Schedule for the Week

Tuesday 2/1
5-7 Optional Rehearsal
Thursday 2/3
5-6 Dead Gaffer Special
Friday 2/4
5-? Lines Running
Saturday 2/5
9-12 Stage Changes(EVERYONE COME!!!)
12-1 Potluck Brunch
1-4 Act 1 Runthrough Cast X
Sunday 2/6
11-4 Act 1 Runthrough Cast Y(and a readthrough of most of Act 3!!!)
Note: On Sunday there will be no lunchbreak. We will be eating while reading through act 3 meaning there will be NO TIME to go get food. Please make sure to bring a lunch with you.

Words of Our Mutual Friend

Rebecca and I found this cool website that lets you put words together in cool ways. Here are the collages:
The Characters
The Participants
The Narration at the end of Act 2
Our Mutual Friend

Marcus Stone

I don't know if you've noticed, but there are a lot of pictures of OMF characters at YSP right now. They're in your script (Act 1, scene 1, for instance). They're sitting on the ground, blown up to large sizes and framed. And Imany of them will be gracing our program at performance time.



If you're like me (which I'm sure none of you are--I'm a total geek) you probably looked at these illustrations and said, "Who made these? How were they made? Did Dickens commission them?" So, being a total geek, I went and researched some answers.

These drawings were made by a man named Marcus Stone. Marcus Stone was an engraver: he carved sketches onto wood blocks, which would then be transferred to copper plates, and finally printed in the newspapers that Dickens' novels first appeared in. Stone was a long-time friend of Dickens and his illustrator for almost a decade. (They were friends from Stone's childhood: when the artist was 12 years old, Dickens saw a sketch that Stone had done of Jo from Bleak House, and liked it so much that the novelist showed it to his publisher).

Most people from Dickens' time did not like Stone's illustrations. They preferred the silly, cartoonish style of Dickens' first illustrator, Phiz, to Stone's darker, more realistic style. However, Dickens himself preferred Stone's illustrations to Phiz's. This might be because Dickens' literary style was becoming more darker and more serious--and more like Stone's drawing style.

Personally, I like Stone's illustrations, and the darker and weirder the scene, the better. This one of Johnny's death is one of my favorites:Don't you feel like that fireplace is about to swallow Betty Higden up?
(You can see the complete set of Stone's OMF illustrations here).

One of the coolest things about Stone's illustrations is that Dickens himself helped with them. He gave Stone notes about character, clothing, and facial expression. So Stone's pictures are what DICKENS HIMSELF thought your character looked like.

Below is Stone's picture of Bradley Headstone. If I start writhing on the ground like a maniac during rehearsal, you'll know why.

This Weekend in Rehearsal.....

-BLOCKING!!!
-A Super Awesome Questionnaire
-Pajama Day on Sunday!
-Warm-ups by Melissa
-New and Exciting Scenes

Words, Words, Words

The first of many weekly games related to Our Mutual Friend!

Crossword Puzzle of Act 1 Characters!

P.S. for anyone in or related to Idle Conversation my mother just got me a novel written by a Shakespearean actress , director and founder of the Pasadena Shakespeare Company, Gillian Bagwell. It is 'The Darling Strumpet' and it is the story of Nell Gwynns life through poverty, prostitution, acting, and of course Charles.

Totally Tuesday

So I slipped up and forgot to post on Tuesday. Please accept this photo from the amazing Ben Rifken. So proud everyone looks like they're paying attention!!

Well, If Jenny Wren gets to be a song...

...then Lizzie Hexam gets to be a comic book character.

It turns out that if a director, sitting at a computer at night, types her character's name into Google, only the first result of the search actually manages to be about the Dickens character. Results two and three reference a character by the name of Lizzie Hexam who exists as part of a comic book series known as The Unwritten. There's even an issue with the title The Many Lives of Lizzie Hexam. So it seems she was at least reasonably important to the story in the comic books.

Of course, I haven't been able to find out if there is any connection between the Lizzie Hexam of Dickens and the Lizzie Hexam of comic books. But I doubt that the shared name is a complete coincidence. And, to use one of Boots' positive adjectives, it was astounding to discover that even in a world where, perhaps, few people have read Our Mutual Friend, the characters' names keep showing up in unlikely places, unnoticed by most who encounter them.

And I just thought that was interesting and worth sharing.