Overdue Production Report

OK, I have been remiss and not filed a production report in a while. So I will review.

Sifu Alex Richter at City Wing Tsun has been awesome enough to give us a good deal on using their studio for rehearsals on Saturday. A BJJ specialist I was hoping would work with us was supposed to come on the past two weeks, but unavoidable situations has kept him away. This has forced me to change the plan for those rehearsals on the fly. However on both occasions, this gave us the opportunity to find some new things I had not imagined.

On the first of these days, certain cast members who had missed a couple of rehearsals were given the opportunity to catch up on the techniques that we had learned, and we were able to add a few more steps. I was then able to see if the whole cast could do the moves in unison. A video of this will be up soon.

We then played a game of “freeze-tag-team-match,” in which the actors were to improvise scenes and combine grappling moves with the dialog. This proved to be a valuable and fun exercise. Thinking of the move and the line at once proved to be a challenge, but a fun challenge.

The following Wednesday we had a read-through. Many of the cast members had submitted scenes from various plays and movies. I assembled them into a sort of script that has come to be known as the “Drama Club Tag Team.” It will be the lead-off scene in the show.

The cast jumped into the lines with encouraging enthusiasm. Some of them seemed unfamiliar with some of the dialog, due to their limited theatrical experience, but none of it seems to be an insurmountable obstacle. It was a good jumping-off spot for the consideration of who will play which role.

We also learned a couple of submission moves from standing and applied them to the grid exercise.