Can You Spot Me? rehearsal – week 2
4/27/06 - rehearsal week 2.
rehearsal this week has been fantastic! not only are we still laughing out loud, but we’re also starting to watch the play take shape in the space. take shape from the space. doing site-specific theatre (versus doing theatre in a theatre-theatre, for those of you familiar with that practice) is V-E-R-Y different. the space dictates almost all. questions like “how will I know when to enter”, “will they be able to hear me do this aside with a treadmill roaring?”, or even “does the Gatorade machine take $1 bills?” start to come up, and determine how we act, how we play, how we tell stories.
for instance… there’s a section in Can You Spot Me? (it opens May 20th, btw, you should come (shameless plug)) when the character Biff goes to buy some Gatorades in the back room of Webster Fitness and the remaining characters in the gym have to sort of fill that time. My theatre-theatre instincts scream out to me “this can’t possibly take this fucking long! FIX IT!!!” but in actuality the space dictates that it does take that long. that it should. that’s site-specific. that’s the show. that’s a Sandbox Theatre Project. that’s what people come for. right? at least it should be. I’m learning – as I direct and write site-specific work more and more – that the space should dictate your art. rather than adjusting the space to our artistic needs, site-specific work (of any kind) can tell us what stories exist in what spaces. and, apparently, when a dude goes to buy Gatorades, and the actors left in the space (without lines to say) have to live in that space for that time, the space is telling us a story. I’d like to think that that is when we’re doing our job right.
we can’t wait to share our work with you, you fucking amazing blog readers.
so, for now… rehearsal week 2: success!
until next week…
your eager artistic director,
justin d.m. palmer
justin@sandboxtheatreproject.org
