Lines, please!

Behold. Here recorded are the events of last night’s rehearsal.

5:05 pm: The actors start trickling in. Late, as usual. I’ll refer to each of them by their character names: Suzie, Roger, Julia, Terrence, Khalid, Jeff, and Lydia (me). Our director Stuart is impatient to start.

5:13: Everyone has assembled, and the actors begin their vocal warm-up: a series of tongue twisters that are prime both the brain and the mouth for maximum vocal performance. Since the play rests so heavily on the action within conversation, this exercise is an important one, and who doesn’t have fun saying: “A box of biscuits. A box of mixed biscuits, and a biscuit mixer,” as fast as they can? ( You know you want to try it!)

5:20: Stuart instructs us to pace: which is just theatre lingo for going through the play and saying lines as fast as we can without acting them. It’s a good refresher for remembering one’s lines, but its also important for rhythm. Conversations have a natural beat to them, like music, and in order for a play to be believable onstage, actors must tap into that rhythm. Pacing drills the lines into the actor’s brain so that they become second nature, natural reactions for the character, therefore allowing the actor to worry less about what they are saying, but how they are saying a line.

6:24: After a couple of line snafus (read dropped, mixed-up, or wrong lines and people who aren’t off-book) we finish pacing. Stuart declares a five-minute break. After we come back we will work on several moments in the play where conversations aren’t working. There is a mass exodus to the vending machines.

6:42: Late, as always, we begin working on a scene that involves fast-paced dialogue and passing a dish of relish. It’s about a 50 second bit of conversation hell. In order for it to work, lines must be said with the correct intensity (building!) and exactly at the right moment (mimicking natural conversation) to give focus to the words over the business of the relish passing. Who knew it was so hard to talk and pass relish at the same time?

6:56: We go to a scene at the top of the play that moves from genial, fast-paced, witty conversation to a full-out screaming match. Again, here the issues are in the intensity and the timing. The words are the focus and we have to make them as active and interesting as possible in order to keep the audience attentive and not sleeping in their chairs.

6:03: Pronunciation meltdown. The actors playing Suzie and Khalid speak English as a second language. Suzie just said sal-mon instead of salmon.

6:05: In an OT conversation, ‘Roger’ asks ‘Suzie:’ “Do we (Americans) sound like we have accents to you?”
She just looks at him.
‘Jeff’: (to ‘Roger’) Ethnocentric motherf****er!

6:07: Back on track. Stuart constantly tweaks bits of timing and line delivery to give focus and make sentences more clear to an imagined audience.

6:46: That scene is nailed down. We move to a scene at the end of the show where ‘Khalid’ has a lot of lines. I’ve been drafted to go through the script and mark where he mispronounces a word or circle places where his accent makes it difficult to understand him.

7:26: ‘Khalid’s scene has made progress. We are rewarded with another short break.

7:44: We start at the top of the show for a run-through. Stuart will not stop us until the play ends or we run out of time, and then he will give notes (God save us!). He reminds us especially to focus on the language, watching rhythm and intensity. “Keep it moving!”

9:11: (A rather symbolic time for the content of the play!) We finish the show. A good run, but by no mans perfect. ‘Roger’ must watch his mush-mouth-ness and his volume (too loud!) . ‘Suzie’ gets a little whiny at times, which is hard for audiences to physically listen to, ‘Khalid’ needs to keep working on his pronunciation and line memorization, while ‘Terrance’ has to tap into the natural rhythms and cadences of speech–he’s sounding artificial. ‘Julia’ has to up her intensity, ‘Jeff’ suffers from the same problem, but he also is having problems with volume. I need to watch my volume at times, as well as my mid-western accent–Stuart doesn’t want it to be too strong for the show.

It’s nit-picky stuff. I’m suddenly realizing how many complex factors go into communicating and communicating well. We hardly have to think about it in regular conversation, but it is imperative in theatre’s artificial conversations. Ultimately, Omnium’s success lies in the power of language and the actor’s mastery of it.