The GoodheART Report – Crossing Rehearsal Diary: Week 2

Nina Goodheart, rehearsal assistant and gap year intern, brings you a progress report on rehearsals for Crossing: A New American Opera written by Matthew Aucoin and directed by Diane Paulus.

Crossing week two is complete! The cast and creative team returned rejuvenated from our Sunday off and jumped back into staging. Here are some highlights from our second week…

– Set changes! This week, we moved the soldiers’ beds for an entirely new perspective on our hospital set, and eventually broke down the hospital walls in order to stage the final scenes of the opera.

– Looking at photos from the cast’s first costume fittings. It’s remarkable to see how a uniform can transform our performers from buoyant modern-day opera singers to world-weary Civil War soldiers.

– Watching Diane work with Davone Tines, who plays Freddie Stowers, on his big soliloquy. Even just standing still, Davone commands attention thanks to his presence and his incredible bass-baritone voice, but Diane’s staging added a whole new level of intensity to his performance.

– Scene work with Rod Gilfry (Walt Whitman) and Alexander Lewis (John Wormley). Both Rod and Al are so compelling to watch and so committed to their characters. It has been fascinating to watch them build the complicated relationship between the old, caring poet and the young, bitter soldier. Plus, their duets are some of my favorite musical moments in the show.

– Putting Ed Parks, who will be playing Walt Whitman for our June 5thperformance, into Whitman’s blocking. And while Ed walked in Whitman’s shoes, I got to walk in Ed’s ensemble track – or rather, lie in it, since the ensemble spends several sections of the show lying in their hospital beds. Note: having to act asleep but not fall asleep on a very comfortable bed at the end of a long day of rehearsal is a skill I’m still struggling to master.

– Watching the ensemble interact in the background of various scenes. The character presentations last week helped to clarify the relationships between soldiers, so while the principals are singing, the ensemble is constantly in connection. They play cards and checkers, they help each other clean their wounds, and they have their own reactions to everything that happens onstage.

– A Skype meeting with set designer Tom Pye and projection designer Finn Ross. As fun as rehearsing in NYC can be, I can’t wait to see the full design of our show in Boston. The set and projections will be vital to evoking the environment of a decaying Civil War hospital.

And we’ll be in Boston soon! Check back soon for more updates on the rehearsal process.

Nina Goodheart is a full-time artistic intern, blogger, and rehearsal assistant to the director for Crossing at the American Repertory Theater. At the age of 5, she terrorized her family with repeated performances of the Queen of the Night’s aria from The Magic Flute.