Dress Rehearsal

Today afterschool we had our very own version of a dress rehearsal. I met up with all the actors just to brush up on everything we had discussed and rehearsed on Sunday. In those few hours I began to see a different side of my fellow peers. They were freer and looser with their characters, almost as if they were simply an alter ego. I felt that this marked the end of their journey as an actor in developing their character--finally being able to be completely comfortable in their character. They were no longer afraid to try new things in their character and were now more receptive to suggestions and critiques. The only particular person I was still having a diffcult time working with was Christine who was playing the character of Blanca in the novel. For some reason, she was unable to retain much of our direction, especially when it came to blocking. In our production, we had this large couch that was difficult to block around. Christine was often so involved in saying her lines correctly that she would completely lose sight of the audience. She would then proceed to perform her entire monologue from behind the couch. I think that was probably one of the hardest things for our actors to learn--keeping the audience in mind. As many of them were new performers it was understandable that they had never approached these types of problems before. But overall, I think The House of the Spirits has been a great learning experience for them.