Opening the Box

Olivia and I boarded the elevator.  

“What floor is the studio on?” I asked.

“The twelfth.” 

I pushed the number twelve.  The highest button on the board.  

“But then we have to take the stairs up one more floor.”

“So we’re on the thirteenth?”

“Well, it’s the penthouse.”

Penthouse.  That’s what they decided to call it.  Because Grimm could never actually rehearse on a floor with the number thirteen attached to it.  Pushing that button would be like poking fate right where it hurts, right where fate would want to poke back. 

How perfect, how poignant, how...Grimm.  Especially on a day that exceeds the livable temperature befitting most human-beings.  Thank God we were rehearsing in the penthouse. 

The room was small.  Hardwood floors, a mirror, a piano, a black curtain against the back wall, and a large window that opened up to the gray, peeling roof (or as Vikki noted, the “prison yard”).  

Today the cast was also small.  In attendance: Jake our wily Rumplestiltskin (I mean, is there any other kind of Rumplestiltskin?  The bastard eats children.), and ensemble members, Tyler, Taylor, Kat, Abby, and Theresa.  After setting up the chairs in a circle, Olivia asked everyone how their weekends went.  Abby told us she was sick, Kat learned the hard way never to eat sausages that had been out in the sun all day, and Jake showed us the bruise on the top of his eye (ask him about it sometime.  Bar-fight, I swear).  It seems Grimm was beginning to rub off on everyone, poking our cast in the form of blood and food-poisoning.  And we’re only in week two.  Also in attendance was our personal paparazzi, Samir (check out his website! Samirabady.com), who graciously agreed to photograph our rehearsal process (you know he’s legit when he doesn’t want to use an iPhone and a bathroom mirror to be artistic). 

Next, Olivia filled the cast in on how things were going on the production end.  Last night she met with the designers: Joe, our lighting designer, Keith, our set designer, Ben, our sound designer, and Emily, Joe’s friend and costumer-designer hopeful.  From the beginning, everyone has been completely on-board with Olivia’s new aesthetic interpretation of the show.  Keith, for instance, came up with the incredible idea to play up the transportability of the show (and of Fringe, in general), using only a few objects -- a trunk, a coat rack, and a wine barrel, for instance -- to spin the story, using these pieces, not for what they are, but for what the storytellers demand them to be.  Cast members would pull objects out of the trunk as the show goes on, creating a magical effect not unlike the famed British nanny’s carpetbag (heads up: our ticket prices will be cheaper than Mary Poppins).  It’s the trunk you find in Grandma’s attic on a dark, rainy night.  Except when you open it, instead of finding Grandma’s collection of priceless wedding dishes you decide to sell on Ebay later, you find a group of ensemble members with third-degree burns and perfect pitch, ready to crawl out and tell their chilling story.  

Additionally, Emily is completely on the same aesthetic page regarding the costumes.  Because, as Olivia suggested, why couldn’t Queen Catherine wear a mo-fu*king crown made of light-bulbs?

Next Olivia led the cast in a few games -- passing facial expressions to one another in a circle, eventually adding sounds and gestures to increase the intensity.  At 6:30, Kenny arrived to teach music.  As he handed out the sheet music to the finale, I found myself having violent “flashbacks” to Grimm, round one back in 2009.  

Kenny: You can hit this high-A, right?

Me (while moving a set piece the size of an overweight child during a blackout): Uh...sure.

This time around, however, I find myself getting chills, not because I know I might trip and fall down the stairs, moving said set piece during said blackout, but because Kenny is creating magic of his own.  With nothing but six voices and an eighty-eight keyed trunk.