Here, simply because I have the technology and the spare time, is a live report from tonight's rehearsal. (I probably got the idea because just now we were running the "Killing of King W" scene, in which my barker character is a newscaster giving a play-by-play account of Ubu and McNure's fight with Wenceslas and Boggerlas.) It's almost 9 PM, and the Ubu cast has been rehearsing some of its greenscreen scenes sans Pa Ubu and the Woyzeck cast.
I've been out of town for most of the last 2 weeks of rehearsal, and am still dead tired from my travels, but all the scheming and battling (mostly Pa's, as I've been filling in for him tonight) woke me, and all of us Dream Cabbers, right up.
As Holly (Ma Ubu to you) put it earlier tonight, the more somber and (for lack of a better word) dramatic the Woyzeck play becomes, the bigger and more carnivalesque we Ubu-ites need to be. Ours is a very physical, over-the-top production, which is tricky given that our scenes are all performed for the camera in a very limited space--so it is taking a while to figure out how to make things look interesting onscreen to the audience watching from the other side of the wall. (I'm fairly convinced that the bizarreness of us acting for the rectangular frame of the camera will be intriguing for audience members who watch on the Ubu side of the wall.)
In the photo above you see Holly (Ma) and Josh (Boggerlas/Tail) on the Ubu side of the wall, Sarah (our director) in motion, and Dave P (I forget his title, but I think of him as master of technology) setting up video projections on the Woyzeck side. As I've been typing this entry, they've all been talking through the tech of future greenscreen scenes; the Woyzeck cast has arrived, and after a brief break we're back to business.
Words cannot express how unlike a conventional Dream Cab rehearsal all of this is (learning lines a month before we open?! blocking?! character motivation?! preposterous!), but that's in no way a complaint. It's very exciting to be finding a way to work with "real" theater artists (and equally real robot designers) while still retaining our essential Cabaretness.
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