Drawing close to rehearsal date now. Only tomorrow and Monday left! But that's four hours of practice, and with the current rate of progress, that's heaps of time!

So today, after a quick warmup, we invaded the main theatre for 40 minutes. (It was supposed to be 20, but the other group never came in. Odd.) I brought in a few costume ideas that I had - black scarves, boas, beads, etc. for Shannon and a flower for Lee. Lee brought in her costume, and it looks great! I had an idea last night for Shannon's costume: seeing as the main reason I wanted to set this in the 1920s was to play up on it being the first era where women could wear pants, it would make more sense for Olivia to sport this fashion. If she could wear black pants and a loose top, it would still suit the fashion, and she could look sort of manly (well, she'll be in pants...). Shannon said that she has a top that sounds right, and she'll bring it in tomorrow with black pants.

The girls then ran through the scene, using the blocking that we had practiced last rehearsal. I told them to keep going to the end, improvising what we had not discussed. The beginning was a little rough, as they had forgotten some of the movements, however I could see the potential and was happy with the movements we had chosen. We practiced the beginning again and the girls were much better, as they now remembered the movements.

We worked on a few blank spots, such as leaning in for a secret and Lee's exit, and then moved on to the big speeches which needed careful blocking.

I had specific ideas in mind for Lee's impassioned speech near the end of the scene, so we focused on that bit for awhile as it needed to be rehearsed in the theatre and the other group was due shortly. I described to Lee what I had in mind (jumping onto the rostrum to 'cry out Olivia'. then swinging through the frames.) The rostrum is too far back and I decided it would be too arkward for Lee to move back there. The crates from The Beggar's Opera were hovering around, so we trialled one of those, and decided we liked it. Lee took a few goes to get what I wanted with the swinging movement - I wanted her momentom to carry through from her jump off the crate, but once she got it, it looked fabulous. I wanted to use the barrel at the back of the stage, and asked Lee if she could try jumping up and sitting on it during the beginning of her speech. Shannon and I thought that looked great (although a little dangerous to Lee's bottom if she misses and lands on the rim...) so Lee ran the speech using the barrel, the crate and the frames. I was very happy with how it looked, so after we ran it a few more times for smoothness, we moved onto Shannon's last speech.

Shannon improvised most of the blocking for her speech, however I directed her to what I felt looked more natural. Such as, building the passion to give her reason to stand, stepping backwards to sit on the crate, and plonking in distraction onto the crate at the end. We ran it several times to refine her movements, and to practice and time and spacing of her spins and sitting, until I was happy with how it looked.

To end, the girls ran the entire scene, incorperating everything they had practiced. It looked really good, and I think all it needs now is a bit more practice to really hammer the movements, then we shall be ready!