Your Humble Blogger has been in three community theater productions in the last three years. I’ve been in three in the last ten years, as well, just so you get an impression. Those three were all with my Dear Director, who is dear to me, and therefore I am used to doing things her way, to the extent that I am used to doing them at all.
One aspect of my Dear Director’s way is plenty of rehearsal time; we had eight or nine weeks of rehearsal, almost all of which was on the stage and the set. Oh, there were always a few missing pieces, or a chair that stood in for the proper chair, but for the most part, we were on the set. I think I wrote about this at one point, that it was disconcerting because were on the set under the lights and totally not ready for an audience—because we weren’t going up in front of an audience for another two weeks.
Well, now I’m in somebody else’s show, and things are different. We have a seriously compressed rehearsal schedule. I have a small part and am not needed at every rehearsal, but I have been to 2 (two) rehearsals so far, and we open in twenty-four days. And I looked down at my rehearsal schedule during a break in rehearsal last night and discovered that we are off-book on Monday.
Monday! Like, less than a week from now.
I had been, you know, looking at the lines and all, but I hadn’t been seriously committing them to memory yet, because (a) it’s a small part, and (2) we had just started the rehearsal process. It retrospect, that may have been an error. Also, it’s possible that typing this is an error, when viewed as an alternative to seriously committing my lines to memory.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.