Room Service Rehearsal, Day Three

Prior Reports:
Day 1 - Sunday, 29 June: Read-Through and Act One Blocking
Day 2 - Monday, 30 June: Act Two and Act Three Blocking

Tuesday, 1 July: Act Three Blocking, Publicity, and Working Act One

Hi again! Eric Silvertree reporting on the third day of rehearsals for Room Service, coming soon to the historic Tibbits Opera House in Coldwater, Michigan.

The director and cast finished blocking the very last scene of the play during the morning rehearsal session, which starts at 10am. My workday began at 8:45, however, because I was booked as a guest on “Delaney in the Morning” at WTVB-AM1590. Publicity work is part of an actor's job, too, from appearances at community events to interviews and articles for newspaper, TV, and radio - and weblogs!

I wasn't actually promoting Room Service, however. Caroline Stewart (Volunteer Coordinator for Tibbits) and I were on to talk to Ken Delaney about The Tortoise and the Hare and Other Fables by Aesop, which is the next production in Tibbits' Popcorn Theatre series for children, now that The House at Pooh Corner has finished its run.

As I mentioned yesterday, summer stock companies have multiple shows in the works at the same time. As of this moment, the count stands at three: Little Women is halfway through its performance run, and both Aesop and Room Service are in rehearsal. Come to think of it, both the director and musical director of The Goodbye Girl are doing prep-work already, and I'm sure the design staff are busy sketching and planning for shows further down the line… It gets hectic and confusing for everyone really fast. The person we actors rely on most to keep the confusion to a minimum is the stage manager. That's our stage manager, Justin Carrol, in the photo with the director, Charles Burr.

After I finished at the radio station and 10am rolled around, I still wasn't working on Room Service. I was rehearsing Aesop instead. Practically everyone in the cast of Little Women who's staying on for the rest of the season is in either Room Service or Aesop, but fortunately for everyone's sanity, I'm the only actor in both. Fortunately for my sanity, I'm not in Little Women.

On to the afternoon. Once blocking is completed, rehearsal switches over to work sessions. Working a scene or an act means doing it in tiny one- or two- or three-page sections. The cast does one section at a time over and over, stopping frequently to get feedback from the director, refining it and cementing it in their memories. When the director feels it's time to move on, he'll let the cast keep going past the end of that section, then loop back to repeat another few pages. Every now and then, to keep things from getting too choppy, the director will back up and run the cast through all the sections they've been working in one shot.

This afternoon's rehearsal period was spent working Act 3. Since I wasn't there in the morning for blocking, I got clued in on my movements by Justin. While the cast write down notes about their own blocking in their own scripts, the stage manager writes down blocking notes about everybody. Thus, actors who have to miss a rehearsal automatically have someone taking notes for them. Plus, when we get far enough along to put our scripts down, we have someone to ask if we forget a line or a piece of blocking.

During the evening rehearsal, we worked Act 1. Working an act involves a lot of waiting, because although you may know that there are three pages to go before you enter the scene, you don't know how many times they're going to do those three pages before they go on. We study our scripts on the sidelines, and at the same time we keep an eye on what's happening on stage, ready to jump in when the time comes. By the end of the day, both Act 3 and Act 1 had been completely worked. Guess which act we'll be working tomorrow!