The bed is rolling

Continuing with the October 17th rehearsal...

The cast moves as a unit with the bed--Barbra laying on it, Sheila underneath it on the platform, Telsche and Dario pushing it around the room. Bob stands by watching, seemingly concentrated on the patterns Dario and Telsche are making with the bed combined with the music Sheila is playing. This beginning part of the piece is very much about moving and traveling, stopping for a quick moment, and then getting back on the bed and moving again. After a while of circling around, Bob instructs them to stop, and they quickly transition to a short scene where Dario and Telsche are sharing food from a pot while Sheila looks around the new place they have arrived at.

After a couple minutes of this, they hurry to put the pots and stools and crumpled papers back on the bed. Barbra decides to hide her hands under the bedsheets as she drops the papers, and Bob wants some sort of butterfly net or piece of mesh on a pole to catch the papers as she drops them. Then he decides that Dario and Telsche could pick them up as they go.

They also want a bicycle. It could be attached to the end of the bed the way a bike is attached to a car hitch, or Dario could just ride it around while helping push the bed. It would provide a real image of vehicular transportation as they are moving from place to place with the bed.

They are getting ready to progress into the first section of script now, and Barbra starts to yell out the first line while laying in the bed in the center of the room, the others mingling around a little. She sings, trying out different vocal timbres, “I was…I WAS…I waasss..I was 17 when I walked away.”

Bob tells Kristin to make a note that he will need a piece of white chalk to draw the country border line on the floor when they cross it. Dario looks around, hesitatingly, and then says that he actually has a piece of chalk in his bag and goes to get it. Everyone laughs at this.

They draw the border on the floor, and practice moving with the bed again, Barbra laying down, dropping the papers, Telsche and Dario now slipping around trying to catch them as they fall while also holding onto the bed and maneuvering it in circles. Telsche struggles playfully to catch the papers in her hat, reaching here and there, sometimes leaving the bed to get the obscure ones.

They talk about how the chalk will look on the actual theatre floor. It is possible the Bedlam stage floor might be too busy to exhibit the white chalk line. They take a 5 minute break. Kristin keeps track of time as they snack and rest.

When rehearsal resumes, Bob preludes by saying he wants it to be more explosive, more animated at the beginning. They nod in agreement and ponder on ways this can be achieved.

Kristin gives me a copy of the script, which I look over briefly. Barbra sees me reading it and, peering over my shoulder, says, “If you’re looking for what we’re doing on there, you won’t find it.” I laugh, realizing they are still working on what comes before the script starts. It’s so fascinating the way artists work in spurts almost, filling in this piece first, then moving on to another when the inspiration comes, and later fitting them all together, perhaps in a totally different order than they were originally set to be.

They work through the scene yet again, this time much louder, livelier, like an eruption. Telsche and Dario run with the bed, Barbra screaming “Not so fast! Not sooo FAST!” and throwing papers out sporadically. She shouts directions at them and they struggle to please her, shifting the bed this way and that quickly. Bob wants an earthquake. They improvise with the objects on the bed, banging pots and pans, dropping wood blocks, Dario covering his ears with his headphones, Sheila making horse noises.

They look for a stopping point in the madness, and Barbra thinks it might be nice to have different languages spoken when they are asked for their papers each time they cross a border.

After the earthquake movement gets slower, but Bob tells them to keep the energy up. They begin the first part of the script where Barbra looks for the beginning of her story in the mess of crumpled papers. Sheila, Telsche, and Dario help her by picking up papers and starting to read, to which Barbra usually responds “No, no, that’s not it,” and continues the search. She finally finds the right one, and reads the first line of the story.

Rehearsal comes to a close, all seem proud to have accomplished this first bit with the bed rolling and paper messing. They review the parts of Barbra’s imagination that are acted out in the beginning with Sheila as the mom, Telsche as the brother of “She,” Barbra’s character. There is a general notion that the other actors should be interconnected as parts of Barbra’s story while she is telling it.

‘Twas an eventful morning.