Lieutenant of Inishmore - Blog 7 - David Vining (playing Donny)

Hello......David (V) here, finally adding my thoughts to the Inishmore Blog. I've enjoyed reading everyone else's thoughts during the last week, but somehow couldn't find the time and energy to add my own! Yesterday's run-through was an excellent end to a very good week, I thought. As I watched and listened while I was off stage, I was so impressed with how solid
and confident everyone looks. In my own scenes I was especially pleased with how strong my relationship with Davey (Tim Shawver) had become this week. All the scenes between us took a big step forward, but the "blaming" sequence in Scene 8 ("and pegged stones, Padraic!") in particular really caught fire Sunday afternoon, which made the tricky timing seem effortless.
As we were walking to our cars after rehearsal, Tim and I were agreeing that it is such a pleasure to work with such an extraordinary cast--everyone is so committed to the work and keyed in to the play and each other. That's made it possible for all of us to tweak and fine tune so many hilarious moments
during the past few days.

I'm very eager to start adding the costumes and technical elements to the mix starting Tuesday night. All sorts of lovely surprises, horrendous problems, and glorious solutions will occur, I'm sure! I plan on getting lots of rest so I have the stamina to stay focused, energized, and cheerful. I'm especially eager to start working with the electric saw on the "real" Brendan corpse and to work out the decapitation moment, coordinating all the physical moves with the blood spurts.

On a sad note, I awoke this morning to discover that my own beloved old cat, Ian, had died during the night. Although certainly not "wee" (he was twice as big as our mini dachshund, Heidi!), he had a very "Wee Thomas-y" look about him, black and white and sweet as can be. By all evidence, he "died peaceful, in his sleep, like." I was glad to have the day free, to give him a good send off and to have at least a 24 hour buffer from all the dead cat humor in the play. To paraphrase Donny, "It's incidents like this does put actors off comedy."