There are no excuses from me, I just took a break from spanking related activity. Lately I have been planning my trip to Japan and I am pretty much set now, all I need to do is book the trip in the next week. The dates that I am almost certainly going is going to be November 25th to December the 23rd. Originally I was thinking that I would spend Christmas there, but by bringing the trip back by three days I will save close to a thousand dollars, so I would be foolish not to do that. If you follow my VANILLA BLOG then you will get to see my Japanese journey every day as I will be filming constantly while I am out there.
This time around I will be doing Western Japan along with Tokyo, and the cities I will be staying in are, in order, Tokyo, Kanazawa, Kyoto, Hiroshima and finally Osaka before returning to Tokyo. Other than my time in Hiroshima I will also be making day trips outside of thew cities that I am staying in so I hope to bring you a lot of different town’s to look at.
Now onto the subject at hand, rehearsal spankings!! Out of curiosity, just how many rehearsal spankings do you think take place when rehearsing Kiss Me Kate? Also, do the understudies get a crack as well so to speak? What do you think? I would imagine that there are at least two rehearsals plus a full dress rehearsal as well as the play itself, just at a guess. Do the understudies rehearse separately or do they take their turns with the main players as well? So many questions.
This will be added to my KISS ME KATE spanking folder. Click on the image below for a much larger version of the photo.
There’s no hard-and-fast rule about the number of rehearsals, but two plus the dress is an enormous underestimate. The larger theater companies today might rehearse for ten weeks before opening, and you wouldn’t ordinarily find a professional show going up with fewer than two to four weeks of rehearsal beforehand. In the repertory system of the regional British theater in the last century, they usually had a new play every week, and rehearsed next week’s offering during the day whilst performing the current play in the evening – so that’s five or six rehearsals including the dress on the afternoon before opening night. And that was the low end of the business, not the norm. Amateur productions tend to be rehearsed over a longer period, because the show is being fitted in around the rest of life: it wouln’t be uncommon for a school class to choose their annual play three months before it was due to open and then rehearse after school maybe once or twice a week.
If you want to apply that to the question ‘How many spankings?’ then again there’s no simple formula. The company wouldn’t work on every scene at every rehearsal, but again it would have been a lot more than twice in street clothes: it’s a tall order even for professionals to get a show up with only a solid week of preparation, so amateurs will almost always need more.
There aren’t usually understudies in amateur shows, but in professional companies they usually work as a distinct group and often give a private understudy performance for the non-understudying members of the company. So unless she actually has to go on, understudy Lilli will usually be spanked by understudy Fred, unseen and unapplauded by the wider public.
It’s been a long time since I was on stage, Richard, but as Harry said your estimate was low (no criticism intended; unless you’ve been in the theatre you’d have no way of knowing). Rehearsals go on for weeks as the director figures out how he wants the scenes staged, and certain events like fights or anything that involves actors making irregular entrances (e.g. coming up on stage through the theatre instead of from backstage) takes a long time to choreograph.
And speaking of choreography, if you’re doing a musical it’s going to take a long time to work out the dances. For me and a lot of others, the dancing was the worst because we were actors or singers primarily and not dancers (this is frustrating for the choreographer too, but we won’t worry about him right now). Note: there is less dancing in a typical stage production of KMK than there was in the movie, but there is some involving the minor characters. Then the music has to be rehearsed under the musical director and the lighting man has to be given all his light cues.
As I remember the last musical I was in (it wasn’t KMK), we rehearsed for about 8 weeks, then had two full dress rehearsals plus an addition run-through of the shorter act. Again as Harry said there is little provision for understudies in amateur productions so alas I imagine that only Kate herself gets spanked, probably during the last weeks of rehearsals plus of course the dress rehearsals, except in professional productions.
I am willing to bet that in some KMKs one or both of the actors playing Kate and Petruchio really enjoy the first time the spanking is staged because you don’t have to be so strictly in character!