FAULT LINES JOURNAL PART III

To read Journal Parts I or II, please scroll down

The actors in the play were really beyond good. My buddy Drake played Bill, and he was literally on the stage the whole play. Rick played Jim. These two guys really go pretty much the whole spectrum from smiling laughing kidding around sitcom-like banter to screaming and yelling and hatred--just short of physical violence, but not quite. They both went all out. Phillip played Joe, who is kind of the dick but also the conscience of the play. It really is THE part, and Phillip was fucking awesome. Ivy played Bill's wife. She has the smallest part and doesn't get to have quite the range the other characters had, but she was still damn good.

It was so neat to see the play over and over again in the practice and then in the actual performance to see how things changed and what was good and what sucked. We had to watch the real close for our cues as to when to go in or out. It was kind of tough, because we would be playing along to a given beat, and the actors cadence and pauses were always different because they are not talking, necessarily, in time to the music. So, in the case where we would come out in the same spot according to the dialogue, it could definitely be a different spot in a riff we were playing or a beat I was playing. It was cool, but a challenge.

PLUMP basically took a break from PLUMP practicing in order to do play practicing. We practiced with the play about 4 or 5 times during the two weeks immediately prior to the last week before the show. Horsehead had arranged to practice at a big room at Univ of Houston campus in their theatre department (1-2 of the Horsehead people work there; Anthony is the technical director there). So that was pretty cool.

We played a show on Feb 27 in Lake Charles and on Mar 5 in College Station in the midst of all this practice. That then gets us to Monday March 8, which was the first first dress rehearsal prior to the opening show on Thursday March 11. To be continued....