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.