The Interview

Earlier, I wrote about vigilantism and serving justice based on your own personal judgments in Is Justice Really Served?  I don’t agree with this, but I can also see why some people believe in it.

Anyway, last week, my friend, Rochelle, and I worked on a scripted scene together.  It was about an interview between a reporter and a murderer who believes her actions are justified.  Nancy’s sister was  recently raped, so she killed the rapist with the belief that she is freeing society of their worries from this predator.  She requested for the interview to let the world know that she is not a murderer.  She wanted everyone to know that she did what she did out of the goodness of her heart and regardless of the verdict, she still believes that she did nothing wrong. 

I really enjoyed working with Rochelle.  We are competitive and we like to get on each other’s nerves.  However, I think we have pretty good chemistry on stage.  We put effort into rehearsing our lines whenever we can.  I called her to practice on the way to my grandparents’ house and she called me during her breaks at work.

Specifically on this sort of performance (to use scripts instead of improv), I have to say I was a bit intimidated when we got our four-page script.  I saw the whole thing and wondered how I was going to memorize this because we were being marked on memory.  However, it came pretty easy to me.  I looked at a page every day and memorized it that night.  After I finished the whole script, Rochelle and I began to put emotion in and block the scene.  I actually liked having to understand the subtext of the lines and work to fill in the spaces with the right kind of emotion and actions.

Lastly, on improvements and what I would have done differently.  I definitely would have put more time into teching and rehearsing with the props.  We did work with the large table we used.  However, we did not have our costume and props present.  It threw me off a bit because on our performance day, I was not familiar with having handcuffs on and how I should sit as a convict.  Also, we did not properly tech the sound, so our white noise was too loud and our tech people did not know when to close the scene and they were not familiar with the cues.  I never knew that tech rehearsing was actually that essential, so that is definitely noted for next time.

All and all, this was a fun experience that I really enjoyed.  It really got me and Rochelle closer and allowed me to try and work with scripts since we have been doing improv up until now.  I would love to work with Rochelle again for our relationship scenes, but we have to choose different partners.  I just want to thank her for the awesome experience and wish her luck in her relationship scene.

I'll post a recording of our performance up sometime this week, so stay tuned =)