This is my eighth show at Story Theater Company, and I have never had the same experience twice. That is one of the most beautiful things about every show at Story Theater Company. We discover the show together. Everybody is story-centric and everything we do is story-centric. We take the time to discover the best way to tell the story and explore several options. I have been in productions where the director decides how the show is going to look at tells you what to do in order to make it look that way, but Kivan has a loose concept for the show and allows us to the discover the show together. A show is much more engaging for an audience if it is relatable to real circumstances, and you can’t tell that kids are just on stage “performing”. In most children’s theaters, they create stereotypical and corny shows, but I think that the level of discovery that we have at Story Theater Company overcomes that obstacle that every children's theater faces.
We began to explore at the very first rehearsal, the read-through. In a typical read-through the cast sits down together and reads their lines. Unfortunately, this form of a read-through makes people think about how to say their line well, instead of how their character reacts to others and contributes to the story. There is also the constant temptation to get bored and stop leaning in whenever it isn’t “your scene”. To avoid things like this that are harmful to exploring the show, our initial read-through involved more discoveries since we used a different format. We used the rehearsal space as a playing space. We would go into the playing space when our character was on stage. You said your lines, but you also moved and could see connections with other characters. This was a much more fascinating method since it was easier to visualize everybody’s ideas coming into the show. Everybody inhabited their characters in fascinating ways, and I know that this cast will be capable of finding the most interesting way to combine their characters and ideas into a new and amazing telling of Honk!.
You could also see relationships between characters through the way they interacted with each other in the playing space and the amount of space they put between themself. For example, Penny and Ugly stood much closer to each other at the end than they did at the beginning since their relationship began to blossom throughout the show. I also thought it was very interesting that there was already so much energy and commitment coming from characters. This read-through really demonstrated to me how much of a difference having a lot of energy can have on your performance. People like Parker McIntosh and Zander Reed blew me away during the first-rehearsal, and I realized as I reflected on the day that they were also the people who were constantly focusing a ton of energy towards the story.
On Saturday, we had our first choreography rehearsal. When I heard that Elizabeth was coming back to do our choreography I was so excited and so was everybody else. Elizabeth has spectacular ideas for the choreography, and I was very impressed by the fact that everybody always was doing something and there was always a reason behind it. However, this choreography has led to a lot of challenges for me. I have minimal dance experience and struggle to get into a place where the dancing is natural. I tend to hold a lot of tension in my body, so I worked a lot to find that “natural place”. I will continue to work hard at learning, mastering, and enjoying the dances in this show.
I am thrilled to continue to explore this production open-mindedly.
Ben Siegel
(Jay Bird)
