Second rehearsal

To be honest I'm a little worried... Things seem to be going too well.

We now have planned all the basic movement for act one. The play feels very short. It took us less than an hour to run the whole of act one. Of course this will slow down once I take the script out of their hands. The speed they are rehearsing at gives lots of opportunity to make a very slick and precise show.

Tonight we did a 'song' but it is more like a rhyme said to a vague tune. Now, I am in no way musical but upon seeing the words a tune just popped into my head. It is incredibly simple and the cast seemed to pick it up straight away. On reading the script it was these 'songs' which bothered me the most- I even had nightmares about them and now, somehow, they are just working. Hopefully all the musical elements with gel together.

We had a bit of silly behaviour tonight forcing me to use my 'teacher voice'. It was reassuring that I was able to regain control. Directing the youth is strange in some ways as I have been put in charge of people who are usually my equal- people I would usually chat and laugh with at other rehearsals and now I have to be the one to hush them. I have never really seen myself as a leader but fortunately they are all good people and it never gets too out of control.

The most difficult part of the rehearsal, however, was trying to get the cast to laugh. Apparently this was too difficult and for some time they seemed incapable of laughing at all. I had to crack out my best laugh and give each cast member an example laugh of some proportion before they could manage even a titter. Maybe I should take them along to a comedy show sometime, they will soon learn to laugh.