Tag: Sean Patrick O’Rourke

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Beau Jest: This Past Weekend

Friday’s Hecklers (March 11, 2005): Well not really. They were people from Sean’s office. Sean, a dentist, works at a second office one day a week. There female office staff came to the show and made comments out loud on everything. I was definitely an experience. As actors on stage, we must ignore everything the audience does except allowing time for laughter. I know if I were in the audience I would have been angry with this detractor. But I was told by friends that once involved in the story, the comments were not that noticeable.

Saturday: Eighty seats were reserved for that night’s performance with around 100 seats filled.

Sunday’s Sellout: On Friday night, we found out that Sunday’s performance would be a sellout. There were even 11 people on the waiting list.

Play Details and Photos

JamesSherman.jpgWith around 100 seats filled the past two Saturdays, a sellout on Sunday, and 60+ averages for Friday shows, Kudzu has agreed to let us do Jest a Second this time next year. James Sherman’s Jest a Second is a sequel to Beau Jest which takes place one year later. BOB and SARAH are now married, BOB has become orthodox Jewish, SARAH is expecting and JOEL brings a secret out of the closet.

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Beau Jest: Finished Blocking

This was my first experience with the blocking process. The primary focus during this process is where when. I.e. what is my character doing at this point, move here, more there, stand, sit, etc. Some focus is on character development.

Lane, the director, allowed me, until last night, to kind of explore JOEL in the way I felt he was. JOEL is divorced, with two kids, has a successful (or at least I thought so) psychology practice and can be impatient with family. Maybe this was a little too much me. But what I never have thought is pompous. So the path I was going down was not what Lane had in mind. This makes a big difference in line delivery. Actually some of the lines are better because of this. Pompous and impatient with family changes the presentation of a lot of lines as well as physical attitude. This could be a major reason for the divorce. “I am the educated psychologist. I see and understand what is really going on here. It really annoys me when I have to explain these things that should be so obvious to you.”

The question for me is did I just misinterpret the character? I suppose I need more training on character development.

The worse thing about this is that I feel like I am doing a terrible job. Everyone else has lots of experience. For Sean (BOB), this is his 30th performance. I was really nervous the rest of the night. I suppose the confidence will come with more experience. This is only my second show after all.

One thing I need to do early on is get director input on his basic vision of the character I am to play. I think this will put me on the right path to begin with.

To be honest, I was having trouble finding who JOEL was until this adjustment.

Play Details and Photos