the big day!!

My last post which was super long and fabulous got deleted : /
But I will report on how today's performances of our scenes went!
MLK day turned out to be a snowy, icky day and our speaker was caught in a ton of traffic so he was delayed. So during our break I was told, you guys are actually performing NOW. Classic theatre moment of pure panic, excitment and nerves! Before Arthur, Kate, and Jake went on stage I told them a few things. One- to listen to each other, and remember that they have to work together as an ensemble. Two- to PROJECT and don't let the laughter cover your lines. Three- to go out there and have FUN and enjoy themselves. Once we preset all of Arthurs props- the first time we ever used some of them- and I ran and got my script we were ready to begin. All of the scenes went well today and all the actors used our franticness as good performance energy. When it was time for our scene, I was sure they would surprise me. And they did! Arthur did wonderfully with his props and using his body. Kate and Jake fed off each other and really supported one another up there which was great to see. And all three of them, felt the audiences energy and used that to keep in the moment. I was so proud watching them up there, because they looked and felt confident and I TOLD THEM they would do great! I could tell they were digging the laughter they were getting, and fueled them to keep going till the end. They didnt forget the awkward moments though and had some moments of genuine listening and reaction. I think they worked hard and even though I would have loved more time to work, since our scene was long, they came a long way.

Today afterwards lots of people came up to me and said great job on the scene and it made me feel so proud of the work we had done. I responded by saying, it was all the actors! Maybe I staged it and helped them with acting choices but all the character work was 100% generated by them. I was impressed with the amount of script work we did that showed when I asked them questions about their character and they had really thoughtful and interesting answers. They deserved a good performance! Seeing and hearing their peers praise them afterwards seemed to give them confidence that they all have potential and should continue to keep acting!