Greetings! After a week on holiday, we returned to work on The Lesson at full speed. Today is December 5th, and we perform December 16-18. That does not leave us much time for lolling about. We've got something like 7 rehearsals left. I always want more time on a show, but 7 rehearsals should be plenty of time.

During the Thanksgiving holiday, I finished cutting and compiling the script. It was a mind-bending task. I literally sat down with a razor blade, a stack of paper, and a stick of glue to get the script compiled. Look for a copy of the script to be posted on this site in the coming weeks.

With the script finalized and the vignettes choreographed, we've spent our rehearsal time this week mapping out the rest of the performance. Pre-choreographing the vignettes has really made blocking the play incredibly easy. Again, I compiled the script by cutting the 15 vignettes into the medium of the conventional text. We know where and how those vignettes are to be performed. The rest of the blocking stems from the vignettes. It's like having a set of waypoints while hiking on a trail. You don't necessarily know the entire path, but the waypoints help guide you point by point along the way.

This is not to say that the non-vignette blocking is haphazard. While the vignettes are noticeably more sculpted than the rest of the performance, the rest of the play has a more organic flow to it. This abrupt switch in staging styles is part of the transition into and out of the vignettes. The switch is obvious and purposeful. The trick now is to motivate the organic blocking towards the predestined vignette locations. This has proved difficult so far. It is very easy to move to the position. The difficulty comes in making seamless transitions appear spontaneous, but we'll get there.

We've also been working extensively to perfect the vignettes this week. Last night, I noticed a curious development in the actors' movement. Naturally, the more we repeated a vignette the less the actors have to think themselves through the movements. Slowly, their muscles take over. This is an obvious shift. After serious repetition of the vignettes, the actors seem to float into position. Literally, they begin to accomplish the vignettes with smaller more efficient muscle movements. Each movement is precise. It's difficult to describe this shift. One moment a vignette looks like actors moving in space under their own control, and in the next repetition, the vignette gels together with the actors "clicking" into position instantaneously. They stop thinking, and the muscles take over. The movements are executed with almost no obvious physical exertion. It's like a sneeze. You don't think about it. You just do it. This is where I wanted to get to with the vignettes. The effect of the transitions from organic natural human movement to the stark automatic vignettes is working better than I could have hoped.