Daniel Blinkoff (Bob Cratchit), Louis Lotorto, Tom Shelton (Jacob Marley) and Timothy Landfield (Spirit of Christmas Present) rehearsing their lines outside of the rehearsal room.

Actor Louis Lotorto is providing regular entries for the Arts Blog as he rehearses for South Coast Repertory’s production of “A Christmas Carol.” It’s the first time Lotorto has been involved in SCR’s venerable production, now in its 29th year.

Here’s Lotorto’s second entry:

The first day of rehearsal is finally here!  As I head into the theatre I’m warmly greeted by Jennifer Chu, who plays Belle.  I haven’t worked with her, but I’ve seen her in a couple of shows at SCR and admired her work.  She immediately hugs me and welcomes me aboard.

I love actors.  When you work on a show in a short, intense rehearsal period, you work very closely and intimately with people, exposing yourself, trusting, letting go of inhibitions and staying open in order to connect and make the work come alive.  Through this communal bond, you can make rich, rewarding relationships that are as deep as family.  I think that’s one of the reasons I remain drawn to the theatre.

My first stop is the Costume Shop for a noon fitting. I decided to do something very “Fred”-like and bring some sweets to the hard-workers because their incredible work makes us look spectacular.  To everyone’s surprise (and delight) my costumes, which were built for other “Freds,” fit like they were tailor-made for me!  This means that the costumers don’t have to do any alterations and can focus on more pressing (no pun intended) needs.

I can now visualize what Fred will look like and how I might move and behave in the clothes before actually working on the scenes.  It’s always a good idea to wear something similar in rehearsal to get used to how it will affect your character’s moves, so that by the time of tech rehearsals (before the first preview), your movement is second-nature.

Rehearsal starts promptly at 1:00 p.m. and, wouldn’t you know, starts with my first big scene with Scrooge.  All the confidence I had going into the room, all the lines I had almost memorized “cold,” quickly evaporated as the reality of doing my role in front of people hit me for the first time.

First of all, I was nervous, hoping the director would like my choices as Fred and approve of what I would bring to the role.  Secondly, Hal Landon Jr., who is a brilliant Scrooge, a living legend at SCR and someone whose work I respect and admire, brings quite a formidable presence into the room, which can be intimidating.  I decided this would work well in Fred’s relationship with Scrooge, so I planned to remember these feelings and use them in the scene.

After some brief but warm greetings, I get a very quick tour of the set for our scene (which is basically tape marks on the floor to designate doors and platform edges), and an even quicker run-down of the basic ‘blocking’ for the scene – where I’m to enter, exit and move, take off my gloves and hat, where I place an important prop – and off we go.

It’s amazing how you can perform brilliantly in the privacy of your own living room, yet when in front of the other actors for the first time, lines that you thought you had memorized pretty well suddenly go out of your head like water through a sieve.  That was the case with me the first time through, but otherwise, I thought it went fairly well even though I had my script in hand.

I hit my marks and was where I was supposed to be, I dealt with my prop and costume pieces as instructed, but I felt most proud about my British dialect that I had really spent time working on.  I’ve done three plays this past year using British dialects and I thought mine was good enough to win even Sir Ian McKellen’s approval.  However, much to my embarrassment, J.D. Keller, the director, said, “Well, that was pretty good.  But, uhhh, we’re not doing British accents in our production.”

Whoops!  I guess I should’ve found that out in advance.  We all had a hearty laugh about it, including this actor, who was beet red.  But hey, if you’re not willing to embarrass yourself, the theatre is not the place to be.  We ran the scene a few more times, and as I grew more confident, I was able to work without the script.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief as my scene partners made me feel I was on the right track with the scene and my character.

Posted in: Theater by Paul Hodgins |

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