We had our first read through! Ahhh!!!
There is something to be said about the way a script comes to life before your eyes when you can assign an actual human to the character of the playwright’s creation. Every one of our cast members brought out such a life to each of these characters and encouraged new thought from me from a person who’s held these characters in my head for so long, never hearing them out loud.
One of these new thoughts was seeing Agamemnon through a completely different viewpoint. Before this reading, I had been having trouble seeing him from beyond just the way the other characters in the script view him. It was almost like I was hearing second-hand information about this character and had never met him myself until this reading. Having an actor, a talented one at that, interacting with the other characters I hold dear made the character of Agamemnon feel like more than this distant figure I saw in my head. He acts in some inexcusable ways, but he’s also a human, just like every other character in the script, and he feels emotions. I hadn’t been able to see that before.
It was also fun to see that, while this is a Greek Tragedy, it’s so freakin’ FUNNY sometimes! I don’t want to give too much away, so I will leave it at that, but you will all see from the reading next month (!!!) how strong a grasp Anya holds over the pacing of her show. She lets us breathe with moments of comedy before reminding us, tragically, what the show is truly about.
I cannot wait for our next rehearsal this Friday. I’ve learned so much more about the play from these two rehearsals, and I can’t wait for the acting and direction to take us even farther down the path to understanding the world of The Killing Fields.