Speech & Debate
By Stephen Karam
American Theater Company
Directed by PJ Paparelli

Rehearsal Blog-Week 2

We entered this week of rehearsal very much looking forward to doing the hard but rewarding work of getting the play on its feet, which always brings new depths of exploration, as well as the challenges that turn up along the way. We found ourselves facing one challenge we did not anticipate, however. One of the actors in our production, Stephen Louis Grush, will be leaving the show because he has been offered the very exciting opportunity of a pilot with Fox. We are sorry to lose his talents and contributions, but we are happy that one of our own has been given this opportunity. We were able to carry on rehearsing through his audition process, and had several nights of very productive rehearsal (and very loud laughter) working with Patrick and Sadieh. We were also able to begin learning the choreography to the “Freedom” dance (if you don’t know what that is now, I promise you won’t be able to forget once you have seen the show!) with choreographer Ed Kross. It has been a whole lot of fun to watch these people move!

Rehearsal was suspended for a few days in order for us to focus on finding a new actor to play Solomon. The result of this lost time is that we have decided to push back the opening of the show by one week. This was a difficult decision, but in the end it was clearly the best thing for the production. Opening night is now April 28. Everything will be happening exactly one week later than originally scheduled.

The search for the new Solomon was furious, and happily we were able to find the very talented Jared McGuire, who begins rehearsal immediately. We welcome Jared to ATC and to Speech and Debate and look forward to his performance.

~Jason Gerace, Assistant Director

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