Thursday, January 26

Rehearsal Secrets

There is a scene in Circle Mirror Transformation in which every character writes down a secret on a strip of paper and the teacher re-distributes the secrets to be read aloud by a different character, thereby making each secret (essentially) anonymous.
Every time we rehearse this scene (which is a lot), each of my actors has a set amount of time, with a strip of paper and a pencil, in which they have to act like they are writing. So most (all?) of them do. Over the course of the four weeks we've been rehearsing, we have collected a fair amount of Rehearsal Secrets. (I think of them with capitals like they're Rehearsal Props, only better because they don't need to be tracked and they're, well, secrets.)
Recently, the actress playing Theresa and I have decided that we want to keep these Rehearsal Secrets. We now have a place on our call board for them and I spent part of this morning looking through them.

The Call Board

I'm so impressed that my actors have continually opened these, read whatever ridiculous-ness is written there, and then said their line with a straight face. Yesterday was the first time someone broke and I think Richard (who plays James) was unfortunate enough to get the second Rehearsal Secret I've posted below.
Most of the Rehearsal Secrets are silly but some serious, and I feel like the mix is just a little, well, perfect.


Rehearsal Secrets


"I haven't done laundry in a month."

"I have anal warts."

"What if a robot and a mermaid fell in love? Can it work?"

"I have a problempossibleaddiction with being in love with Theresa."

"Sometimes I like to put my finger in my belly button and then smell it."

"I still wet the bed sometimes. And that sucks."

"I can't do anything right."

"I could eat corndogs every day. They are so delicious."


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