Act 1 Scene 1 | Playful Torture

And so we begin this phase. After months of talking about the play, exploring images, ideas, music, thoughts, characters. The guys are on their feet. They ran Act 1 off-book, about 10 pages, meeting all 8 of their shared characters, switching sometimes within one scene. They were pretty sweaty at the end. Man, this is hard and fun and the skype boxes are actually proving really cool. We are understanding the potential of background and foreground, in a cinematic way. How to listen and respond and speak to each other through screens -- where do you look? (the screen, not the camera we figured out). Entrances and exits of characters is pretty exciting to explore. Do you come from below, the side, stick your head out, pull your hair back and pop back in to the screen? Falling into the screen/scene because you're bombed, a note handed to you from you but you can't see the from you because it's out of the screen...all things we explored. Loads of potential.

Not surprising, Antony and Cleopatra are the most elusive of the characters for Ron and Luke. They are tough. Good. We finally got them to a place in 1.1 where they feel like a mess, a potentially dangerous mess, 2 people capable of destroying themselves, putting otheres in danger, perhaps dangerously obsessed with each other. "This is exhausting"