April 2, 2008

Blogging Breaking Ground: More from Day Two

Today is our second afternoon of rehearsal for UNKNOWN SOLDIER with the whole creative team here at the Calderwood Pavilion in the Deane Rehearsal Hall. Before Thursday evening's reading of Michael Friedman and Daniel Goldstein's new musical, the cast will have spent a total of approximately 18 hours in rehearsal. This is time to be spent learning and working music, on the discussion of characters and structure, sometimes figuring out rewrites/refinements, and discovering opportunities for further development of the piece before it's shared with an audience tomorrow night. In addition to all these points on their rehearsal to-do list, they are also trying to figure out the simple logistics of how actors will navigate the space in performance on Thursday night (when actors are to move to their places for scenes and songs, who stands where, etc).

For all the other readings, all of above has to occur in even less time -- 5 hours to be exact. It's quite a whirlwind, and it's what makes Breaking Ground so very exciting (and possible!) as 5 readings take place this year over only 4 days, during which I will surely continue humming the songs of UNKNOWN SOLDIER I've heard over the past two days ("Cut that meat!")

Speaking of the songs, the lyrics are proving to be quite a riot. If you make it to the reading tomorrow night, be prepared for some slightly, um, adult-themed songs. They are AMAZING.

(PS: It turns out that Maria wasn't the only one involved in UNKNOWN SOLDIER who was called away unexpectedly. Near the end of rehearsal, co-creator Michael Friedman found out he was needed later this evening in NYC for a last-minute adjustment to current project in production. He'll be back tomorrow, but it looks like Michael is going to spending a lot of time on Amtrak in the meantime. Now that we have his car keys, I wonder what kind mischief we can get into?)

Mwa ha ha ha..

Lauren

1 comment:

Stupid n Silly said...

The reading last night was incredible; it was interesting to hear the contrast between the present day characters and the past characters. I can’t wait to see this musical and hopefully it will be in production by early 2009. I better get back to work before someone screams finish that work you slacker like cut that meat in the musical ;-) adios …