Road to Opening Week 8: Cynthia Dale On Rehearsals for A Little Night Music

"Gird your loins, because we will be making changes right up until opening"...words of wisdom from our director Gary Griffin this week.

I love the process of rehearsals. Exploring and understanding. Overhauls and tweaking. (....definitely not twerking)

We are onstage running the show more often than not, with many of the elements that are important. It can be wonderful or all wrong, but just when you think all may be lost, the director gives you a note that helps you to turn a corner and find exactly what you need.

In truth, Gary probably gave me the same note the first week of rehearsals and quite possibly many times since, but for some reason, now I was ready to hear and understand it. Now it drops into my body in a different place and rattles around like a silver orb in a pinball machine that produces flashes of light and fabulous results.

How much of your true self do you really share on stage?

How much is acting and how much is real life?

How brave, raw and open do you need to be?

You ask yourself these questions all your life as an actor.

I am reading a book where the lead character is a turn of the century 'woman of the night.' She speaks about what it's like to let her body do one thing while her mind does something else.

She keeps the truest part of her hidden. She always holds something back, a secret part of herself.

In theory, that is what I do. It is my job to pretend I am someone, something, else and maybe the audience never sees who I really truly am.

Now, I am not the first person to correlate 'acting' to the 'oldest profession in the world,' there even was a time when they were thought of as on par with each other.

And even though we would like to believe acting is a noble profession, that is often up for debate. We don't cure cancer, we don't make things fly, we don't determine world events. But we can shine a light on a situation or an emotion. We can make people wonder, think and feel certain things as a result of what we do. We can move hearts, if not mountains, and we can entertain and bring joy....a most necessary commodity in life.

This week we saw for the first time our fantastic lighting designer Kevin Fraser's magic. He has bathed us in a warmth and glow that is another piece in the puzzle and leads us to a more complete production - the world of A Little Night Music.

I love it when you've done a run of the show and you all sit together with the director and his note pad. He meticulously goes through, fine tuning and fixing what does and does not work. You sit with your pen poised, ready to scribble down and try to grasp the variations or deeper meanings or corrections he sends your way. You listen to what he says to the other actors that help illuminate and deepen their performances. You marvel at how he polishes and shines the show.

The alchemy of all of us together at this moment, on this stage, with this music and these words, will create something that could only be built by him.

We are ready for the changes, ready for the understanding, and ready for the joy.

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