Last night in rehearsal we made real progress on an important section: Blind Pozzo falling over.
The stage directions are simple: Lucky falls, drops everything and brings down Pozzo with him. But of course every production has to decide on how to actually accomplish that.
Fortunately, our Lucky has some physical comedy training and some stage combat training (as do I, a tiny bit), so once we got a bit of rope, we were able to concoct a decent tumble: Lucky stops when he sees Didi and Gogo, Blind Pozzo of course does not see them or stop and walks into Lucky from behind. Startled, Lucky jumps forward just as Blind Pozzo goes backward—they are caught short at either end of the rope and each reverse direction, passing each other and being caught short again. This time, they turn toward each other, winding each other up in the rope, and then losing their balance and toppling over. We still need to figure out a few things and practice it enough to land in the places we need to stay for the next five pages, but the basic movements are there. It will take perhaps one extra second than a simpler sequence, but I think worth it. Plus I like the metaphor that shows the two bound together, rather than one to the other.
I say Blind Pozzo because I have decided it’s important for me to keep in mind that Blind Pozzo is a different character than Pozzo—it isn’t just that Pozzo can no longer see, there has been a more substantial difference than that. I mean, it’s possible that the second act visitors are in fact entirely different people from the first act visitors; nothing can be certain. But even assuming that Blind Pozzo was once Pozzo, at the time we meet him he is a very different person with very different goals and speech patterns. This is also true of Didi, at least, and to an extent of Gogo as well—the setting is the next day, and there are certainly clues that indicate that only one day has passed, but there are other clued that indicate that Act Two isn’t really one day after Act One at all. Or that in Didi and Gogo’s world, there aren’t two different days, and perhaps never have been.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.