Today’s Date: July 19, 2019
Show Title: The Roaring Girl
Director: Stephanie Ann Foster
Assistant Directors: Cortland Nesley and Molly Harper
Stage Manager: Joe Marsh
Dramaturg: Madison Miller
Rehearsal Room: Grafton Library
What we did:
What didn’t we do today? This process is moving along quickly, and quite honestly I can’t believe that it is already Friday of the first week. Today we blocked Act 1 scene 2 which is a hefty group scene full of comedy and quick shared lines. While working with scripts and hula hoops and percussive sticks these actors have their hands full figuratively and literally. This scene is truly a multipage beast, full of little moments, group movement, and sound. We then, once we had fully blocked, did a walk through quickly, then ran through the entire scene.
QUICK AND QUOTABLE
FROM THE PLAY
“Sh’as the spirit of four Great parishes, and a voice that will drown all the city.”
-Laxton
FROM THE DIRECTOR
“Don’t get hidden by the hula hoop, if you’re out of the hula hoop be out of the hula hoop!”
-Stephanie Ann on the great dilemma of The Hoop.
FROM THE CAST:
“Hippity hoppity women are property.”
-Leilah reminiscing on sexism in the 1600’s.
Production Insight:
Let’s talk about text. This play was first published in Quarto form in 1611, and was a written dramatization of the life of a real life virago named Mary Frith/Moll Cutpurse. The play itself is almost completely written in prose, and has left us with less scansion work then with a Shakespeare show, which has allowed our cast to focus on details like understanding rhetoric and tactics through the text. This text is a gift and the embedded humour has given us lots to work with, and for that, I am grateful to see this process. I rarely work on or in comedies, so to see the focus and precision required to make every little moment work is astonishing. Each little interaction requires an incredible amount of repetition. It’s mesmerizing and the cast is so patient and willing and invested in being precise. Truly they are teaching more than I could have ever expected about being present in a room and loving the work fully.
Maddie Miller
Maddie Miller (she/her/hers pronouns) is a North Carolina native, and a sophomore BFA Theater Performance major at Emerson College. In her free time she can be found COQ (crying over quarto’s [Ask her about Q1 Hamlet and her wonderment at instability in early modern text]), taking power naps before planning her world domination, and finally: writing monologues, and poetry about intersectional feminism, art, and Shakespeare. She is more than ecstatic for her first year as a production intern, and can’t wait to get to work!