This week was perhaps the most disheartening rehearsal we have had to date. We showed up to find that most of our main roles were absent and only Christina and one new actor were present. With such a small group of students we were fairly limited in practicing until Timone finally wrangled a few more students into the church. In the end, we were able to run through a full scene however we had to use interim actors for most of the parts which will not help us much for the final production next week. Additionally, Timone informed us that some of our better actors who have bigger parts will not be coming back which puts us further behind as we will have to do more casting and editing to our script. However, the rehearsal was not all bad. We found some students who had smaller parts show some interest in having more lines which will help filling the newly vacant roles. Additionally, some students like Christina even asked to bring a script home so she could practice before the final production next week. Lastly, another thing that has perhaps been slowing us down is our attempts to make sure that the students know what is going on in every scene. We take large portions of each rehearsal to explain what is happening so they aren’t just reading words mindlessly of a script. While this slows us down a little, I think it is well worth it for them to understand the play and help them grasp some of the larger ideas of the play.

In light of everything that has happened I still believe we will be able to put on a great show next week. I believe that DeAndre (Macbeth) is planning on showing up for both the rehearsal and the performance which in combination with Christina (lady Macbeth) will cover a large portion of the lines. From there we will just have to cross our fingers and see who is able to show up and work on the fly. Lots of our students have been reading different roles as a result of absences so I’m sure some last minute changes will be very manageable.