Polarity Ensemble Theatre Blog

Bryan Breau as Jonathan, Leah Morrow as Molly and Scott Sawa as Henry

In the next stage of rehearsals, we get the play on its feet. We’ve delved into each scene intellectually and emotionally, focusing on the nuance of every word during the table work stage. Now we start to get physical.

Each day before rehearsal, I spend a couple hours reading and rereading the scenes we will work on that night with the set design and floorplan at my side. I’ve already got notes jotted here and there in my script, but now I go over it again and make decisions about how I think the scenes should look and how the actors should move. The Good Harvest is a play about relationships. What moves the actors around the set are their emotions more than their need to accomplish tasks.

Set Model by Ashley Ann Woods

For instance in one scene, Davis arrives at the house where the triplets are mourning the loss of their mother after the funeral. Davis is their father, but he left when they were infants. They have no memory of him. When we did the table work on the scene, I got the image of a pack of dogs circling and attacking the old alpha male who has returned. That was the image that inspired my initial blocking (the movement that actors make around the stage).

Another scene takes place in the past, with Davis and Joan (mother of the triplets) when they were young. Davis and Joan struggle with making their marriage work. In charting their movement through the scene where they become closer or further apart, I created blocking to match their emotional state.

In every case the pre-blocking I create on my own is our starting point. I describe the blocking to the actors at the top of the rehearsal. They jot it in their scripts. We discuss it. Then we try it out. And then begins the active collaboration on our feet as the actors work the scene in movement. We find ways to improve the initial blocking. We rework the scenes again and again and make many discoveries and choices on the way toward the final shape of the play. Along the way there are moments of both frustration and exhilaration as we work together to bring the script to life.

The triplets enjoy a lighter moment in rehearsal.

In addition, we have Lisa in the room who provides us insight into the playwright’s original intention and who continually gives us revisions to the scenes, improving the script at every step. Lisa is a pleasure to work with because she truly enjoys seeing the other artists discover things about the play that she hadn’t seen herself. Every member of the company is committed to making the play the best it can be, so it’s an exciting collaboration all the way around.

-Richard Engling, Artistic Director

This entry was posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 12:09 am and is filed under From the Ensemble. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.