This is the time where we “dah-nce”…

Having not danced for a while, I was a bit rusty for years. But last year’s production of Mame put me back into the swing of things (I was only in one musical number so it was fairly painless). I don’t consider myself a dancer because I’m just not so interested in doing musicals anymore (though I’ve been really thinking that I might want to do Sondheim’s Assassins some time in the future). But now that we have this great dance scene at Fezziwig’s ball, I MUST do something with it, so we gave MaryBeth Cavanaugh over at Berkeley Rep a ring to help out. She’s come up with some great snazzy-stepping for the ball scene at Fezziwig’s. I don’t want to give too much away, but I think the audience will enjoy it…it’s quite clever.

I’ve been talking with other people who have done one man shows for advice on various things. I’m mainly interested in actors who have done solo shows that they didn’t write themselves because they can’t really improvise if they “go up” on their lines (an actor’s term for getting lost or forgetting one’s lines during a performance). I rarely go up during a performance, and when it’s happened (I can’t even remember the last time it did) I’ve always been able to improvise my way out of it since I always know where my character is going. Not the case with Dickens.

Dickens has a particular style of prose that’s similar to Shakespeare, which is VERY difficult to improvise and sound right. There are still 8 days until opening night and that’s barely enough time to get it all right! I think I’ll end up feeling like I’m doing a tightrope act and could fall at any moment!