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Aah, the Comedy Series rolls on. I was greeted by the previously posted voicemail from Adam when I woke up this morning, so I headed to school a good hour early today. I mean, hell, I really didn’t want to be “dead” to Adam forever… so…

Anyhow, I went up to Room 42 (which is, as I’ve stated before, my favorite room) to find Adam, G, Angela (Mrs. Drudge), and Stephanie already there, playing a game of ‘Zip-Zap-Shazam.’ Now, I’ve still got some beef with ‘Zip-Zap-Shazam,’ seeing as it could be partially responsible for my downfall in A Far Country (we played it as a pre-game thing, and, admittedly, I didn’t do all to well) I decided I’d play. Maybe I could shake the curse. After a couple of rounds of losing, I started to get on the winning trail. Zwoobah!

Before long, we were joined by Criss (Cynthia) and Joel, and started to read through the play. We got at least 3/4 of the way through before time was up. I find it amazing that, no matter how many times I’ve read The Real Inspector Hound, even in such an analytical nature (which killed many different works of literature during my high school career), I find myself cracking up hysterically. Tom Stoppard is a genius. I’m a big Stoppard fan now. I mean, I’m not even as ashamed as I was to say I enjoyed Shakespeare In Love, because I found out that he wrote it.

So, I headed down to the MM Theater for rehearsal for Once A Catholic. It’s always nice to be in the theaters, especially ones like the MM. I wasn’t quite sure whether I’d like working in the MM, because I’m used to proscenium-style theaters, like the one at TZ, but I really do enjoy it.

Anyhow, Pam told us her ideas for the set, which I didn’t quite understand at the time, but I think I get it now. The thing about exam play sets is that they’re all representational — that is, they’re non-existant. Instead of a rock, we have blocks. Instead of a couch, we have blocks or a bench. Instead of pews, we use (you guessed it) blocks. So the “sets” of our plays are an elaborate configuation of benches, tables, chairs, and blocks. It took a while to understand for me today.

Anyway, we blocked our first scene in a way. I lead the congregation in to the stage area, and then bless them before I leave. It was also quite productive in that we worked out a melody to sing the latin with. I’m still going to check with Jim as to whether or not there’s a set melody we should be using. He should know, he was almost a priest once. You know, I never thought of that before — and now that I’ve realized that, I’m quite intimidated that Jim’s going to know if I’m fudging anything. I may have to do more research than I thought.

I did a small bit of goofing around with Kyle S. Beaver while we were blocking the scene, and I was quite proud that he caught my Monty Python reference during our first run of the scene. I realized some time after the scene that Kyle and I probably have more in common than I think, as he got in trouble for reading comic books instead of watching our peers rehearse.

My second scene came and went. I kind of started to go for a game show host personality for my priest, but I’m not quite sure I went as far with it as I’d like. I really have to take the time out of studying Hound to invest in rehearsing Catholic some more.

I couldn’t wait for Inspector Hound rehearsal, and (once again) I wasn’t disappointed. Today, we started reading through the play with only G (Moon) and Adam (Birdboot), to closely examine and pick apart their dialogue. It’s absolutely fucking amazing to see the small revealing details that can be found within word choice. We spent a few minutes trying to figure out what Moon means by saying that Puckeridge is waiting “for Higgs and I to write our own obituary” and not “obituaries.” Now, there is a chance that things like this can be a typo, what with the amazing accuracy that Samuel French and DPS have a record of… but it was fun to examine it through that perspective.

After picking apart Moon and Birdboot, we added the other characters to start to examine their relationships to each other. T gave us some ideas on how to rehearse individually over the next two weeks, and we adjourned for the weekend. Before leaving school, we decided to rehearse Hound tomorrow at the school, seeing as it’s going to be the last day AADA is open on Saturdays — Saturday school ends tomorrow.

I like Inspector Hound. I like it very much.

7 rehearsal days left for Once A Catholic
9 rehearsal days left for The Real Inspector Hound