Actor's Blog

Nashville Children's Theatre is excited to share with our audiences what it is like to be an actor at NCT. Each show's blog offers a different actor's perspective on being in a show and the work and fun that goes into the preparation and performance.

Junie B. Jones and a LIttle Monkey Business
Blog by Brooke Bryant

Posted on December 3, 2007

Hi! I'm Brooke... I'm playing the role of Junie B. Jones in NCT'S current show Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business, and as Junie would say, WOWIE WOW WOW - being a part of this show and rehearsal process is what I call something special!

I've worked with NCT as an actor in several shows since 2000, and have always enjoyed the production and rehearsal process - but THIS time, we're doing it in a brand new space. The theater, the offices and the rehearsal rooms got COMPLETELY rebuilt during the past year. NCT'S website has pictures of the entire process - way cool to see!

Not without it's challenges, though... for example, on our first day of rehearsal, the theater had not been granted its' "occupancy permit" yet. The people at McKendree Methodist Church were kind enough to let us use their basement to rehearse that day. It was a good space to work in, but the NEXT day...

WOW! The first thing we did on day two was walk around the new building. Without spending too much time on every detail here, suffice it to say that EVERY THING WORKS NOW! With the old building, the heating and cooling system didn't work properly (the last show I did, the building's heater malfunctioned, and the girls dressing room was clocked at right around 100 degrees between shows - we literally finished getting ready for the next show in the backstage hallway). Now, the building is perfectly temperate. And the new rehearsal space is awesome - twice as much space, and plenty of natural light to keep our energy up (the old space was kind of dark).

We established our "pattern" of how rehearsals would generally go the for the rest of the week - dance and/or blocking in the morning, and learning the score (the music and lyrics) in the afternoon. Of course, being in a brand new space, there was plenty of activity going on all around us - several times inspectors would need our director and stage manager to sign off or get trained on something, so our ASM (assistant stage manager) was much busier than usual... and the fire alarms went off in the middle of several rehearsals (wow - they're loud). We were a little bit behind schedule going into week two (in terms of where the director wanted us to be), but everyone pulled together the next week and the fire system finished testing :), so we got back on schedule fairly easily by the second day of "tech" (technical rehearsals).

From an NCT actor's perspective, perhaps the most dramatic change in the renovation is the new stage floor. The old one wasn't flat at all - it had divots and holes in it everywhere, and in many spots would sink a little bit when you stepped on them. The new floor is completely flat and even. I was a little surprised at how much easier moving around the stage is now. We used to have to remember those spots on stage and be careful around them (in addition to remembering lines, choreography and character) - now, we can move around the set much more freely.

At the time I'm writing this blog, we're on our last day of technical rehearsals before opening day. We finished blocking the opening number two days ago and added costumes yesterday... I always look forward to that - there's something about putting on the costumes that reinforces character for me. Many of the costumes changes in the show are very fast, though, so we still have a few of those "quick changes" to work through today. The "tech" process is pretty grueling (several 10-12 hour days for the cast, and sometimes even longer for the hard-working crew), and we're all a little bit tired... but also very happy to be working together (very good friendships in this cast), and excited about opening this hilarious, surprisingly heart-warming show tomorrow!

Brooke

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