Notice the body position of that guy in the middle of the picture there, holding the reins. Looks pretty easy right? Now imagine basically holding that position for about 3 hours straight, two days in a row. In fact, go with me a bit further here and imagine bouncing up and down as if you were "riding a horse-drawn wagon" for those solid six hours. If your imagination is not working so well, just try it wherever you are right now. Go for 5 minutes. How do you feel? Do you FEEL THE BURN??? I do!I have a great time in this scene. It is the same basic idea that we used in our last version of PRAIRIE, a square dance moving into a great mix of song and horse race. But, since there are changes and new cast members and because it is quite involved in terms of lyrics, music, and movement...you can imagine we spent a lot of time rehearsing this scene these past couple days. I'm remembering why I got my soccer legs back after the last run of PRAIRIE. No pain, no gain right?
We are pretty much done blocking the whole first act. Today, we ran it in it's entirety. Everybody is really working hard, and it definitely shows. Tomorrow we tackle the second act! Let's see if Nellie can thwart Almanzo's pursuit of that free spirit, Laura.....only time will tell...with the help of a kick ball-change and some fantastic movie-composer-turned-theater-composer underscoring!
