"Coyote Hunts the Sun" Rehearsal Log, November 2

Last night was a lower key rehearsal, due to my recent cold, in spite of it being our very first walk through. It was good to do the whole thing straight through and to see how it flows, which is nicely.

To start off, we plugged Ranae into the Makataimeshkiakiak sequence. It definitely makes a lot of difference having her teach the lecture notes as opposed to Darci reading them. It heightened the tension in that scene, making it, in my estimation, the most explosive in the play.

Then we walked through it off-book. The first time through we had a lot of stops and starts, mostly due to me not knowing all the lines that I wrote for Pihnêefich yet. But it worked, and ran about half an hour. The second time through was smoother and ran about 27 minutes. It’s great having Darci on the team as the objective eyes in the house. She helped us strengthen the visuals in the Makataimeshkiakiak scene by having Ranae, Chriss and I move into two lit playing spaces separated by a wall of dark, and re-blocking the Introduction by putting the Pihnêefich-Grant physical relationship on a diagonal across the audience.

Know that we all know our lines, we’re ready to run it a few more times on Friday, and then start putting in costumes and tech. We’re going to have a great show next week!

"Coyote Hunts the Sun" Rehearsal Log, October 30

It’s been one heck of a week, and what a productive way to cap it off! This afternoon Darci, Chris and I worked through the Makataimeshkiakiak, or Black Hawk, scene. I’m trying to refer to him by his name in Sauk. It seems more respectful.

Darci had to get there late today, so Chris and I read through the scene several times just getting the feel for it. Several textual changes were in order, but the blocking flowed pretty naturally out of it.

When Darci arrived, she watched the scene. Her note was, “It’ll be interesting to see how it works with Ranae in it.” In this scene, the Schoolteacher is trying to give a lesson while Makataimeshkiakiak and Pihnêefich have their jailhouse scene. The gist is supposed to be competing storytelling. But Ranae couldn’t be with us today, so I asked Darci to step in and read her part. I wasn’t sure it was working, but after talking to Darci and Chris when we were done, I’m convinced that the competing storytelling will work as compelling theater. But we’ll find out for sure when we plug Ranae in on Wednesday.

Now it’s time to rest up. I feel the start of a sore throat coming on.