September 8

Today we worked on some of the moments in Act 3 to help us clarify point of view and revisit our poster moments. We also did a speed-through of Act 1, which is one of my favorite things to do when working on a show. For me, a speed-through takes away so much of the stress of what I’m doing and why I’m doing it and everything just feels much more natural. Because we don’t have any time to think about what our next line or action is, it becomes a process of entirely trusting my muscle memory and trusting that the work I’ve done will show up for me. Doing Act 1 this way really helped alleviate a lot of the anxiety I was having surrounding my engagement and point of view. That being said, I still know there is more work to do in clarifying my point of view and working to convey my reactions externally because, realistically, the show will not be done at this fast pace every night and there will be longer moments where my point of view is displayed for longer than the millisecond it was today. One of the biggest things I took away from this exercise is that when doing a speed through it is not only the speed at which you talk that cuts time out and makes the run effective, but rather how quickly you move through the moments of air in a typical run. Every other time I have done a speed through, my primary focus has been on the speed of my speech and getting through my line as fast as possible. Today, when I tried to focus more on the spacing of my lines, I found the process much more helpful and I was able to let go of a lot of intonation and rhythm that I had latched on to too much.