John - Playing in the Dark

We started tonight with the dialog fragments exercise - which I'm bad at. Actors just start speaking lines from the play to each other - not necessarily their own lines - not necessarily addressed to the usual recipient. I heard all the basic relationships played out, and all the key moments in the play visited at least once. But not in sequence.

I think I'd like to sit in on a fragments exercise for a play I don't know. Then I would amuse myself trying to reconstruct the plot. It would be like taking a shredded letter and piecing it together.

From the fragments the cast spontaneously morphed into a full rehearsal of the play - in the dark. Well, not completely. We all had little flashlights. And there was a candle. So there was light a-plenty, in fact. It was the fastest, most fluid version of the play I've seen so far.

You sometimes hear, from theater people, that the real fun is in rehearsal. Perhaps it's because so much of the original creativity takes place there. Yes, there's often moment-to-moment creativity during a play's performance. But during rehearsal you see the big leaps take place before your eyes, which is always a pleasing surprise.