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The Boards, Thursday [Rehearsal]

"Evening folks," Jono greeted as he leaned back against the stage, nodding to the people gathered for tonight's rehearsal. "Today, we're going to run through the last bits of the show. That is, everything after the floor show, right on through Super Heroes."

He had a certain fondness for that song. No reason.

"And then when we're done with that, I'd like you all to touch base with us. How do you feel about where you're at so far? Are you comfortable with your roles? If you feel as though you could use any extra rehearsal time, or one-on-one work, please, let Troy or myself know, and we'll make time for you. I'm fairly certain we can be accommodating. After all, it isn't as though we have classes or other jobs to go you. Just let us know when works for you."

"Seriously, anything we can do for you, just ask," Troy agreed. "It's a big part of what we're here for. And I'd be happy to make time to work on the choreography if anyone wants more pointers, although for the most part I think everyone's doing pretty well."

Well. For a community theatre production, anyway.

"So I guess we'll get on with it, then, and then we can move on to any questions you guys have, stuff like that!" Grinning, Troy waved everyone into position. "Places, everyone, for the end of the floor show."

[Cast List | Script (with AP, multi-page, colour on black) | Script (no AP, single page, black on white) | ~~Wait for~~ OCD is up!]

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There may or may not be muffins, but at this point we're assuming that it's tradition (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRdfX7ut8gw).

As always, lemon water, at least!

Since finding the parts she needed to fix her still fried suit were heavily on the may not, Samus was going to take advantage of the fact that no helmet meant easier feeding when there may have been muffins. See? There were some downsides to the Power Suit...

...some.

Hanna ~~and her player~~ felt like she might be starting to get a cold, so lemon water was probably the best thing for her right now.

Hoyt is dead, along with... half the principal cast, practically; it's not quite 'rocks fall, everyone dies', but it's close.

And the humans left behind are certainly... changed.

Bring up anything you need to! One or the other (or both) of Jono and Troy will respond!

"I... could probably use more work," Natalie volunteered mildly ~~right as her player was about to pass out, so SP was imminent~~.

She was pretty sure her Ecuadoria still came off pretty stiff.

Troy nodded -- partly in agreement, partly in encouragement. "Did you have a specific part you were worried about?" he asked. "Or are you thinking in a more general sense?"

Don't worry, Natalie. He'll totally get to the general sense, too. He just wanted to see what you've picked up on yourself.

"General," Natalie replied. "I was cast in this role because of an audition where I was basically on drugs." Gremlin venom counted as one, okay? "I'm still not really comfortable with it. Except the singing."

She was doing pretty awesomely with that, actually. She thought so, anyway.

"Yeah, your singing's been great!" Troy agreed. "Okay, so... If you had to pick, like, one thing you're having trouble with, what do you think it would be? Sometimes I find if I change one thing, everything else starts to fall into place."

"I'm not naive."

That was probably better than saying 'the acting, I have a problem with acting', right? And she didn't really have a problem with the mechanics of acting, anyway. More like the emotions she should have been portraying.

"Ecuadoria's... open. Loose. I'm having a hard time with that."

Troy nodded. "So if Ecuadoria's open and loose," he asked, "how do you characterise yourself that's different? Do you think you're opposite -- closed and tight? Or is it something else?"

"My boyfriend thinks I'm a closed book."

True, she wasn't sure he thought that anymore, but the point still stood. Even the person closest to her thoughts she played things close to the vest. And as much as anyone could tell from the mild, restrained way she acted, she preferred it that way.

"I'm not cute like Ecuadoria, and I'm finding it hard to fake it.

"Okay, try this," Troy said, pulling out his phone and opening up a stopwatch app. "You get one minute to argue in favor of..."

Hmm.

"Thongs. You are the pro-thong side in a debate. Your minute starts now."

[NGL, I actually had to do this in a theatre class once. Although I think I was the anti-thong side; I used the word 'buttfloss' a lot.]

Natalie raised an eyebrow at this task. Mildly, as you do. But hey, at least she refrained from noting how hard it was to time text. Because that would've just been confusing.

"Thongs are a perfectly acceptable article of clothing," she started. "Sure, they can be pretty unseemly but sometimes that's exactly what's needed and expected. There's a scale in tone to clothes just as there is to everything else."

Oh yeah. Natalie also happened to be pretty analytical about things. She continued much in the same vein, with smart, calm pro-thong arguments, finishing off near the one-minute mark with, "And so thongs are no worse than guys not wearing shirts in the summer or people who aren't conventionally attractive wearing whatever they like. It's a matter of taste and tone."

She may have missed the point of the exercise.

Troy was grinning, admittedly, at the end of the minute; anyone able to spend a minute talking off the cuff about thongs analytically was awesome.

Awesome.

"Okay, so that was pretty good," he said. "Maybe a little more..." Troy waved one hand kinda vaguely. "It's still kinda... clinical?

"Natalie, hey, do you know anyone like Ecuadoria?"

'Clinical' was not a word she was unfamiliar with in relation to how she talked about things, no.

She paused to consider the question, then decided, "No. Not really." Pause. "Sam probably comes the closest, and that's a major stretch. He's just a dork."

"How do you think he'd play Ecuadoria?"

He wouldn't look half as awesome in the fishnets and gold tuxedo, probably.

"Like, I mean," Troy continued, "what kind of choices do you think he'd make about the character? Would he play her kinda like himself, or would she end up further in one direction or another?"

Natalie actually thought there was a chance Sam would manage to be more comfortable than her in fishnets. He had a better sense of humour about himself than she did.

But, again, she considered the question. "Flirtier than him," she said. "A little livelier, but maybe not by much. Louder, definitely."

Maybe she was starting to grasp at things, now.

That was good, yeah, Troy thought, nodding. "Perfect. Okay, so, she'd be flirtier." He grinned, holding up his phone again.

"You have one minute to flirt with me."

... Well. This was going to be harder than the thong one. Natalie actually visibly hesitated for a moment. Flirting was something she barely even did with Sam.

But, she dug into the part of herself that would one dayslowly turn her into someone called Envy. That part Ms. Holloway so liked to prod at. She clung to the mental image of herself at the Valentine's Dance, in her dress, and went with that.

She didn't really smirk, but something in her expression changed. Oh yeah, and she stopped blinking. It was a thing. Her attention was constant. "Well, that's easier than justifying thongs," she said. Lying like a lying thing. "I mean, you're not a bad looking guy. I'm a little taken but that doesn't mean I don't notice, and since this play's a lot about attraction, it makes sense the directors should be attractive too."

And, even surprising herself, she could actually keep it up for a minute. Sort of idle but flirty. Rising to challenges could be a matter of pride. Plus, being used to keeping things to herself meant being able to fake confidence.

"Okay, now how do you think Ecuadoria would do that?" Troy asked. "Like, you were pretty cool there, right? Would Ecuadoria do it the same way, or do you think she'd be... bubblier, or looser, or what?"

He was really happy with how this was going; Natalie was, at the very least, good at taking direction, and she could think on her feet.

"Bubblier," Natalie nodded. "She's... more the giggly type."

Whereas Natalie barely cracked a smile that she didn't feel was absolutely merited.

"Okay, so give me one minute of bubbly. Bubbly anything."

Natalie was pretty sure these tasks wouldn't have seemed to get progressively harder if she'd been a different sort of person.

Alas, she was herself, and had to focus on pasting a smile on her face. Totally going for what she could remember from Miss Cheese Scandinavia from when she'd auditioned. "Oh my gosh." That was a good start, wasn't it? "This acting thing is so fun! I never knew you could have this much fun in community theater! It's pretty neat we even have one here, but I guess it would be pretty sad if we didn't."

She faltered a little more with this than she had with the flirting, though she made it to the minute mark. Did he know how hard it was to pretend you weren't utterly cynical and brokenhearted?

Troy considered it, then shook his head. "It's good, but I don't think it quite works for Ecuadoria," he said, finally. "What about if you went for... Hmm. Maybe a little... edgier? Sharper?"

"I think I'm good," Quinn said, then considered it. "I want to work on the singing a little more."

She wasn't bad, but she wasn't great yet, either.

"That would be my area of expertise," Jono replied, smirking faintly. "Is there anything in particular that you're having difficulty with, luv?"

[Still stuck at the studio, so Sp for a little longer.]

"I think I need more character in my voice," Quinn said. "It's pretty, but it sounds ... kind of bland. Fuschia shouldn't sound bland."

"You're right," Jonothon agreed with a slight, thoughtful sort of nod. "Fuchsia is most definitely not bland. Let's have a listen, shall we? Sing me some Science Fiction Double Feature, luv, let's hear what you've got so far."

Michael Rennie was ill
The Day the Earth Stood Still
But he told us where we stand.
And Flash Gordon was there
In silver underwear,
Claude Rains was the Invisible Man.

Quinn sang, on tune and clearly but without real feeling. She sounded, as it happened, like a cheerleader.

"...I just don't get the references," she kind of whined. "They make the play feel as old as it is."

It took a fair bit of effort, but Jono managed to look... mostly not scandalized.

"I'm not going to need to walk you through all the greatest of the classic cinema, am I?" A beat. "Please tell me you at least know who Faye Wray was."

Quinn shrugged. "Gorilla took her up a building, right? I've seen the poster."

A pause. "And the greatest of all classic cinema is Left with the Breeze."

Jono considered that for a moment, and then he shrugged his shoulders a bit.

"I'd argue Rabat, myself, but to each their own," he settled on. "Have you tried singing with some sort of accent, perhaps?"

... A Pennsylvanian one?

"It won't necessarily add characterization, but it might be a starting point to build on."

"The girl in Rabat sucks," Quinn argued. "She cheats on her husband, and then she doesn't even have the balls to stay with Bogart, even though he's much, much hotter."

She hadn't really gotten the point of the movie. Quinn thought about the suggestion, glanced to her music again.

"I can try an accent."

Then something went wrong
For Fay Wray and King Kong;
They got caught in a celluloid jam.
Then at a deadly pace
It Came From... Outer Space.
And this is how the message ran:

Hear that, Jono? That is how an impromptu attempt at your cockney accent sounded filtered through Quinn's Ohio drawl. That said, it did fix the 'sounding like a cheerleader' problem, and wasn't any worse than a lot of community theater British accents.

Edited 2012-03-09 02:05 (UTC)

It was... something like an improvement, if one happened to be a fan of Dick Van Dyke. Jono took a moment to have a quick glance around for chimney sweeps, shrugged, and then offered her a wry smile.

"The thing of it is, if you're singing with it, you'll need to keep it up through the show, luv. Do you think it'll be a bit much?"

He'd just do his damnedest to refrain from laughing during the show.

"Sure," Quinn said. "Maybe I can ... walk around with it sometimes when I'm not on-stage. You know. Like method acting."

Just bite the inside of your cheek, Jono. Bite it and hold in that urge to chuckle, like a champ.

"Perhaps it would help to pick up some British film," he suggested. "Or spend a bit more time around people with accents, like myself. Try to pick up on the sounds of it?"

The actual sounds of it.

"That said, if you can find an attitude to replace that accent, it would certainly do wonders for the role," he added. "Your character knows she's going to come out on top. Her and her sibling have the upper hand, they're just keeping their cards out of sight until they can step up and take control. She'd be... smug, perhaps?"

"I get that part," Quinn nodded. "She and Rag-Tag are the only ones who see Hoyt for what he really is. So ... smug works."

Which Quinn happened to be excellent at.

When they ping in, if you need one or the other of them specifically!

Edited 2012-03-08 15:22 (UTC)

Troy couldn't quite believe that they'd finally made it through the entire show.

Time to start focusing on the fiddly bits.

Jono... could believe that they'd made it through the entire show. But then, Jono had great faith in the ability of young, impressionable teens to latch on to inappropriate material.

He was making a mental note to stop by Dite's soon to see if their costume orders were in yet.

Wait for the pinging. You know you want to!

Kenzi was pretty happy with how far they'd gotten on the flats, and was now doing work on the furniture pieces and props.

That included playing with the sound effects machine.

I am around-ish through the afternoon, and both

apocalipped and I should be around this evening!

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The Boards, Thursday [Rehearsal]

Arrive/Mingle!

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Rehearsal!

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Speak to the Directors!

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The Crew!

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OOC!