Rehearsals - Week One

Rehearsals for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" began about a week ago or so. I joined in October 19th as blocking was being put into the show.

Blocking is the process of planning when, where, and how the actors in a play will move around the stage as the play is going on.

To block the play, the cast reads through their script. The director interrupts them when he has a direction for them to take. The actor writes the direction down and follows through with it.

There are many terms and symbols used when applying blocking directions to a script. To understand these, one must first understand stage directions in general.

All directions are given from the actor's point of view, facing the audience. If the actor is told to move to stage left, they move to their left. From the audience's perspective, however, the actor moves to the right.

The actors can also move up or down the stage. If they are told to move downstage, they are to move toward the audience. To move upstage is to move away from the audience, toward the back of the stage.

The symbols are as follows:

X - Cross
L - Stage Left
R - Stage Right
U (can also be an up arrow) - Up Stage
D (can also be a down arrow) - Down Stage

For example, if the director tells an actor to cross to stage right, it would look like this in the script:
XR

The director can also tell the actor to cross down right:
XDR

Although this seems simple, it can become very tedious. In some scenes, almost every line requires movement. In others, there is very little to no movement. It took three rehearsals, or five hours to block and run through the entirety of Act One.

The actors must be aware of their own blocking, as well as the blocking assigned to others. These directions must be memorized along with all of the words to the script. If movement is messed up during the show, it can throw the entire scene off easily.

Next week, Act Two will be blocked.