Rehearsal Log: Come From Away

by Scott Leon Smith

We can never thank Good Hope Lutheran Church in Bucyrus enough for allowing us the use of their auditorium for music rehearsal.

There's something about learning music, singing in a half-circle around the piano, beneath a high stain glass window that's particularly sublime. Especially for this show.

The music for Come From Away is deceptively simple on its surface. Lots of short phrasing and lovely, effective melodies, owing a lot to Sondheim's style.

But within that simplicity is a challenging array of close harmonies and syncopated rhythms that require a lot of focus, especially with a cast of twelve.

We've been holding our own, though, and having a lot of laughs amid the frustrations of feeling the right beats and hitting the right pitches. Oh, and watching our language in the church.

Which lasted for maybe 2 rehearsals. Sorry, Lord.

The "Come From Away" Chairs--where will they end up next?

Upon returning to the theatre, we quickly discovered that we'd been spoiled by Good Hope's comfortable chairs, and after one rehearsal sitting on the pub chairs we'll be using in the production, we decided to heft our newly acquired comfy seats from the first two rows onto the stage for music rehearsals.

However, once we started our blocking rehearsals, we realized that the pub chairs, no doubt feeling slighted, would begin to take their revenge on the cast, especially those of who have to stand on them (crackle-wobble-crackle-wobble).

Oh, well. Such is the stage.

Despite our vindictive chairs, blocking rehearsals have gone pretty smoothly thus far. We'll be moving all the time, with very few breaks offstage (if we can call them breaks).

But hopefully the movement will help us solidify our lines, another challenge given the multi-narrator format of the show. There are hardly any dialogue scenes, which causes us to find new ways to pick up cues.

Some of us got our first taste of the show's energy when we congregated to watch the video production. We quickly learned that this is high stakes all the way through.

But it turns out nothing will be more high stakes than remembering our individual placements on stage, and which chairs we move...and when.

I've lost count of the number of positions, but I'm pretty sure it's somewhere around 500. And we're about halfway through the script.

Yikes.

More to come.