Tonight’s the first rehearsal of my cutting for “Grey Gardens”. The cast has been long since determined, my costume-design collaboration with E is complete, and the piano tracks have been made. I’m really excited to start working with these students — they will get along quite well with each other and I hope they’ll take well to me too. I’m a little nervous about the rehearsal process itself, though. In rehearsals for my project last fall (Mo’s class), I pretty much just let the actors do what they wanted and all-too-often deferred to what they thought the characters’ emotions and motives are. I know that it’s important that the actors understand the characters and come up with their own ideas, but not to the point of my having barely any involvement or input. It was all my own fault, of course. I was so insecure about being a first-time director that I didn’t even know what I was supposed to do. Now that I’m a little more confident, I can give much more information and “hints” about the text to help the actors along. I’ve already taken the liberty of writing emotion adjectives after nearly every line of dialogue to coach the actors on how their characters should be behaving at each point in time. The notes aren’t set in stone, though. I may even cross out half of them tonight and replace them with what each actor thinks. I want this to be a joint effort but I can’t let my role as director get watered down. It is my project, after all!
Also, happy birthday to my little goose. As I said on FB, this is truly the end of an era. A door has been closed. I feel so bloody old.
Magic To Do 