Love's Labour's Lost

So we are done rehearsing for Love's Labour's.  Finito.  I realized today that there are a lot of things that I am good at.  One is helping an actor who has talent hidden somewhere up his or her ass to realize this talent.  The second is that I know how to teach Shakespeare.  I really do.  I had a session with just Daniel and Kristy late in the afternoon that I am sure helped him a lot to really talk to the audience.  It was good.

The third thing is knowing how to cast a show in the first fucking place and not to cast shitty people in the show.

After the last of these Shakespeare readings, I took Linda aside and offered to help.  I knew that I could.  The first thing that I said was that the things needed to be shorter, and I offered to cut the play accordingly (BTW: without intermission, this version of Love's Labour's Lost runs a total of an hour and 35 minutes.)  The second thing that I said was that we need to cast actors who are capable in the largest parts, and the actors who are really talented and who can speak Shakespeare (by this mainly I was talking about Aaron, Wahima, myself, and Justin) in the servant parts... the really funny parts that are so often done poorly.  We don't need to prove anything, and so we don't really mind playing smaller parts and giving the bulk of the learning experience to inexperienced actors.  This was not heeded by Linda.  At all.

She changed her tune, by the way, about the payment for the Black Box season: she said she meant to say $100 more than last year instead of $100 less than last year.  I need to talk with her.  I am still very leery about taking a job here again.  This LLL experience has really soured me on the place.

I am dying to see Volume 2.  I can't wait until Tuesday.

Peace out and much love to all.  I am gonna go prep for a warmup that I'm leading.  As stated previously, this evening I am being billed as dramaturge: Aaron C. Thomas.