First Rehearsal

We assembled for the first time on a wet and blowy Sunday afternoon and huddled around some tables to trawl through the script looking for clues. Having warned the cast that my most common answer to any questions was likely to be "I don't know," I was encouraged by the collective feeling of cooperation that seemed to already run through the group, with many people chipping in with their responses to the scenes we looked at, leading to some interesting ideas. With the designers and producer also present and contributing to the discussions, I think we started to decipher some of the enigma. This is exactly what I hoped would happen, with all parties working together to find the answers.

We read through the first nine scenes, playing around with the number of speakers, taking each scene on its own merits and trying to identify characters and context. One of the most exciting things I noticed is the sheer variety of vocal textures this cast offers, with lots of different sounds. Our Swedish cast member, Emelie, really helped us to appreciate what the various languages in the play will bring to the production, and people were getting to grips with the overlapping dialogue written into the script, and when it worked this sounded absolutely compelling.

In terms of themes, there are still some points for debate. Jacquie is convinced that the play is political, which is pretty obvious as every play is political, but her point was that it is making some quite specific political points. My concern with this is that to focus only on the politics will reduce the play to a polemic, and also it deals with so many different issues that this doesn't really help achieve the coherence that I think is essential. I think we have settled on a key decision, that of Anne's identity, and this seems to be pushing me towards a useful holding form for the production. We are agreed that Anne exists, or at least did exist. But we also concluded that Anne isn't in fact a single person, rather she is the Everywoman, the archetype that crosses cultural and geographical boundaries. There is an Anne everywhere and anywhere in the world. She isn't the same person, but she is recognisable to everyone and anyone. We resolved that it wasn't necessary to find a catch-all identity for the whole play, but it is crucial that for the characters (and therefore the actors) that describe and know her, she is real and specific. I feel strongly that the performances and emotions in the performance must be rooted in truth, and this will mean making to specific and concrete decisions about who she each for each person in the play. I am keen to avoid placing any one identity on her, and this means that Anne will never been "seen" in her entirety in the play, something which echoes the poster design.

I think what we are leaning towards in terms of a cohesive concept is a situation in which Anne is a notable yet disappeared figure, and there are two key people who are trying to piece together her identity from the evidence she leaves behind. The second scene sounds like a couple of film execs pitching a film about Anne, and as we read through the scenes we noticed that these characters possibly pop up in later scenes, and so the context of a film about her is emerging. This brings in many of the ideas that were covered over the afternoon, that of an identity being imposed on an individual by others, of a person being packaged up and commoditised for general public consumption, which flies in the face of the contradictions inherent in all of us. It also lends itself to the multimedia style of presentation we are aiming for.

We will finish our initial exploration of the play tomorrow, when hopefully we will find our ideas becoming crystallised rather than contradicted. All in all, exciting stuff.