Right to left: Wendla (Tich Wilson), Ilsa (Odessa Cadieux-Rey). Photo by Brendan Albano.

I’m perched on a plastic chair positioned behind a folding table covered with pieces of paper, pens, pencils, empty coffee cups, bottles of water, notebooks full of illegible handwriting, and numerous copies of the same script. This can only mean on thing: it’s rehearsal time. Today we run all of act II for the first time and in the end it proves to be a very interesting evening. Suddenly the emotional journey the audience will be taken on during the second half of this play becomes clear and I find myself marveling at how well crafted this play really is. Scene four has to be hilarious and comical, because scene five is going to break peoples hearts, and scene six needs to be as sweet as it is, so that scene seven can go to a much darker place. And next rehearsal we tackle our first run of the whole show…

Laura McLean – Director