A Beethoven symphony should be rehearsed like chamber music, only for a lot more people.
By the early '70s I had gotten reasonable and I started to get in hundreds of groups that rehearsed and never played at all. I mean, the most important thing was to look good and have a great name.
Something I learned as an actor was which scenes needed to be rehearsed and which actors are good with rehearsal, which actors learn from it, and which ones grow stale because they start to second-guess themselves.
I never rehearse scenes with the whole ensemble, because I need to preserve some surprise. Instead, I work with the cast individually on their characters.
It was a scene in the sense that we were all close and we all knew each other before the different bands had really formed. We used to rehearse in the same place.
I love not knowing what's going to happen next. With work, you never know. You rehearse and strive and get it right sometimes, and still you never know. Some people are like that with their marriages. They work and strive and labour and toil at them. God, what a bore! What an unromantic bore!
We didn't have a garage to rehearse in. We had to aggravate the folks in the house. But I got a chance to play in a beer joint, and that's how it started.
When I rehearse, it ends up doing more harm than good. I think I work a little bit better when it's right off the bat. Mostly, I try to wrap my head around a role as much as I can without rehearsing and then kind of make it as fresh as possible on the day.
I've been lucky enough that some designers let me borrow their dresses to wear to events. And companies such as So Low and Tart have given me items to wear to rehearse in. I wish I could take more credit for the clothes that I get to wear!
My brother Trev went to the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and he used to do his monologues and stuff and rehearse in our apartment. So I used to hear him all the time doing these things over and over and over. And when I was a little girl, I used to soak up everything - like anything anyone did, I soaked it up.
