Rehearsals – Week 2

by Northlight Theatre

from BJ Jones, Director

After a wonderful week of hard work by our diligent cast, we got through the play, blocking and marking out how the physical flow of the play’s journey should go with our set as an environment. This is a fairly aggressive approach, as we attacked these tasks first, given what the play’s physical demands are. Fortunately, the cast came in to rehearsals largely off-book (lines memorized), so that we could move ahead to take on the physical demands first.

Cast at the first read-through of the playinishmore014
Cast at the first read-through of the play

For a few hours at the end of last week and all of Monday, we brought in Nick Sandys, our fight director, to deal with the violence of the play. Nick teaches all of our actors to execute the moves safely and with a sense of reality. We walked through the play as blocked and he added all the fight moves that are required, as well as addressing the gunplay which needs to be safe and specific. The actors were wonderful, picking up the intricacies of the moves quickly, and eager to take on the tasks.

Nick was great at sensing the comedic nature of the violence, and working with me to find the proper balance of gravity and looniness. We seem to be moving in the right direction!

This week we will plunge further into the play’s nuances and refine the scenes, and by the end of the week we will start to do some run thrus.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore is just too much fun to work on, and I am lucky to have such a talented team to take on a rather daunting piece with such challenging physical demands.