Shrdlu, Rehearsal, The Adding Machine

Rehearsal @ Impact

Rehearsal Technique: General/Specific Insights/Principles

Last night, a psedu-tech rehearsal, either I was not picking up my cues or Dan was not -- either way, it diminished the moment-by-moment, the scene like a big fat plane that lumbered down the runway without ever taking off.

Note: People can panic. I heard the comment (generalizing here) that doing or not doing such and such "kills it!!!" It's critical to avoid black&white, catastrophic thinking. When it comes to negative events that WILL happen at some point, catastrophic thinking is a concentration-motivation killer. It's not the event (necessarily) that "kills it" -- it's the belief about the event that "kills it."

A final note -- in the final days of rehearsal, w/much of the chronic problems of the performance solved, I seem to be struggling primarily w/my attitude and managing my expectations and "experience" -- not Shrdlu's experience, my experience, as an actor, struggling to be professional, struggling to perform optimally, believing that however well I'm doing, it is, and will be, good enough.

Christopher (not Shrdlu)

A prayer. If I start to to feel bad/down about the theatre, my cast-mates, the sets, the lights, the props, fill my heart w/love for whatever it is I'm freaking out about. Let me see it as precious gold. Let me see the theatre (and everything in it) as a holy, glorious, wonderful place, and let me see my time there as the greatest gift, as if I was just born there, in a magic place that's there to support me in whatever I choose to do, and that it's the best thing that ever happened to me. Let me see everything in the theatre as a sacred object and me as the luckiest person in the world to be there -- because it is, and I am.

This is my prayer in those times.