We were to rehearse from 7 to 7 in Long Beach on Monday. Meanwhile, late morning I had a new audition for a Mexican food company, in West Hollywood (good pay, if one got it!), so had told my rehearsal director/actor early to allow the production to plan around me. As I had predicted, most of the actors didn't show up on time for rehearsal. I made it by 7:15, after having problems defogging the rental car, which I had parked outside overnight, and driving off without my wardrobe, then turning back a few blocks later....So, with these kinds of early morning memory lapses on my part, you can image how my day went...
The audition in LA was interesting - my first for my new agency, so I absolutely had to be there: a roomful of elegant Latinos - men in good suits and bright ties if they were older, hot-looking hunks with glistening black hair in their 20's in black suits, and classic raven-haired babes in their late teens to early 20's wearing tube dresses ending just below the butt and amusing stiletto heels sans stockings.
Then there was my crowd - we women over 40 were there to play the wealthy matriarch. Many styles of us. I wore a plaid teal ruana over a teal cotton blouse and my mother's fabu faux diamond and aquamarine earrings. Then we found out our character would not have lines. So our facial reactions to a story told about favorite foods at the hacienda would be all. The audition ran an hour late, as the casting agency cameraman was late, so I wasn't back to rehearsal in the LB til after 2...Missed lunch, grabbed a last donut from the play production breakfast to keep my energy up. By then they were deep into Act 2 and I was pretty lost and spaced out. And I really just went with the flow. Since the guy who plays my lover, a newcomer to the show with too much on his plate (as director and stage manager, too) is still on book - it sorta makes one want to cheat. I did.
Earlier that morning I had my first freak-out when it was announced all of us actors - even those of us with eight or more costume changes - were to move all the furniture around on the set between scenes.
I don't see at all in the dark, we would be running into one another, and then those two lethal steps plus the plastic step that is not attached to anything at the side of stage awaited, I surmised. Several of our cast and crew have tripped on the steps in the course of rehearsals so far, even though there is now a little scattering of yellow tape on them to define their existence in the dark. Since Day One I have begged for lighting strips. As for the scene changes, there has been compromise, and now we each move a few things off stage as we can and on stage when we are not rushing into wardrobe.
I finally bought a little Sony digital tape recorder and earbuds as suggested by another actress so I can play back my lines over the next several days. It records over 500 minutes and you can upload digital files to your computer. Pretty awsome.
I spent today in recovery...Truth is, I have not really recovered from my last six drives up and down the coast!
No comments:
Post a Comment