the first rehearsal

So today was the first day of rehearsal. This meant a meet-and-greet where we gave everyone “the low down” on the design of the show, (we’ll have a podcast of that soon), a read-thru (under 2 hours!!!), watching some cartoons to give us all a common language (we watched 2 Warner Brothers Cartoons, a surreal Betty Boop cartoon and a very sad cartoon from the 30’s entitled ‘The Ten Soldier”), and then puppet camp. What's puppet camp? A Jon Ludwig led training, followed by him then working with each puppeteer on movement and on scoring their scripts.

During the meet and greet, I had mentioned that Jon Ludwig’s Frankenstein was the reason I wanted to get into puppetry. Lorna came up afterwards to let me know that she teared up upon hearing that. Frankenstein was her first show with Jon, and he had then mentored her in puppeteering before she left two years ago to go to Phillly - and now they were working together again. Her reaction - “my god, I have to keep doing this.”

For me, I was slightly giddy at seeing each of the puppets come to life, and then simultaneously overwhelmed by how much work lies ahead for us.