It's alive!!! (theatre)

So yesterday was my first day at Live Theatre Workshop for a Wild Things rehearsal. I got really excited because of how different it was from Borderlands. I interviewed the director after the rehearsal was over to find out exactly what her background was with theater and how she picked her cast. This is the first time that the director, Debra, has directed an actual play for Live Theatre, she usually teaches children's acting classes for Live Theatre but says that she is usually just too busy with her daughter to have time to direct a full show. Most of Debra's experience seems to be in children's theater (which is exciting to me because I would be surprised if Eva Tessler has EVER directed children) and four members of her cast are children or teens (the youngest is ten years old), something that I did not know when I picked this play. Debra treats the youth very differently than she treats the adults in the play (who weren't even present). When I arrived, she was explaining to them that the adults will not show up until a few weeks before the show opens and they'll be able to jump right in. This is very different from the philosophy of Lev Dodin who mixes the ages and experience levels of his actors to make the less experienced actors feel the need to step up. Debra, though she is dealing with a wide age group, shows different treatment to the actors based on their age and experience.

The next biggest difference between Eva and Debra is the amount of freedom they give to the actors. Eva would let the actors do what they want to do for the most part, then comment on what needed to be changed. Debra tells the actors exactly where to go, what to do, and how to say their lines. Also, Borderland's performance of Between Pancho Villa and a Naked Woman follows the script almost word for word and Debra told me that she expects her actors to do a lot of improvising. So Debra is more loose with the script but more specific about the acting and Eva is the opposite.

Yesterday they rehearsed the first few minutes of the play with each of the double-cast lead boys. Then she talked to the 'monsters' (the other three youngish actors) about how to be a monster without scaring the youngest members of the audience. They did not do a full run-through so I cannot yet summarize the plot as thoroughly as I did Pancho Villa. Today they will be choreographing one of the musical numbers, but once they do a run-through I will give a full summary. Speaking of which, I've gotta go to rehearsal now!