Rehearsal moved temporarily to another hall, and it took us a while to get our bearings again with respect to where various parts of the play would happen in the performance space. We all gathered around the model to see if we couldn’t figure it all out.
I feel like I have to start updating this blog twice daily or more: too much happens on any given day to record it all in retrospect.
One week into rehearsal and we are already on the point of assembling and running the first three acts of Shakespeare’s text and the first three dumbshows that precede them.
Today, we had the whole cast (all twenty-seven!) in the room together for the first time. We hammered out many the kinks in the opening number that will establish the setting, set the mood, introduce most of the characters, and provide some major storytelling points… all packed into five minutes… without words… and set to music.
There’s a kind of magic that settles on the room when the music starts and all twenty-seven members of the cast spring into action: jumping, dancing, tumbling, contorting, knocking each other down, and picking each other up, all in a way that is at once tightly choreographed and completely open to individual expression. There’s a mixture of fun, wonder, and joy in watching it all happen that never diminishes, no matter how many times we run through it…
And this is just the opening five minutes of the show! There are so many massive transformative elements to be added: the set, costumes, and lights, and most critically: the audience! Because if this is already an amazing experience to share with a few dozen people, one can only imagine what it’s going to feel like when we are sharing it with five thousand of our closest friends.
After a few days of dancing and movement for Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s beach-themed Comedy of Errors, cast member Rebecca Whitehurst put together this set of pictures of other similarly acrobatic beach goers.
Thanks, Rebecca!
Learning the First Phrase, originally uploaded by rpmaxwell.
Hello, and welcome to Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s 2009 production of The Comedy of Errors!
The first week of our incredibly fast and fun rehearsal process has just come to a close and there are so many pictures and stories to post. So let’s get right to it:
Artistic Director Steve Maler has set this production in South Beach Miami of the 1930s: in the boardwalk world of Latin jazz clubs and boutique Art Deco hotels.
The cast has been hard at work with choreographer Yo-El Cassell on the “dumbshows,” (brief, fun, wordless vignettes that will occur around Shakespeare’s acts) that will set the stage and tell the story of the South Beach world in which the play takes place. The dumbshows are awash in the characters, colors, and energy of that world: Lifeguards and dogwalkers, band members and young lovers. All moving and dancing to sound designer David Wilson’s amazing, energetic, expressive music.
Two dozen actors spent three days dancing through five dumbshows, and there’s still more to come!
