Guildenstern's journal

21 aug '00

Yesterday we got some bad news: John has decided that he doesn't have the time to prepare both shows, so we are going to do only Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The good news is that we can now devote our remaining twelve calendar weeks to the one play. Mind you, we're not working together intensely for much of that period, due to scheduling conflicts: we rehearsed tonight, and don't meet again until next Monday.

I had a dream last night: John and Dino and I were working on a play set in space, and the characters didn't have scripted names, so we had to invent them, using the "what's your Star Wars alias?" rules. I got as far as "Gor-Da of..." before I woke up. There was also an electronic dictionary, a prop that I was going to make.

Guil has been waiting 44 years for something to happen, and that's when the action of the play begins. John is pushing hard for me to stress the anger and frustration of the early scenes.

We've begun work on the first french scene of Act II. We also worked the two Ros and Guil french scenes of Act I. We haven't worked with the Player yet.

John likes to front-load the early scenes of a play with additional rehearsal time. He feels that the extra work helps to establish the characters, and then subsequent scenes fall into place. I'm not sure that I agree, but his approach pays off.

My ob jective for the next week is to get rid of my book for the scenes we've worked in Act I.

before
index and backstory
after