IN FLIGHT - A View from the Top



A GUEST BLOG by

In Turn to Flesh Production's May 2015 Mainstage Show, Jenny Lyn Bader's IN FLIGHT, our heroine Vera "Marty"  Martinelli, played by Danielle O'Farrell, is a sprightly editor-in-chief out to save the world.  

Peek inside the rehearsal room with a View from the Top!

I always love the first rehearsal. It has such a “first day of school” nostalgia about it - the beginning of something exciting. After several weeks spent reading scenes alone on the train, in my bed, or propped up on a treadmill at the gym, it’s such a joy to be able to listen to your scene partner; to see how their personality and choices - literally, what they bring to the table - imbue the world of the play with specificity.

I'm so excited to let Drew's language sting me into a retort, to play off Jackson's perfect funny line reading, to set up Ginger's couplet for the joke. Lynette and Sam both open their mouths and I suddenly know exactly who those characters are. There are lines and question marks and upward or downward arrows all over my script already - a little hieroglyphic alphabet that I'm not actually sure I could explain, but one that kicks something in my subconscious.

I keep jotting down the little pieces of text and images that pop up as we read, as well as a to-do list ("finish highlighting" "look up Czech pronunciation" "research Bhutan").  The list of free-floating imagery is less prosaic (and way more pretentious) - "security vs. integrity" "title: humans are driven by ideas" "who's got the power? I've got the power!"

And thank heaven for Jessica and Jenny Lyn, for the moments of absolute blank "Oh God, I have NO idea."

We're creating a world of big, grownup ideas - ideas that have far-reaching, real-life consequences (Could this be foreshadowing? .........Perhaps.) But it's also funny and effervescent, with a screwball chemistry; a little sexy and very smart.

When I get home exhausted from the day, my mind is turning round and round the play.

The only thing that drives me mad, to wit?
I can't stop thinking in a rhyming couplet.

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TICKETS: http://ttfinflight.brownpapertickets.com

For more about Danielle, check out http://www.danielleofarrell.com/ or follow her on Twitter @ofarrellstyle

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