This past Wednesday we worked on Act 1 Scene 5 , and then Saturday we worked on Act 5.

Act 1 Scene 5 includes the great interplay between Feste and Olivia where he needs to get back into her good graces after being gone too long. Olivia has been missing the counsel of her tolerated fool with her father and brother dead; the imperious Malvolio and the drunken Sir Toby are not being of service to her. Feste engages in some wordplay to try to break Olivia out of her prolonged mourning for her brother and restores some of the trusted relationship between them, as indicated by his exit to look after Sir Toby.

One of my realizations coming out of this rehearsal is that while I spent four years in high school studying drama and appeared in one musical, I have very little experience with direction. Most of the drama work was individual or small groups. I thought I really understood what a director brought to a production, but it really wasn’t until I was acting myself and getting feedback from the director where I appreciated it. I had thought that I had to do 100% of the work realizing my character, and it’s nice to get the support of the director in making decisions about how to proceed. That also means having to be open to suggestions that might be different from my own interpretation – something I thought would be easy but in the moment actually was a little difficult!

I encountered a lot of frustration with myself not having learned lines yet. None of the cast is fully off book yet but I am finding it really difficult to focus on developing my character when I am having to go back to the script. Feste’s lines contain a number of complex instances of wordplay as well, and my desire to get things 100% right textually really pulls me out of the moment.

Saturday was one of those rehearsals where there’s a lot of hurry up and wait. Feste appears in the beginning, briefly in the middle, and again at the end of the act. In between there is a lot of rehearsing that needs to be done by the other actors. On Saturdays we are practicing at the park, which means not a lot of seating – I’m going to need to bring a lawn chair for future rehearsals. The rehearsal was a lot of fun overall because Act 5 is when everything in the play comes together so almost all the cast was there. Hearing all the interactions and the big reveals was really exciting and has me really looking forward to when we perform.

This upcoming week I am having a music conversation with our director so I need to really work on nailing down what I want to do with each of Feste’s songs.