DEAR SARA JANE REHEARSAL JOURNAL

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Rehearsals for DEAR SARA JANE are going very well. We have staged the first 28 pages. Joey Parsons is bringing the character of Sara Jane to life in the rehearsal hall. It has been a joy having Victor Lodato in rehearsal. It is a very collaborative atmosphere. He is guiding us… and helping us discover Sara Jane’s journey:

               “By the end of the play, the character is profoundly changed, and I believe the power of the play will come from an audience feeling that they are somehow complicit, that they are closely participating in the character’s journey: a mad twisting road inside her mind by which she arrives at a radical change of heart.” Victor Lodato

DEAR SARA JANE by Victor Lodato is a solo play that examines the psychic disintegration and subsequent transformation of a woman waiting for her husband to return from war, a war during which he may or may not have committed a stunning atrocity. Joey Parsons is Sara Jane. After just one week of rehearsal she is embracing the simplicity and the complexity of Sara Jane’s personality. Sara Jane has a story to tell…and she is driven to reveal her story as the play moves forward in time. But Sara is shy and maybe a little afraid to open up…she need us…the audience…she needs to gain our trust before she can completely reveal her story:

               ” My heart is beating so fast, god.

                 (pause)

                 It’s supposed to rain again tomorrow and I just wanna…

                 This is like our moment.

                 (long pause; she is strangely, nervously, smiling)

                 I just want to tell you something and I don’t want you to…run away or something.

                 (she steels herself and says it)”

Later Sara Jane says: “I mean, you have secrets, right?”

We have only roughed in the first 28 pages… we have begun the rehearsal process. I love the rehearsal period. I enjoy the collaborative process. I enjoy exploring the “given circumstances” in the script with the actor and the playwright. I am looking forward to sharing our work with you in July.

Ed Herendeen