In a week there will be a production of The Secret Garden at the local theater. In it Mary Lennox finds the door to a forgotten place. The garden that once was a bower of roses has fallen into a mop of weeds.

Already there are rehearsals happening many nights a week, or so the actors tell me. I helped out by sewing the black dress Mary wears when she is in mourning. 

Rehearsals seem to be an unavoidable part of any play, unless you are into improv. In redundant progression, the players repeat the words and actions, whether or not they mean them. The script reads "It's wick!" and regardless of how you feel, you repeat it. Wick means alive, and the miracle is that the garden, abandoned for ten years, is still viable. It takes Dickon, Colin and Mary weeks to woo it back to glory. 

John Gottman is a proponent of rehearsals. He is a scientist, not a cheerleader, and has research to back his stance. One of the chapters in Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work lays it out like a procedure in tenth grade science. In a seven week course, broken up into daily practices, Gottman instructs the reader to take on positive ways to think and speak about the relationship. 

Week 1

Monday

Thought: I am genuinely fond of my partner.

Task: List one characteristic you find endearing or lovable. 

Tuesday

Thought: I can easily speak of the good times in our marriage.

Task: Pick one good time and write a sentence about it. 

It's rather like writing a screenplay in which we are the lead. 

He asserts that after seven weeks of rehearsals, your marriage will again be wick.