Stumbled Through

We've been lucky these past few days when it comes to rehearsals. For two days, we got use the actual space we'll be in at Arts Court. While I did suffer from the old actor's hazard of losing everything when thrown into a new space, it was incredibly beneficial to be able to properly visualize the area the scene takes place in.

Yesterday, we did our first real stumble-through of the show and I was pleased to see that we came in at an hour and 6 minutes (without our ten minute intermission and set changes). My guess that will be pretty close to the show's actual run time when everything else gets thrown in.

I've been having some issues though. The biggest one being that I've been having trouble getting the lines stuck in my head. That surprises me because I was off-book before Christmas and I general never have any trouble when it comes to memorizing lines. I don't know what the problem is this time around. Maybe it's because a lot of the dialogue is the same with only one or two words moved around. Or maybe I'm just not trusting myself enough. When I ran lines with the stage manager, I'd often find that I had the line, but I'd cut myself off to get confirmation.

I did finally realize one of my latest actor "habits" that was pointed out to me during my acting intensive. I try too much to get a "finished" product and don't allow myself any room to play or experiment. It's horrible because really there is no such thing as a finished product when it comes to acting. And if you think that way, you end up getting disappointed in yourself when things don't end up where you wanted them to.

Well, at least I realize it now.