Did some experimenting for Lady Macbeth in my hotel bathroom sink this morning. I was able to clean the sink pretty well afterwards, but left the washcloth pretty red. So on my way out of the hotel, I stopped by the front desk to tell them not to worry if the maids report a murder in Room 200.

Then on to the theater, to the women’s dressing room in the basement. Worked at the sink for a while to get one of Lady M.’s handwashing blood appearances under control. Soon my buddy Angie arrived and I sent her out to find a ketchup bottle (a good tool for filling blood containers) and a cup of tea.

I’d been told that Kate was ill. So I decided to go easy on her, not to work too long, not to get her covered with blood.

Kate was 20 minutes early and was bubbling with some Internet research she’d done on somnambulism. Sometimes somnambulists just stand still and doze off for a while. That seems cool and useful. They are often trying to escape, which can be problematic when they escape by jumping out of windows. But now Kate has more of sense of what is in these people’s eyes when they walk.

I mentioned to her the idea that Lady M. should stay beautiful, and create hand-washing gestures that express her inner turmoil without getting nervous or jagged, but staying beautiful and sexy.

Then we went through the scene, choosing the moments of blood gushes so that they will hit long syllables in the poetry; this will let her ride the language into the gesture. We also tried to anticipate where the audience might expect the next surprise to come from and play on those expectations.

The hardest trick for Lady Macbeth is the moment where blood visibly appears and cascades from her hands. So we spent about an hour choreographing Kate’s hands to hide the secret stuff in a way that’s expressive and graceful.

Then we worked through the scene, beginning to end, dry (without blood), from outside to in and from inside to out. What I mean is that sometimes we let the ideas in the lines guide the placement of the magic and sometimes we let the magic inspire interpretations for the lines. All the while we tried to keep a strong and clear vision of what Lady Macbeth is seeing in her guilty nightmare; and to stay aware of the direct, sensual impact on a spectator of a beautiful woman bathing eerily in blood. We placed nightmare sound effects where they provided motivation, and helped to time and punctuate the conjuring.

By this time both Kate and I had forgotten she was ill. So we did a final run, full out, wet. It was breathtaking. If she had to go onstage with this routine tonight, even with none of the improvements we are contemplating, I think she would be devastating. We worked almost three solid hours and there wasn’t an instant in which I sensed Kate was at all ill. Either she’s the ultimate trooper, or creative work is a magic cure.