12 days!

12 days till our production of Midsummer opens! It's also the third day of rehearsal with our New York director, Jason Bohon. As scary as 12 days sounds the kids are very prepared and doing really well on our time line. Jason's been going through and working on getting the kids to be bigger and less neutral, as he calls it. He's done a lot of organic blocking, of sorts, simply by having the kids get up and move around while reading and then giving them some direction and ideas. We haven't had any real blocking yet though as we haven't been able to get onto the stage and with our set yet. Hopefully we will today during our second round of rehearsal (4-8pm with the Mechanicals). If not then definitely on Monday we'll dive straight into blocking. It's a really interesting experience watching the kids wrestle with Shakespeare and a new director and style they're not used to. They are loving Jason's big personality and all his ideas however. He's also been very open to the kids' ideas. Just today we worked on stage combat with the lovers, and rapping with Puck for when he takes the enchantment off Lysander (the actor's idea). It's a little nerve wracking doing stage combat with the kids, but Jason was very precise with his instructions and explained how dangerous it can be if they don't listen and do only what he says. The kids were very receptive and excited to get to try some new things.

We had our last workshop this morning and now all of our focus is officially on Midsummer. There are still the summer classes going on, but Morgan and I are taking a step back from those now to work on Midsummer. I'm definitely getting a full experience here this summer with 7 hours of rehearsal a day. I've also learned a lot of new games, including the 12 step program and thee thou and nay. But I'm sure there's still plenty more I'll learn as I continue getting to know Jason and then get my own group to teach at our second week of camp during opening week of Midsummer. Now that will be a busy week!