Rehearsal week 1: Letters and Numbers

This past week has been a blast diving into this script. We got started with a ton of improv (Cindy Beall makes a kickass bowling ball), picked music pieces for our characters, and worked to discover the tone of the piece in our table work.

I find it rather difficult to discuss working on this project without spoiler alerts. However, I'll do my best to capture the essence of the argument presented in this play without giving too much away.

As the cast sat around dissecting each moment of the script, this past week, we discovered that this play is full of "Numbers" people and "Words" people. Aren't we all?

Is math an essential part of assigning worth to something?

Can you "calculate" someone's worth based on money?

As Andrew asks in the play "So people who don't have money can't exert any impact?"

Is this the fundamental disagreement that fuels the ongoing fight in our modern day politics?

I ask these questions as we move into blocking. I have my instincts as far as Becky is concerned but I leave this question open-ended for now.

Luckily, I'm an actor who works a finance day-job. Going to work, I get an up close, intimate look at what fuels the "numbers" people and how they calculate worth in the literal and figurative senses. So yes, getting paid to do my job is also paying me to do my other, more awesome, job.

To keep my sanity, I usually have a companion piece to read or watch while I'm working on a play. Something either similar to the play or the exact opposite (depending on how much the character wants to bleed into my daily life -- ie Being in a play is no excuse for breaking into tears at the bank or yelling at the retail worker at the gas station). For this play, I've chosen to read Vanity Fair by William Thackeray - a book i've been meaning to read for years and never got around to it. Perfect timing and a wonderful companion piece so far.

For now I, simply, brag about working with Cindy Beall, Max Hartman, Tina Parker, Leah Spillman, and Mike Federico. Not to mention Ruth Stephenson as SM. And, of course, I trust Korey Kent's costumes implicitly.