Dude!

Please save all the "Where's my Car!" references to high school students. In my current show I say "Dude" a total of 27 times according to the script. And I am sure that I have added a few extras here and there. It is one of the easiest roles I have had. And the hardest. The other day my scene partner went up on his lines and since he carries the actual plot in his half of the dialogue we froze. Those of you that are actors know how horrifying this can be. There we were with a paying audience, facing each other, with horror written all over our faces. "Dude" doesn't exactly jar any memories when it is said as much as I do. Our only hope was for me to pick a place in the script to jump to that he would be able to find me. Luckily one of those places was just a few lines down from where we were. I told him during rehearsals that he can't screw up since I can't really help him. This was our first big test. Did the audience know that we had screwed up? Maybe, but we kept moving and hoped that they would just assume it was part of the plot.

The next night we ran our entire scene before the show just to make sure we had it under control again. One of the great, and frustrating, things about our theater company is that the show is watched every night by the director and we get notes on how to change things. Blocking is being revised, delivery, characterization, everything is molded until we have a "perfect" show. My scene partner and I try to run our "notes" into our scene before the show each night so that we don't have to worry about them in front of the audience. Trust me it is hard to run a new set of blocking in front of an audience without rehearsing it.

I am rambling but I wanted to get something posted. More on the show later.