Rehearsal Day Seven:

Tiffany arrived from Brazil today. Coming straight from the airport to rehearsal she didnít miss a beat. Amazing. I scheduled a scene that I had already worked with Nate and Abe that she needed to be dropped into with ease. I also built in a break in the day figuring that something like this would happen.

I had been worried about working with Tiffany because I'd never met her before auditions. Thank God she's a peach to work with. And her sense of humor works with the rest of the rehearsal company. I had a bad experience with Ryan Hays on Mineola Twins because I just couldnít figure him out. Not the case here. And strangely enough I get Ryan now and he's kinda fun to work with too.

I ran the bedroom scene with Nate and Susan again. That's three. It's better, but not good. Not good enough for me. Luckily Susan took my notes and understood what I wanted with Alice. Cute, but not dumb or naive. She's very likeable now and will be more so by show night. Nate however is one of two flavors; cold and mean or touchy-feelie and boring/ sensitive.

I remember when I was building a character for Boys' Life with Rick. I have wanted to be a character actor since I was in the fifth grade and of course wanted to make a character that was nothing like me. Rick taught me that a character can never be completely different from one's personality. There will always be similarities. In realizing this I created an amalgamation of Don and myself, or at least attempted to.

The Carter that exists in my mind will never be seen on stage. And the next actor to play Carter, given the chance, will also not be like the one in my head. It's impossible.

Carter will always have aspects of Nate Fessler. Sigh. For better or worse. Now I just have to get him to be less like Nate Fessler. Certain traits that Nate possesses makes the character strange and or boring to watch. I've been sympathetic to Nate because of his hand, but as time goes on, I can't sacrifice any more time. That and I realized that Nate hasn't had Acting II. Damn it. So I've been teaching him things that anyone who's had Acting II would already know.

The first thing he needs to know is how to lay out beats. That will be done tomorrow. He's currently playing everything at it's base leave. No subtext. Very little raise or fall in action. Wavy motivation at best. And fake. Everything seems fake. The best scenes so far are the ones that he's not the main focus. That's bad.

Worse of all, when I try to give him direction he gets weepy. I try to counter this with complements when he's doing well. But he's so hard on himself that he just shuts down. Ryan needs a lot of work, but he doesn't shut down when I work with him.

I tried an improv scene or two, but he turns it into a joke, because that's where he feels safe. It doesnít help that I know that one of the reasons he's weepy is due to poor decision making over the summer. I gave him the speech about leaving personal feelings at the door. When you're working, you're working. I said it much nicer than that, but that's more or less what I said.

I'm not mad at Nate, I just think that I'm not a good enough director to get him where he needs to be. It's true that he wasn't my first choice. He was my only choice left. I'm not going to give up on him. He's going to give up on him. Something needs to be done.

I spoke to Brian again about show dates. I'm extremely worried by this point for the sake of the show. If a decision can’t be reached, then I won't be having a show. The two options are that we either open on the same weekend as Earnest (I know that's impossible.) Or we open and close in the middle of the week 22,23,24, which wouldn’t work since Nate need to be at the Ernest dry tech during those days. Our original date (Sept. 11) is the day that Nate is having his cast removed. He won't be able to use his hand for several days after that. And the weekend after that I loose Tiffany, Susan, and Scott to a wedding. The days after the opening of Earnest I loose Cameron to Frog and Toad and Hayley and whoever she casts to New Works.

It's come to the point that I think I'm being tested if I have the balls to make it in the real world. But that only makes me dig in harder. Unfortunately, nothing I can do can control the outcome of this. Have a show, or donít. Lose the project I've worked on for three years. Lose the project the designers have been working on for four months.

The actors are getting antsy as well. I don't have an answer to the show date. What can I say? Wait more. More time. Donít focus on that. The questions about KCACTF approval also hangs over head. They're a little more understanding about that since all of the professors aren't back yet. I don't know what else I can do. This is ten times more work that I've ever done on a project. I've rarely seen this much work done on a project. I went in knowing that I would not get the same enthusiasm for Saving Alice from the cast in crew as I had for it, but that's not entirely true. To some it's just another show they're doing, but others are completely dedicated to the life of it. I never thought some of these people would care so much.

Sigh. Other than that... the show's going really well. The opening is incredible. Kate and Ryan came up with the idea to use Ryan's acrobatics in the opening scene. It really only makes sense. We blocked it out and I think I sets up the show really well. I was also able to set it up safely. I don't want a repeat of some studio shows in the past that have put either the audience or the actor in danger.

The mad tea party is near show performance. I'll ease up on that one for a bit and let it breathe.

Then I found out that Scott's computer is dead. He'll have a replacement to do editing , but it was scary. For a moment we'd thought that he'd lost all of the video footage he'd done in the last four years. It's safe. So that makes one broken actor and one dead computer.

Rehearsal Day Six:

About half way through rehearsal Abe pulled me aside. I got that instant sick feeling in your stomach when you know you're about to get yelled at. Abe gets this low tone and shifty eyes when he's upset. He started out telling me that he wasn't happy with the way I was running rehearsals. That caught me off guard but I don't think he noticed. Having seen Barb and Rick use their "lawyer face" plenty of times I've adapted one of my own. I continued listening with a nod, asking him what the problem was as though I was ordering dinner. He continued to build his case not getting to the issue at hand until minutes later. I let him talk. This had obviously been on his chest. Or at least he was nervous about asking me, so he ranted.

Finally he revealed what the assault was all about. A schedule. He wanted a schedule. Because of Nate being in and out of the hospital without any real notice, as well as the problems with getting the show date set, I haven't been able to make a new schedule. I had one that was now quite void. I assured Abe that this was not a normal occurrence and told him that a new one was being worked on already and that he'd have one by the end of the day.

He seemed pleased. I wasn't. I could feel myself wanting to defend my reasons and get passionate and flail my arms about, but I thought of Rick and his beard and his squinty, thinking eyes. So I patted him on the back and told him that I was glad that he came to me and that he should do so at anytime. That was true of course. He smiled and went into the Studio.

This scheduling process has not been easy on anyone. I can't think of how another student director would have reacted to an actor saying that they weren't happy with the way they ran rehearsals. But you know what? My pride doesn't matter. Furthermore, Abe is completely right. Very justified in his being upset. Especially when you consider who he's had as a director before me; Barb, Rick, and Rachel Nelson. All of whom are very structured.

By the end of the day he had a schedule. It won't be brought up again, and I won't give it any more thought.