Today was supposed to be our first day of running through the whole play; however, that is not how it turned out. We knew that one of our actresses wouldn't be attending, and that's a fair enough thing that we expected. What I didn't expect was for it to take an hour and a half to run through the first scene. That's as long as it took the first time we read through. Whilst I understand that it's been around 8 weeks since we covered it, I had (naively?) anticipated the actors to be pretty keen on their lines, so only need prompting on the blocking.
I was unsure of how to respond to this. With the show going up in 10 days, is it unreasonable for me as a director to expect scripts to be far, far away from the stage now? And for the actors to have taken it upon themselves to move where they feel natural, as I've been recommending now over the last week? I found myself disappointed by the run, and uncertain as to what to do next.
Tomorrow, we have another rehearsal booked - three hours, as opposed to what turned into one and a half today due to room booking clashes - and I would like to think that we'll be able to make considerable improvements to the run, with Abi standing in for the absentee. My plan is for Friday's rehearsal to be a proper run-through, with as many props and costumes as we have our hands on, so we've at least gone through it before the official tech and dress next week.
Perhaps it is because I am still getting used to this 'directors' role, but maybe tomorrow I will be a little firmer with expectations should things feel, in my opinion, sub-par again. Whilst I'm not worried about the final performance, I would prefer a bit more productivity in the run-through, and use it as a way of polishing the piece, rather than repeating rehearsals from two months ago.
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