Line

In rehearsal, when you are on stage and can't remember your line, you are to simply call out "line" and the stage manager will begin to feed you your line until you can pick it up and run with it.

I did manage to memorize the whole show. I've had to call for line a few times, and there are two or three places that always throw me off for some reason, but I plan to have them nailed by tomorrow because that's the end of calling for line. I think I'll get there. I'll likely flub one or two, but I'll keep going. Just like I would with an audience. It's good practice for when we open in a little over a week.

I'm worried, however, that I may need to have more than my own lines memorized. Oddly enough, it's not the brand new actor who doesn't know his lines. He's pretty solid. It's the stage veteran playing my father. He's struggling. He knows he's struggling, then he gets frustrated, and drops his lines even more. We've already gotten together once outside of rehearsal to work on lines, and are trying to set up another time.

The problem is: although I'm the central character in the show and onstage nearly the whole time, there are huge chunks of the show that I am not driving. I am reacting. And it's pretty hard to nudge along the scene from that position. So even though I often know exactly what is supposed to come out of his mouth next, I am not sure how I will ever help him get there. It will be interesting.

And here is where I feel like I need to have the perfect line to end the post and sum it all up. But I don't. Instead, I'll just give you one of the lines I say oh so many times in the play... so much, in fact, that it's sometimes difficult to remember if I say this or one of my other one word lines.

Yeah.