First Film, then Stage, now Conquering Radio: Second, the Walla Rehearsal

As I mentioned last time, Marc and Elaine asked me to write the walla lines for the Magic Time Radio Play we were performing on Saturday. I was delighted to do so.

These were dialogue lines for the crowds of people going down steps as they evacuate an office building during an earthquake, for people cleaning up their broken treasures after the earthquake, for people witnessing objects falling from the sky and autos and such not working, for people attacking the cop shutting down the bread line before they got their handout, and a variety of other 'extremely important and relevant' dialogue.

Since Marc writes very ambitiously, there were many, many scenes that needed their walla written and I confess, I wondered a bit if I'd ever get done. But it was worth it when Marc liked them all. I was gratified, to say the least.

So today the group of people who were going to perform the walla got together to select their lines for each scene. Once they chose their lines, they would write them in the margins of their scripts at the proper place so they would have them handy when they needed to speak them.

Everybody loved the lines and had fun selecting. One of the guys, Gunnar, told me that the lines he had selected told the story all on their own and that he had deliberately chosen them. I hadn't realized that I was writing lines that would be sequential, but I guess since the scenes are sequential and I was writing dialogue appropriate, but innoculous for each individual scene, it shouldn't be surprising that it would all fit a pattern.

Now we just need to get the revised script that Marc would be putting out and we would all be ready for Saturday. There was going to be a tech rehearsal on Friday, but I wasn't free to attend that, so the next time I would see the group would be at dress rehearsal Saturday morning.

It would also be another first for me, since I have written walla in the past, but never performed it.