Fight choreography in rehearsal on Wednesday. Pet…

Fight choreography in rehearsal on Wednesday. Peter (fight choreographer) helped work out the moments of physical contact, including Belle slapping Stark in the face. To learn it, Peter first has Christina slap him in the face, which she does fine, and then practice it on David several times. Questions come up of precisely where to hit David on the face so it doesn’t hit his eye and also looks believable. Peter begins to slap himself on the face repeatedly to confirm the best way. At the same time, Alison, the stage manager wants to learn to choreography as well so she begins to slap herself in the face repeatedly. Daniel is interested as well and he slaps himself too. Pretty soon there are four people slapping themselves repeatedly in the face.

Funny moments aside, the slapping moment is one of my favorites thus far. Christina plays it completely dead pan–no expression of emotion at all, a perfectly relaxed face and body, but an explosion of anger through this one gesture. Its that highly contrasted mixture of hot and cold, rough and smooth, light and dark, that makes drama so compelling.