First AMUK Rehearsal

So remember that time when I auditioned for a play? I am pleased to be able to say that I was accepted into the production as part of the cast. Yesterday was the first script reading of the production and it went well.

We held it at the director's apartment which was nice and cozy. He started the session by introducing himself as well as all the other members of the team and what their roles were. For the cast members specifically, he mentioned why we were chosen. The rest of the team is pretty young, relative to me of course. I am the second oldest in the team, the oldest person being the director himself, so I didn't feel like I was as "lit" as everyone else (if that's what people say these days).

After the introductions to each other, we we introduced to the play itself. The director told us what the story was all about and why he felt it was interesting. He communicated to us the vision of the play so that we would all try to head for the same goal. The playwright was also there and added why he wrote the script and what he hoped the script would achieve when performed.

Then we got to reading the script. The director made it clear that the lines were malleable, and as actors, we were granted the liberty of saying and/or changing them as we saw fit. So for a good two hours, we read through parts of the twenty-minute play and picked it apart and discussed why certain lines were crafted the way they were and how they might achieve their goals better by being put in a different way.

It was an interesting process for me because the environment of this rehearsal was so different from my previous (limited) experiences in theatre. In plays that I had been involved in before this, the script was gospel and trying to change a character's lines was akin to blasphemy. If the script was already good and properly edited, then I understood why that had to be the case. But some scripts haven't been thoroughly edited and require picking apart and putting back together to make sense of it all.

The director and playwright were understanding of that fact and recognised that the script was yet to become a finished product, so they welcomed the questions and editing. I in turn appreciated their humility and professionalism in taking into consideration our input and applying them in an effort to get the best script we could possibly gain from the story that was to be told. I was glad that we were invited to be critical of the script and not just take it all in passively. This made me feel like I was able to connect with the script and the team more because we were building the narrative together as a unit rather than disparate pieces of an incongruent puzzle.

I look forward to future rehearsal sessions and continuing this journey with the team.

Here's to humility and professionalism.