Girlhood was the winner of the Lanford Wilson New American Play Festival and in part with winning the festival, it means that my school, the Dobbins Conservatory, then fully produces the play as a part of our spring season.
It is such a cool thing that my school does and that I get to be a part of. Since we open in less than a month, I wanted to share a bit about my experience so far in Girlhood. For context, Girlhood follows the story of 7 girls as they prepare for their coming of age debutante ball. Throughout the show, the girls face many issues and personal struggles of adolescence over the course of a year until the big night arises, but with that tensions rise as well and more chaos ensues.
I am understudying the role of Katie, who is the fearless, academic, leader, student council president and captain of the varsity soccer team bound for Harvard. It has been so much fun getting to know Katie and getting to understand her more and more as she changes with the new versions of the script. When it comes to the rehearsal process, this so far has been a pretty relaxed and great one. Our first rehearsal began as a table read for our wonderful playwright, Ida, so she could hear it outloud and get our understanding of the play.
From there she made rewrites and changes some bits and bobs. There was a week of rehearsal where we got new scenes every day I believe. It is very fast paced, but I like it a lot. After the table read, we started with tablework, which is where we talk about the play and what it means to us and for our characters. We then did a deeper dive of our characters and who they are and what makes them tick. From there, we moved onto running through the sections of the play on our feet and exploring the scenes and such.
Our wonderful amazing director, Roxanne Wellington, also has been super inclusive of the understudies and has also given us a voice to talk about the play as well. After exploration, it was time to start blocking!
