Stumblethrough Blues

When in a theatrical rehearsal process, the cast gets its lines and blocking (movement) together enough to get through the entire show without stopping, you have the opportunity for "runthroughs."

The first runthrough or two, however, inevitably comes just before the cast feels ready to runthrough. Thus you get the stumblethrough.

In the show I'm in, we had our first stumblethrough last night. We . . . almost made it. A few transitions had to be finessed, so the train had to stop on the tracks for a while. We had to call it a night about ten minutes or so from the finish line.

Tonight is the "designer run," where the show's costume, set, props, and lighting designers all watch a runthrough so that they may calibrate their designs according to the exigencies of the staged piece. We're still likely not quite ready.

I don't feel quite ready, anyway.

Last night's stumble-almost-through showcased for me zones of uncertainty, memory gaps, and just plain How do I get to stage left again? moments. I went blank three lines in--this after having run my lines ad nauseam.

As our director reminded us, such mental blarps are expected. Pulling all the pieces together at once like that can short out brain circuits in unexpected ways.

But there's no way around stumblethroughs. There will always have to be a first time getting through the whole thing. That first time will almost always feel too early. Feeling ready, I think, only happens after the noble failure of the stumblethrough. You eventually become ready by becoming experienced.

Like writing, like so much else in life, I need the stumblethrough as a space to shake out all the bugs and errors that might otherwise pop into being onstage during the run. I have to get the bad out to get to the good.

Or at least that's what I'm telling myself now, about an hour from tonights stumblethrough. I hope I remember my lines. I hope I find truth, make discoveries, get to the honest places, and communicate clearly.

I hope we make it over the finish line, stumbling or not.

JF