Hayley Williams' LONG TIME TRAVELLING Blog

APRIL 13

This is the hardest part!!! We are not yet completely off book and desperately need to be. Not because of a time crunch but because we need to finally become our characters. We (especially Josiah and I) need to be able to make connections as actors. Last night was the most frustrating rehearsal I have had since we started this show. It was frustrating because I felt like I couldn’t connect with Josiah as actors. Actors having a connection and relationship onstage is as important as the characters having a connection. If the actors can’t work together to bring the characters to life, the characters will look lifeless and boring. Last night we experienced just that—boring acting. Josiah and I just failed to connect for the majority of the rehearsal. We did 2 run throughs of Act I and not until the second time did I feel as if we were working together as Josiah and Hayley—not just as Adam and Lora to make this play come to life. I think it really helped us when Rick sat us down and reminded us that we need to remember our acting basics: what does my character want? How is she going to get it? How is my character constantly feeling about the world/people around her? What are my objectives? These basics are easy to forget when you have been doing theatre as long as we have. It really made a difference in our performances after we sat and thought about these things for a few minutes. We came back and ran the act again with a lot more energy and passion. It finally felt real again rather than stagnant and stale like it did the first time. Last night was a real reminder that you should never throw away what you learned way back in Acting I, it is always useful and you are taught it for a reason. You can always go back to your roots when you need to work through something, we never outgrow them. Hopefully, we will be able to bring that same liveliness that we had at the end of last night to tonight’s rehearsal when we will be running Act I again. I’ll let you know how it goes!