Kyle Puccia - Composer - Praying Small
Another fruitful rehearsal yesterday. Once again I spent the better portion of the day learning lines and then toddled off to rehearsal to see if any of them stuck. Some did and some didn't. There is a monologue that's giving me fits. I'm a huge proponent of repetition and lists in my work. Especially lists. I like to give them. Emotional laundry lists, as it were. The problem is, being a play, someone has to memorize these lists. And in this case, me. An actor once told me years ago, "Your writing is the hardest writing I've ever had to learn." I never thought that way. Upon retrospection, I think he was talking about my lists.
We mostly concentrated on act II last night although at the end of rehearsal we went back and did act I without stopping. Both acts have their tough moments for me but act II has more of them.
I've included a picture above of my dear friend and collaborator, Kyle Puccia. As I've mentioned before in this blog, Gentle Reader, Kyle has composed some luscious music for this piece. In fact, the play begins with a heart-wrenching song by Kyle called "Falling Apart Again." In addition, he's designed a brilliant sound scape for the piece, following the director's vision of copious ambient sound to link the scenes together. It's all quite remarkable if I do say so myself. And the cherry on the cake is this: Kyle is one of the most pleasant and adaptable artists to work with I've ever known. He positively reeks of positive energy.
We've got a day off today...mostly because I'm involved with a night of one-acts at the theatre called Sanity 2. It's always hard for me to go back and do this night of theatre after working so hard on Praying Small all week. Suffice to say the two pieces are not exactly, um, in the same ball park.
Lines today. And more lines. The lines, the lines, my kingdom for the lines.
On an unrelated note, I'm seeing my nutritionist today with regards to my diabetes. I'm not sure I'll learn anything new since Angie and I have been pouring through the internet researching this already. But we'll see. Since taking the new medication I can say unreservedly that I feel a hundred times better than I have in many months. The 'silent killer' was, quite frankly, kicking my ass there for a little while. So glad to be over that.
Angie has virtually turned my world upside down where my diet is concerned. She's become damn near an expert herself on diabetes. These days when she shops she examines every bit of nutritional content on a box or a can as though it were the Rosetta Stone itself. I'm grateful. I don't think I could do it alone. In fact, I'm sure I couldn't. Knowing myself as I do, I think eventually I'd just say, oh, screw it, and start eating M & M's for dinner. Needless to say, Angie is not having any of that. She doesn't understand the meaning of 'oh, screw it.' The most driven woman I've ever met. Lucky for me.
See you tomorrow.
