A couple of days ago, when my Director asked if we had any production or schedule type questions, and I asked for an off-book date. She said that we should definitely be off-book by the 26th. That is Opening Night, you see. A little joke.\n
My preference is to have a deadline, some date to prepare for, after which any actor clutching a script will be scorned and derided. I have been in shows where actors were simply Not Allowed to clutch a script after that date; I don’t approve of that. So, I suppose there’s some sense in being unwilling to declare a deadline you are not going to enforce. Still, there has to be a time.\n
Now, as for myself and the Duke of Buckingham, we both carry around a folder. And, in fact, it’s the same folder. Although, presumably, what’s in the folder is a trifle different—the Duke probably would not carry around a printout of everything he is going to say for the next two hours. He might, if he could, but most likely he does not.\n
So. I found myself, at that rehearsal, carrying around a prop notebook with an actual script. And although I am mostly<\/i> off-book, I mean, off-book enough to be off-book, but not yet off-book enough to get all the lines exactly correct, the temptation to open it up to the correct page and take just a little peek was overwhelming. Just, you know, while somebody else is talking, open the folder and glance down at the page and back up, refreshing my memory that I address the Queen as Madam<\/i> not Highness<\/i> or that it is for shame if not for charity<\/I> and not vice versa. And we’re not past some deadline for off-book-ness, so it’s not, you know, cheating. There’s no scorn or derision. There’s only the beginnings of the formation of a bad habit.\n
Therefore Your Humble Blogger, being a Good Lad, has transferred the sides to a new folder, a new blue folder, and put a bunch of random pages out of the recycle bin into the black folder I will be carrying properly. I will probably want to make up something that looks good (for mid-70s values of good) before we go up, but the key thing is to get the book out of my hands so I get used to being without it.\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger punches holes in rubbish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[209],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theeyater"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12872"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19037,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12872\/revisions\/19037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}