25 May, 2010
by Stephanie Mulligan

It’s Week 2 of rehearsals. We spent the entire first week deep into script work- slowly delineating units, discussing context and intentions, getting to know one another. The day Todd arrived, we shared a cab to the director’s house, where the entire cast met and chatted over Irish stew. That was a lovely, casual way to kick off the collaborative production, and it gave the ensemble a way to connect without the pressure of the first read.

This week, the cast is up on their feet working doing physical improvisational exercises with movement specialist John Bolton. The stage manager John Reid (that's us in the photo!) and I have taped out the big rehearsal room, having moved down the hall from a smaller space. I’ve gathered rehearsal furniture: two wicker armchairs, a round table, a rocking chair, a side table as an ersatz window ledge.  After the movement work, Director Andrew Upton begins blocking the play. He moves the actors through the beats, creating a rough outline in which the actors may find an organic shape to the scenes. I get a couple of new prop notes, but nothing I hadn’t anticipated: a cigar cutter, an ashtray, a box of wooden matches.

The rehearsal room is spacious with dark wooden floors and high ceilings. Over our heads, there are I-beams and trusses carrying old gears and the vestigial framework of the buildings early days as part of a working wharf. There’s a double door that leads right out onto the upper deck of the wharf. On breaks, we step outside. A ferry horn blasts: three loud hurrahs. The rain falls on the harbor, and we lean over the railing, watching the boats sail by, watching seabirds fish, or settle on top of a piling, or strut in the proximity of a tourist. I have barely had time to be a tourist here, much less a traveler. But I am charmed by the sunsets (the photo on the right is from my balcony!) ,thankful for the sunshine, and a little unsettled by the turning leaves and the shortening days.