First week down! Park City to go!

Sorry I haven't posted all week! This rehearsal process has been very intense! We have been going from 9am to 6pm every day. The show is blocked and everyone is (almost) memorized, including myself! There have been some bumps in the road, but overall I am really enjoying this process. I already love my cast so much and I'm really excited to get to perform with them all summer!

I've been really falling in love with Catherine, she is such a fun character to play. Sassy and sarcastic and bratty, but open-minded and kind as well. Her journey over the course of the play is really well-written and beautiful. I've been learning what this show is about through her, and I think it's about how everyone feels like outcast or "foreigners" for different reasons, and the only way to overcome that is by coming together. All the main characters in the show are outcasts in different ways, Catherine being an upper-class debutante now fallen and an orphan. But by the end of the show, they find love and support with each other, and through that they learn how to love themselves. It is a surprisingly powerful message for such an upbeat, comedic play!

But anyways, on to the biggest news!!

We leave for Park City on MONDAY! We will be staying in fancy condos near the performance space and we'll spend next week rehearsing onstage, which is really nice because we will be able to get a feel for the spacing and acoustics early on in our short rehearsal process.

I've never been to Park City before, so I'm also hoping for some time to explore!

First rehearsal!

Today was a very exciting day, because it was our first read-through as a cast!

So basically how this summer is going to pan out is that we are starting The Foreigner rehearsals today and rehearsing 8 hours a day, 6 days a week for 2 weeks until we open up in Park City on June 11th. (Each year NSF tours one or two shows up to Park City and performs at their beautiful Egyptian theater.) We have a four day run up there and then we drive back down to Cedar City and start rehearsing the rest of the season. So for now, I can focus on one show, which is very nice!

I had such a fun time at the read-through today! I'm playing Catherine Simms in this production, and she is the leading lady of the show. She's a Southern ex-debutante and engaged to Reverend David Lee, who we find out at the beginning of the show got her pregnant. But she later learns David is not the man he claimed to be and she finds independence for the first time with the help of Charlie, a mistaken "foreigner" staying at the B&B lodge run by Betty Meeks. 

I already know some of the cast because they are my classmates at SUU. Keaton Johns is playing Ellard Simms, my little brother, Henry Ballesteros is playing Charlie Baker and Nathan Smith is playing David Lee. The rest of the cast seems like a lot of fun and based on the read-through, very talented as well! The director is Clarence Gilyard, of Die Hard and Walker, Texas Ranger fame. 

One thing I'm worried about (besides getting all these lines memorized) is learning a good and accurate Georgia dialect. I can do a basic Southern accent, but I know dialects vary depending on way in the South my character is from. Hopefully I'll be able to somewhat master it within the coming weeks. 

Official rehearsals start Monday! We have a lot of work ahead of us in order to pull this show together in such a short rehearsal time, but with our cast I'm sure we can do it. 

Introduction

Hello world! This summer I will be participating in a very exciting thing that I've decided to use for my EDGE project as well. I wanted to document my experiences and writing it all down on a blog seemed like the best option. But first, a little about me!

My name is Amber James and I'm heading into my senior year at Southern Utah University, majoring in Theatre Arts and studying in the Classical Acting BFA program. I'm originally from Glendale, Arizona but I'm been living in Cedar City since I started school here. After I graduate, I'll probably move out to the Washington D.C. area and pursue the theatre scene out there for a while.

As I am set to graduate this coming spring, I wanted to spend my summer doing something in the professional world of theatre that would help give me a boost in my post-college acting career. That's when I realized, that's what the EDGE program is for! 

Here is a summary of what my project is and what I'll be doing this summer (SPOILER: it's very exciting!):

As a current student studying acting, the most important thing for me is to gain real-world professional experience even before I graduate college. The Neil Simon Festival is a local professional theatre company and I have been cast this summer in two different plays. My idea for my project is to complete this acting internship, perform with this company, and gain that necessary experience to graduate and become a successful performer and get work in my desired field.

I will start rehearsing towards the beginning of the summer and tour up to Park City with one of the shows I am in, where we will perform for audiences in that area for one weekend. After that, I will return to Cedar City and continue rehearsing for our local opening. Then I will perform four times a week for the entire run, as Catherine in The Foreigner and Laurie in I'm Not Rappaport. On top of that I will get to participate in other company events as assigned by my supervisors. 

Last summer I was a member of the Utah Shakespeare Festival acting company as an SUU intern, so it is extra amazing that I get to keep learning more things about professional companies while still in college! Rehearsals start tomorrow, so from here on out I'm ready for a busy, wonderful summer!