Sylvia

Can't say I've heard of the play. You say you're working on it. Sounds like fun. What is your participation? Are you working on scenery, costumes or one of the actors?

I saw the play at Manhattan Theater Club 8 or 10 years ago. It was a delight, primarily for the role of "Sylvia" as portrayed by Sarah Jessica Parker. [Charles Kimbrough (Jim Dial on "Murphy Brown) and Blythe Danner were also in it]. I wish I were articulate enough to describe SJP's performance, but I'm not. I can only say that she did not impersonate a dog; she was a dog, and you felt this in less than three minutes of her performance. I remember her performance much more than I do the play.

Yeah, that's the one, flyboy. The actress we have playing Sylvia actually looks slightly similar to Sarah Jessica Parker, we'll see if she lives up. I am the assistant stage manager, so I'm not really doing anything special, but I get to go to all the rehearsals, which is really amazing. The actors are really quite good, when they remember their lines, haha.

Rufio,
The important thing for the director is that Sylvia (the dog)
not be played literally - hands out like paws, on all fours or whatever. At most, she should sit with crossed legs whether on the floor or the sofa. The audience has an imagination and doesn't need more than a suggestion.

When I directed it, the costumer suggested a fairly wide (one inch) silver colored neck choker. This was put on after she was given a bath. It was suggestive of a collar
while adding elegance to her appearance.

I wonder if your production will use Sylvia's language at the cat under the car?

It's not a great play, but it is very funny. And a little bit kinky.

Break a leg.

Rufio, how are rehearsals going? Or has the production opened? Let us know!

Sylvia in our production does some doggy things occassionally, but yeah, for the most part she acts sort of human. But she has little dog mannerisms, and walks on the furniture (especially during the part where she gets the shoe and runs around with it) and she waves her butt around and stuff. And when she comes in at first she gets down on hands and knees momentarily to explore under the desk chair. But she doesn't do that for the whole production, just at times to sort of bring out the humor.

This is a pretty liberal college - we're using all the language. Actually, when we were blocking that scene the first time, for the line where the script says that she's looking over her shoulder, the actress just turned all the way around and bent over so that she was looking through her legs at the "cat" and on the line that starts "up yours with a..." she reaches through her legs with her free hand and flips the cat off. When Greg imitates her pretending to be yelling at his boss, he does the same thing. It's great.

About the kinkiness....heh. Tom's character is starting to scare me a little.

I'll mention the "collar" idea to the constume designer and see what she thinks... we are on kind of a tight budget though.

Right now it's break, so there are no rehearsals. But we did pretty well last week - I missed some, studying for midterms, but they now have this cute little routine thing that the director choreographed for the song in the airport scene, making it even more random. Lol. It actually looks really good. I wish I could watch it, but I have to take line notes. At this point, the director is spending like an hour on each scene going over every single little thing in the scene. It's amazing how little things can make or break comedy. For Kate's line about her book - "I bet Sylvia took it and ate it," one time she said it with just the right emphasis and it was really absurd and really funny, and then she did it only slightly differently and it wasn't.

The production opens sometime soon... I forget when exactly, but I know it's getting pretty close.

Thanks for the update rufio.

I think keeping line notes is a very tedious task - plus you can't watch the rehearsal! And the actors usually aren't quite grateful about having their little errors pointed out, are they?

Anyway, I hope you are enjoying the process. Come back and tell more when you have time.

Ok, it's Tech Week now, I'm dying trying to organize scene shifts with my run-crew of Freshmen, and the designers are still trying to figure out just how they are going to function with the little that the theater department gave them to work with, and the stage manager is gradually get ahold of things (she's doing a really good job, though, for her first time). They didn't give me any time during Dry Tech for set changes, so I had to steal some tonight. Having the actors change the set is not as easy as it sounds...

The costumes are great. (BTW, the costume designer did get a little choker/collar thing in for Sylvia - it looks fantastic.) Sylvia had this poofy pink strapless dress for the first time she gets made over, and this little black one for the second time, which has this adorable little bow in the back - very dog-like.

Show opens Thursday night - I think we'll be ready.

Break a leg, rufio.

I'm sure it will all come together for opening nite - somehow it always does.

following the adventures of rufio and Sylvia.

Tonight was opening night, and it wa SO great. The audience laughed at everything they laughed at stuff I hadn't even noticed. By the second act, they were laughing as soon as Tom/Leslie came on stage, before he did anything. It was great. The set changes all went well, it was a lot of fun.

Congratulations rufio! How many performances will there be? Watch out for that second show slump! :wink:

There was another one tonight and there will be a third tommorrow. If there was a second show slump, the audience didn't notice it, and that's cool. There's actually another show here this weekend - Hair (yeah, the musical). They're both independant, and they're both attracting a lot of attention - and people are saying that we were better. Better than Hair? I love the sound of that. We were sold out tonight, and there were like 40 people on the standby list.

Sounds like a great success! Congratulations!