Rehearsal update: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

So, who's got two thumbs and has been really bad about updating the blog?

This girl.

Sorry, guys. Between work, rehearsal, and the holidays, the blog kind of got away from me. But I'm back, and here is a rehearsal update!

So far, so good. We haven't been able to use the actual theatre much, so we've been doing a lot of our rehearsing in a classroom -- which will get interesting once we're on the stage and have to adapt to having four times the amount of space to work with. I forsee much laughter as we watch ... well, pretty much everyone but me, as I'm the only one who has the luxury of being so drunk taht I don't move for most of the show, tripping over themselves trying to get to where they belong when suddenly the distance from sofa to bar is a lot more than they're used to.

I have to say, this is a delightful cast to work with. Small casts have their pros and cons -- sometimes it's really nice because you all have a chance to get close, and other times it's rough becasue if you don't all click offstage, there's a lot of awkward silence in the dressing rooms while you wait to go on. This isn't one of those casts, though.

We have the luxury of having two Fairfax County Drama teachers on the cast, Chip (George) and Scott (Nick), so they already know one another. They're also both jsut really nice, affable guys who seem to be the type to get along with everyone. Chip and Wynn (Martha) have great chemistry onstage and off, joking and laughing the whole way through rehearsals (which you really have to do with a heavy show like this -- if you're not laughing wheny ou're not acting, it's really easy to get hung up in the darkness of the subject matter and then you just end up depressed and cranky for the whole run).

Our director, Michael Null, is wonderful, and he provides us with lovely rehearsal snacks of Chex mix and some kind of awesome wasabi thing he found at an Asian cafe. Wasabi is amazing. Unless you're not expecting it, in which case it can make you choke on your lines, which is hilarious if you're one of the other people in the room.

Our stage manager Christy has stepped up and filled in whenever we have an actor out for the night, and so far she's rocked out at playing Nick and I'm fairly sure she's had to play Honey, too, since I have a conflict for the first part of Tuesday nights. I'm not sure how she's faring at playing Honey, as I'm not there to see it, but I imagine she's doing well.

This will be the second time I've played drunk onstage, and it's a really different type of drunk. Georgeanne (Five Women Wearing the Same Dress) was just funny; Honey is a manic-depressive drunk. It's definitely turned out to be challenging ... although not as challenging as learning the lines. I'm not sure who has it worse in this show: me, having to learn lines that are mostly non-sequitors, scattered sporadically throughout people yelling and talking over one another; or Chip and Wynn, who have to learn basically a full two and a half hours of non-stop dialogue. Scott has it easy; all he has to do is smile and nod through about 50% of the show. I think probably Chip and Wynn have it harder, though this is easily the most difficult memorization I've ever had to do personally. And we're supposed to be off-book after New Year's (well, we may have another week or so ... I have "off-book" written on at least four days in my calendar, and I'm not entirely sure which one's right, so I'm going to assume it's the earlist one).

Wish us luck, and mark February 12 (opening night) on your calendars!