Rehearsals have been "Astonishing"!

Hello Again,

Finals are finally done at Davidson College and our rehearsals for Little Women have been picking up the pace. A lot has been going on since I last wrote. We had a paint call on May 10th to work on the main backdrop for the set. It was a hot and messy day but we got a lot accomplished. Our Assistant Stage Manager or ASM for short, Chrissy, was at the paint call the entire day overseeing the work and putting in many hours of manual labor. Many of the younger cast members were also there to help the painting process move more quickly. The Stage Designer wanted this backdrop to look like a forest to compliment the settings of Jo's imaginative stories. To create this effect it was made of a holey material and painted with varying colors of green with colored ropes strung through to represent vines. Once we were finished it looked quite convincing. There will definitely be more opportunities to help with these paint calls. If anyone is interested in helping out just contact the Davidson Community Players at 704-892-7953.

Meanwhile, in the rehearsal room we have been getting deeper into the blocking and choreography of the play. For those who don't know, "blocking" means deciding where and when the characters will move on the stage. Since Little Women is a musical there is much more involved than a straight play. Musicals require singing, obviously, and so you need someone to play the piano to accompany the actors. However, it is not always possible to have someone actually play the piano during rehearsals. Fortunately, DCP has an excellent solution to this problem. They have an electronic score that plays every song in the musical with only the background piano so the actors can sing along with it! I had never seen anything like this before so I found it very exciting and useful. You can start the songs in multiple places depending on where you are in the scene and you can also change the tempo of the song making the music go faster or slower to suit whatever you like. It has proved to be a very helpful piece of technology during rehearsal, it is amazing what technology can help you accomplish!

Something I have really enjoyed during this process so far is watching other people work. Melissa cast four younger girls to play the parts of the sisters when they were little. I think it will be really great for the audience because they will see Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy as their current ages as well as the girls they were when they were much younger. There is one song in particular called "Our Finest Dreams" which reveals the sisters desires for their future. The song starts with the 4 younger girls playing around in the attic and then it changes to the girls at their present age. I think it is a really nice effect and it is wonderful to see the younger girls work. They are all very talented with beautiful singing voices and lots of personality on stage! I think whenever they have performed their song the reactions from the other actors has always been something to the effect of, "Aw, they're so cute!". And they are. :)

I also remember from rehearsal watching Kim Baysinger, who plays Marmee, belting out her song called "Here Alone" and being totally blown away by how powerful and beautiful her voice was. This show is full of talented people; the audiences certainly won't be disappointed. Another cast member who has really made an impression on me is Marc Bastos, who plays Laurie. Anyone who is in the room when this guy works can hardly keep it together because they are always laughing so hard. Not only can this guy sing wonderfully, he is incredibly funny and brings a very special quality to his character Laurie. Lisa Smith, who plays Jo, sums it up right when she says to Marc, "You make me beam!"

As for me, I have been really enjoying the process of developing my character Beth. I must say it has been difficult putting the singing, dancing and acting all together! I find that when I learn my harmonies in the songs and then try to put that with the dancing it kind of all gets jumbled up! I know that I will get it; I just need more practice. Last night we blocked the song "Some Things Are Meant To Be", which is my duet with Jo and it is the last time you see me alive because Beth dies shortly afterwards. (Not on stage though, thank goodness.) I wasn't expecting it to be too difficult to do this scene, however, last night I found myself trying really hard not to cry. Lisa and I have made a good connection so far while working on this show and I think that has enabled me to really invest in the scene. It is a difficult song because I'm trying to tell Jo that I'm okay with dying I just want to make sure that she is okay as well. Hopefully, when we actually perform the song I'll be able to get out all the words without being stopped by crying!

Well, that is what has been happening lately for the cast and crew of Little Women and I am sure I will be updating you all soon!

Thanks for reading,

Suzanne