Romeo and Juliet - Rehearsal 3

1.1
This was the first scene that I needed everyone for.  Surprisingly, the staging of this first big group scene went fairly quick.  We were able to block through the whole scene, work the end with Johnny (Romeo), Hollinger (Benvolio), Montague (Zach), and Lady Montague (Wagoner).  The guys in the brawl at the beginning got a break while we worked through the end of the scene a few times.  Once that was nailed down, we went back through the whole scene a couple times before focusing in on the opening brawl.  We worked the fight several times today.  Once the small details were sorted, the brawl came back together easily.  And, by the end of rehearsal, the guys were able to speed it up just a little.  There were some timing issues at first, but they sorted out with a second run.  All in all, fairly easy going.

5.3
This is the final scene of the show and it is a beast.  It took me almost an hour and a half to get all the blocking mess sorted out.  I had to rearrange some of the blocking right from the off because of how I want the bier to come onstage.  Also, it took longer because folks had a lot of specific questions about character motivation and how long it takes to get from one place onstage to another.  Once we finally got all the traffic patterns sorted, the scene ran fairly smooth as far as blocking goes.  Though, it was a long haul to get there.  After we blocked out the scene, we went back to work the fight between Paris (Bobby) and Romeo (Johnny) at the top of the scene.  It came back together quickly and we moved onto Romeo and Juliet's deaths.  We started with AJ (Juliet) just lying on the ground, until I realized that this wasn't going to help the actual staging at all.  Once we had AJ lay on a table, the blocking for their deaths came together beautifully.  Unfortunately, now that I know what their deaths look like, I need to flip flop the positions of all the people onstage at the end of the play.  But, if the price is having Romeo and Juliet's deaths look just right, then I'm ok with rearranging positions after their deaths.

"King's Highway" by Tom Petty
The guys on this song did most of the work on this song today while we were working were working on Romeo and Juliet's deaths.  I heard their last run thru of the song and it's certainly coming along.  Though, to be fair, it is a three chord song that sings and plays through fairly simply.  All in all, sounding good.

"Medicine Man" by The Hush Sound
We don't have all the pieces to really put this song together yet.  AJ and Wagoner sang through the song with just Hollinger playing the base line.  Sounds good until such time as we get the specialized and weird instruments that Hollinger's cooking up.