Last night we had our final rehearsal for our staged reading of Base Instruments with Bare Bones at Theatre@First! For most of our rehearsal process, we practiced in pieces, doing scenes not in sequence but the ones that had the same actors. So last night was the first time I got to hear them do the entire piece in order.
You never really know how a play’s going to work until actors read it, and I’m really lucky to have this talented cast. All of them have some level of experience with their characters and familiarity with this world, and that allows them to make best use of their abilities. Some of them, like Samantha LeVangie and Eric Cheung, do multiple accents, often switching one scene after another!
And because it’s a murder mystery, we’re going to do something fun. Base Instruments is longer than previous installments, so we decided to have an intermission. And in that intermission, we’ve decided to give the audience a chance to vote on who they think the murderer is.
As I’ve mentioned, Base Instruments is a Fair Play Mystery, and most of the important clues are given in the first act, while the second is the leads pieces them together. So there’s enough information for the audience to at least take a good guess. After the audience votes, all the correct answers will be put into a hat and the one drawn will win a prize.
Finally, if you can stay a little late, there will be a talkback after the show with the cast and myself. Heaven knows I could go on about these stories all day, so if you have any questions about the story, the mystery, the world, or the direction of the series, I’d be happy to talk your ear off in answer!
The staged reading of Base Instruments by Phoebe Roberts will go up on June 10th at 8PM at with the Bare Bones reading series, brought to you by Theatre@First.
