Meeting of Minds

The remnants of the aftershow party for the Wild Duck had barely been cleared away when the production team for Attempts on Her Life gathered together for the first time. I was joined today by Jacquie Penrose and Frankie Huin-Wah (who will be working together as production designers, Jacquie for lighting and Frankie for set), my Producer Robin Hall and the newly recruited Stage Manager Peter Corrigan. Just the fact of having these people in the same room was enough to get me excited, and our first production meeting was extremely positive. I felt somewhat guilty that my answer to most questions was "I don't know" but that phrase is basically the motto for this show and everyone will just have to get used to it.
Jacquie had arrived with some fairly clear ideas and Frankie with a blank canvas - it will be interesting to observe how that particular dynamic will emerge, but already it is looking promising. One definite outcome is that film is going to play a major part in the show, with Jacquie expressing a desire to use live camera feeds in the space. Similar ideas had already crossed my mind so it was reassuring to see that we are already on the same wavelength.
We have resolved that the designers will be present at as many of the early exploratory rehearsals as possible to get some idea of where the cast are taking the show, before thrashing out there ideas between each other and then coming back to the production team with a more concrete concept, which can then be fed back to the cast when we reconvene for rehearsals proper in the new year.
I always said I wanted this to be as collaborative as possible and it certainly seems to be heading that way, with even the Stage Manager - so often a role that occupies the fringes and records rather than shapes - putting forward ideas that might ultimately inform the performance itself. Peter had been toying with the idea of keeping a "video prompt book" rather than the traditional paper version. When this was revealed, I could immediately see the possibility that what we film in rehearsal might actually be used in performance in some way.
It's all very exciting.