Technical rehearsals

Our tech rehearsal was extremely challenging. We all had to adapt to using the box for the first time, with very little time before the performance to perfect the transitions. At first I feel like the focus and energy of the cast was high, but everyone was tense and nervous. The lack of rehearsal time with box left everyone feeling anxious about the quality of our first performance. However, I think the majority of our cast remained well focused and hard working through both technical rehearsals. It took about 11 hours over 2 days but eventually we got through the entire show.

The tech gave us all a chance to finally get a real sense of what our final show would be. For me personally I learned that I had a lot more to do with the moving and opening of the box. It is my job to unpin the box for all the American house scenes. This can be quite tricky as I have to remove everything from the table, and find the pins which usually fall to floor and pin the box quickly so they can begin to move the box back into its place. This can be done however, it's hard to do quickly and safely and it's easy for the door to fall too far forward and for the pins to be quite stiff and tricky to put in place. 

It was hard during our tech to perform the script to the best of our abilities. The stop/start rythm to rehearsal meant you couldn't fully let a scene develop and for me personally stopped me feeling like I could listen to the other actors onstage and organically respond. However, this was part of the plan and I'm sure next time we rehearse on the day of the performance we will be able to do this.