Opening Angel Street

This week is the show week for our Theatre 151 production of Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton.  Last night’s opening was a wonderful performance, and was followed by a delicious tea and biscuits reception.

Angel Street is the first Theatre 151 production to flex the expectations of a performance in a small venue – usually the stage is set up as a traditional proscenium set-up, but for this show it was arranged as an ‘alley’ set-up, with the stage in the center of the room and a bank of seats on either side.  This made for an even more intimate presentation – which heightened the sense of suspense in the play; a Victorian thriller.  The impending return of a suspicious character is all the more intense when the furthest seat from the stage is hardly more than 10 feet away…

Congratulations to student director Ginny Holladay, the cast and crew of the show!

 

An evening of rehearsals

It’s a joy for me to be in a rehearsal room – I love to see actors at work, and watch a director guiding the process. I got to sit in on 2 rehearsals tonight- Angel Street (which opens in two weeks) and Henry V (in initial blocking rehearsals to open in mid-October).

Rehearsing is practicing – trying different ways of moving, of saying a line, attempting to draw out every possible meaning and deciding which ways communicate the most of what could be meant. A rehearsal room has the space to fail, and fail in the most effective way: the way that leads to discovery. And that’s why a rehearsal room is a place of trust – in fellow actors, in the director, in the crew; trust in the fact that we are all there, together, serving one another, serving the text, and that our valuable failures here results in work that ultimately serves our audience. Otherwise, it’s hard to have the freedom to fail well.

20120912-201345.jpg

20120912-201438.jpg