Rehearsal #2. This time with less cat urine.

So tonight Tony and I finished our second rehearsal over Skype.  Both times have been interesting experiences for me so far.  Tonight, as with the first time, there was a cat incident but it was not as dramatic as the previous one when my cat jumped into my lap and promptly took a piss.  Tonight my other cat, I assume, thought I was losing my mind talking to nobody else in the room and came up to me meowing and jumped up into the chair, the one set piece I've been using and continued meowing while staring at me as if to ask "Are you alright?  I'm getting a little worried about you, buddy."

Tonight after a short discussion with Tony about my costume we just jumped right into the rehearsal.  It did take me a few minutes to get settled in with the character.  Rehearsing using Skype, especially in full screen mode, does kind of feel like performing with an audience member in your lap and one who is jotting notes while you're doing it.  It initially made me get self-conscious about what I was doing which is about the worst feeling I can ever experience as an actor. Tonight I even rearranged my living room so I could move further away from the monitor but there still something that felt overly personal about it.

After taking a pause I was able to recover and get back into character and ignore the face in the monitor looking back at me.  Just an aside, if Tony ever decides to dress like Max Headroom for one of these sessions I would totally lose it and laugh for about three days straight.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I invoked the name Max Headroom.

I did feel a lot more positive about this rehearsal than the previous one largely because I gave myself to move around and not just sit in a chair and read my lines.  More of the character was starting to come to life. Being so far back from the mic did force me to speak louder than I normally would for a space the size of my living room.

Tony gave me some great notes both in general and specific that are really going to help me make some big strides with this show.  There were a couple of glitches with Skype tonight.  The first was when we decided to take a 10 minute break but couldn't reconnect until I closed and restarted Skype.  Then during notes the audio would occasionally drop but that might have been because of the speed of out internet connections.