Bobbie Edmunds
Today is the last day of week four and first official day of rehearsals on our adaptation of Moliere’s Tartuffe! All of us were a bit tired this morning after a late night watching the Graduate Acting alumni’s amazing Sondheim Cabaret, but I was eager and excited because we started the morning in the mask making studio with Joan! We spent our time carving and shaping our masks in clay and some people began to work on the paper mache step of the process. The masks are starting to look amazing. At the end of the program, we will all have made a Commedia mask to take home with us.
Jacob was sensing that we were a bit worn out during our first rehearsal and had us start with some Feldenkrais work. This work focuses on little repetitive movements that can be felt all throughout the body. For example, we gently move our heads right to left, while paying attention to how this movement ripples through the neck, shoulder and spine.
We are stripping Moliere’s play down to its core, rather than learning the text and presenting it as we might are used to doing. Once we break down what the scenario of each scene, we use that scenario to improve as the different commedia characters. It is hard to believe that in 6 days we will be performing. Jim said that today we are setting up the clothespins of the show and will spend the next week deepening each scenario and finding the play between the different characters.
We are all having to get used to a new way of working here in Florence; the show is much more process oriented than performance oriented. We are learning and discovering how to go deeply into each different commedia character and how we can connect the old archetypes to our modern world. It is scary and exciting to work on a play that is going to rely so heavily on improvisation and character work, rather than scene study or text work. I am learning a lot about working through artistic difficulty in productive ways, rather than dwelling on what I might perceive as something going wrong. There is no right or wrong. We are encouraged to stay curious about why things are not working and why they are. In order to play, we have to dive in despite the fear that comes with the possibility of failing. As Jim often says, we are learning to “make it worser” for ourselves in our acting work. The worse it is for us, the better it is for the audience.
Tomorrow is our last day off for a while and many of us are planning on taking some time to explore downtown. It is very exciting to get going on the play and we’ll be resting up while we can!