Well, and we’re going through the scenes we blocked last week, right? This is the second time through. I have my own blocking scrawled on my sides, but of course I don’t have anybody else’s written down. That’s their business, and Jane’s, and Laura’s.
So. I make my entrance as Rich Alfie, and I come in and look around, and I think to myself Alfie, my boy, I think, wasn’t Higgins on the other side last time? I’m all back-to-front. I am still going DL when it says DL and DR when it says DR, and it all works, but I have Higgins on one side and Mrs. Higgins on the other, and it’s the wrong side. Or is it? Am I remembering it wrong? Which one was in the sofa? Which one was in the chair? Nobody else seems to think there’s anything different.
I still, stubbornly, think that they’ve switched it. And it works this way just fine. Maybe better. I couldn’t tell, because I was so thrown by it.
This is, by the way, utterly different from the blocking being off during a performance. During a performance, I can’t let myself be thrown by a little thing like two people switching chairs. There’s too much else to be thrown by. And by that point, I hope to hell I’ll know if we’ve screwed up the blocking, and I’ll roll with it. Lord knows I’ve done it before. But at this point, when we’re still working it all out, and I’m trying to decide what lines to pitch to which people, and when to stretch and when to stamp my little feet, and I could just swear he was on my right when I came in.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.