"And We're Off…"

On Sunday night, we had the read-through of Their Town, which went really well - considering that we had to meet in a raw space with no lighting, so we had to speed things up before it got dark! Ah, theater.

This was the first time the cast was all together, and that I formally met them. (I'd seen a few of them at auditions, and one of them in other plays.) I didn't bring my camera, because it seemed pushy for the first time, but I will take some rehearsal photos for publicity purposes at a later date.

The read-through was a little slow and stumbly at first, but that's to be expected - some of the actors hadn't read the play before and were reading cold. But as the scenes went by, they dove into their parts, and the thing started to find its legs. It's going to be a good production, although very different from the reading we did in January, with different actors.

That, to me, is the really energizing part. You write a play, and then it is interpreted by all these other people - it can be many different things depending on the director, the actors he or she picks, or even the particular performance. And there are all the things the writer doesn't necessarily think about - for example, I realized I had never considered what the costumes would look like until Adam, the director, brought them up. His idea was to be minimalist, as with the set, which seems like a good idea. (Although, in an interesting aside, Our Town tends to have traditional costuming - only the set and props are minimal.)