At our second-to-last rehearsal (woah), there were a few surprises. Jacob (the student) told us that he might not be at our actual performance, and Christina was mysteriously absent! We hope Jacob is able to make it, and we hope Christina comes back for our last rehearsal.

For rehearsal we had Rufus, Charles, Jacob, Dale, and Talia. At this rehearsal, we really wanted to focus on blocking. Overall, the lines are going very well. Most of our students read very well at this point (Rufus, Charles, Jacob). While Talia’s speech is hard to understand, she is very committed to her lines and gets through them at a good speed! The last reading problems we have are Christina and Dale. For Christina, we cut down a number of Feste’s lines to make them easier for her to read (and to cut down on the amount of time she talks, as much as we didn’t want to!!!) And for Dale, we decided that one of us will go on stage as the role of Fabian, and we will help Dale read his lines if he gets stuck.

At rehearsal, we ran the act twice! Both times it was within our 15 minute time limit (though this was probably because Christina wasn’t there, and the three of us switched off for Feste and read the lines much faster). Still, it is encouraging that we have gotten it down from being over 30 minutes! We also finished blocking the act, and most of the students seemed to remember the blocking well from the first run through to the second. The biggest issue we had was that some students were not following along in their scripts backstage. We emphasized that they should always be following along, but we think that at least one of us will be on each side of the stage so we can make sure the students make their cues!

I must say, I am so happy about the commitment and enthusiasm of our students! Most of them understand what they are saying, and all of them use some emotion in saying their lines! Dale still gets discouraged when we run the act more than once, but luckily in the show we will only do it once, so hopefully he will have sufficient enthusiasm for that one time!

Finally, I wish that we could officially cast the show, but it continues to be all but impossible because we don’t have the same students show up every time. We have pretty much cast the show at this point, but it’s technically not finalized. We will just have to see who shows up and take it from there.

So excited for Friday!