Printed Scripts in Hand!

- table read of our finished product

- got on our feet

- put Scene 1 in a good place

- our hour together went quick

- DTC, Sr., came through!

- had a good talk about where we wanted to go

I was excited for rehearsal this evening, as I had printed out copies of our final draft of the script which had been submitted to the festival, and we were going to begin with some table-work. Everyone had arrived, including Chava, and Olegario and Alex had even brought copies of their original drafts, which I couldn't believe they still had. Unfortunately, my printer was running out of ink and some of the lines were difficult to make out. But given we had created the script, we helped one another through it. As we were reading, I noticed it was difficult for a couple of us to sit still throughout the entire duration of the read-through; I was glad it was solely a refresher and that we would be able to get on our feet soon enough.

I made the mistake of working with everyone at the same time when I should have split us up and done individual scene work simultaneously. Then I could have brought everyone together and see where everything was at toward the end of the session. I will also need to incorporate some games to help tackle some traps our actors were falling into: volume, cheating out to the audience, and intentions will all need to be revisited.

Still, we ended up working Scene 1 and 2 a couple of times and it's not in a bad place. Poor Olegario and Giovanni, who weren't in the first couple of scenes, ended up sitting out for somewhat of a while. Before I knew it, the hour was already up and we didn't have an opportunity to play any games at the end of the rehearsal. It didn't help I had to request focus a couple of times during the process because a couple of my actors were choosing to horse-play with one another rather than be focused on the scene at hand. (But I blame myself for not having conducted the rehearsal the way I suggested earlier.)

Soon, I was looking at the faces of the original DTC! Marques needed to catch up on some work and could not arrive, but it was great to see the original crew, Angel, María, and Sarah! We caught up with one another for about 30 minutes and then discussed what the group could work on for our next presentation. I'm not sure why it didn't come to me, but I should have mentioned us trying to put together a show for the Tampa Fringe Festival next year. We decided we would work to present one of our earlier pieces for the 16th of September, and it was neat to re-hash the work we had created for that presentation. It made us realize we had been working together for about 5 years! I don't know we will meet next week, given everyone's commitments, but we promised to try in two weeks time.