How to rehearse 3 scenes in 90 minutes? Rush! This evening's rehearsal was a pacey affair as we couldn't access the rehearsal space until an hour after the usual time. However, the speed with which we attacked scenes 2, 4 and 6 reiterated a useful rule: the pressure of having to act quickly robs performers of thinking time, and so there can be less self-consciousness and more spontaneity. The result tonight was a lot of laughter. This is a great bunch of actors - every so often they will just hit a note that you hadn't spotted and the tone or meaning of a line, or even a whole scene, can change.
I think I set the tone by kicking off deliberately with a scene that is short and requires a lot of energy. Scene 4, The Occupier, became a brainstorming session for a marketing team thinking up ways to sell the Anne product.
After this 'warm-up' we looked in more detail at Mum & Dad (scene 6). I had originally determined that we had only two main speakers for this scene, but reading through it before rehearsal I had second thoughts. There seemed to be too many disparate ideas in the scene, so I split it up into sections and we played around by given each section to a new pair of characters - starting off with parents, then moving on to friend and ex-boyfriend, Anne's agent and a charity rep, her stoned artistic friends and a lecturer with her group of students. There was a lot of spontaneity in the character types which were largely thought up on the spot. Most surprising was the lecture scene - I certainly hadn't envisaged ending the scene with seven people on stage in an entirely different context. It has thrown up issues of staging these rapid changes and moving people on and off, but that is for another time.
Scene 2 delighted me. It was rushed, messy and chaotic but the actors grasped the spirit of the scene perfectly. A scene which should reflect the improvisatory nature of film makers bouncing ideas off each other while a pair of actors try to react to their myriad suggestions. I was quite surprised by the amount of comedy the performers brought to this scene, and we have a strong basis upon which to build and refine.
Another major development tonight was meeting Patsy - a very clever woman who is going to create the various images and animations that will run through the show. I'm particularly looking forward to what she comes up with for Scene 11.
Tomorrow is another short rehearsal, but we only have a couple of scenes to focus on so will hopefully be able to take our time over them more.
Thursday, 10 January 2008
Sunday, 6 January 2008
Journalism, ritual and karaoke.
After nearly a month since our last meeting, the company met once again today for the first rehearsal of 2008. Approaching this day, I came to realise just how little time we have. First night is just seven weeks away this Tuesday, and we have only just started to stage the scenes. Looking at the schedule I drew up I also noticed with some horror that most scenes will only get two rehearsals until we are in to runs! Just what have I got these people into?!
Happily the company is growing, with a number of people offering to help, advise and share the burden. Our Stage Manager, Peter, will be attending rehearsal from now on, taking copious notes of the decisions made. Lynda Fleming is on board as Assistant Director and already her contributions are proving invaluable, and Darryl Wakelin joined us today as he is going to assist and advise when it comes to bringing the various film elements and use of cameras together in the show.
So, feeling the pressure of time I aimed to work on four different scenes today: "Faith in Ourselves", "The Threat of International TerrorismTM", "The Girl Next Door" and "Porno". Delighted to say that we got through all of them to a greater or lesser extent. Here are the outcomes. By the way, because this show is going to evolve and alter quite frequently, I will be using this blog to record many of the decisions made. I apologise if this means there it's going to contain some 'spoilers'.
Porno
This was the scene I was most secure with, so kicked off with this as a reassuring, productive opener. Although it is a fairly static scene, the variety of voices and languages is already making it a compelling and surprising scene. I'm going with the idea that the scene features a PR spokeswoman for a media agency that creates distinctly unsavoury pornography. Zoe enters to flashes from cameras and starts spouting out this disturbing justification for their output, all the while being translated into Swedish (why Swedish? Simply because that is Emelie's first language. I'm not casting any aspersions on the Swedes as a nation!). As Zoe falters, she is joined by various other women until we build to a crescendo of hyberbolic propaganda. The statements and assertions range from the insidious to the bizarre, and as certain phrases sound out above others the scene switches from unpleasant to humorous.
Faith in Ourselves demonstrated just how important a collaborative approach to this play is going to be. Starting simply from the idea of showing a naming ritual from a primitive society, we ended up with some striking ideas about how to stage what I feel is one of the more difficult scenes in the play, thanks to suggestions from various members of the ensemble. The plan is to show the gentler side of the scene, the ritual, as a reenactment, but as the mood changes to violence and devastation we will communicate this through a series of tableaux, with the lights playing an important role in both obscuring and illuminating the pictures.
I had very little idea how to bring The Threat of International TerrorismTM to life. We discussed in which contexts you might find a group of people passing judgement on another individual that they don't actually know, and what emerged was the idea of journalists creating their story for Anne. Initially Callum acted as Editor and the other speakers contributing to tyhe creation of a single news article. But hearing the dialogue it seemed that there were a number of different agendas and angles, and so we gave each speaker a specific publication that they work for. This coloured their delivery, and does mean I will have to change the line allocation to make sure that all the lines are appropriate to the publications featured, but it really started to come alive and gave the scene a sense of context. We settled on The News of the World, Woman, The Independent, The Big Issue and The Daily Mail as the featured publications, and I envisage each journalist pacing in the space, dictating, either to a recorder or another person, their angle of Anne's story according to each publication's social or political standpoint.
While I worked on this scene Lynda took the spare performers away to work on The Girl Next Door. I had pre-warned the cast that I imagined this scene being a song, and when Zoe suggested karaoke this seemed even better. I was delighted with the outcome - it was hilarious! Somehow fitting the dialogue to the tune of My Way, we ended up with a Sinatra impersonator, a Japanese karaoke nut, a jazz club singer and a reluctant performer all coming together to perform their rendition of the song. I don't think there are going to be too many outright funny moments in this show, but Scene 14 will certainly be one of them. All I have to do now if find a karaoke version of My Way.
Happily the company is growing, with a number of people offering to help, advise and share the burden. Our Stage Manager, Peter, will be attending rehearsal from now on, taking copious notes of the decisions made. Lynda Fleming is on board as Assistant Director and already her contributions are proving invaluable, and Darryl Wakelin joined us today as he is going to assist and advise when it comes to bringing the various film elements and use of cameras together in the show.
So, feeling the pressure of time I aimed to work on four different scenes today: "Faith in Ourselves", "The Threat of International TerrorismTM", "The Girl Next Door" and "Porno". Delighted to say that we got through all of them to a greater or lesser extent. Here are the outcomes. By the way, because this show is going to evolve and alter quite frequently, I will be using this blog to record many of the decisions made. I apologise if this means there it's going to contain some 'spoilers'.
Porno
This was the scene I was most secure with, so kicked off with this as a reassuring, productive opener. Although it is a fairly static scene, the variety of voices and languages is already making it a compelling and surprising scene. I'm going with the idea that the scene features a PR spokeswoman for a media agency that creates distinctly unsavoury pornography. Zoe enters to flashes from cameras and starts spouting out this disturbing justification for their output, all the while being translated into Swedish (why Swedish? Simply because that is Emelie's first language. I'm not casting any aspersions on the Swedes as a nation!). As Zoe falters, she is joined by various other women until we build to a crescendo of hyberbolic propaganda. The statements and assertions range from the insidious to the bizarre, and as certain phrases sound out above others the scene switches from unpleasant to humorous.
Faith in Ourselves demonstrated just how important a collaborative approach to this play is going to be. Starting simply from the idea of showing a naming ritual from a primitive society, we ended up with some striking ideas about how to stage what I feel is one of the more difficult scenes in the play, thanks to suggestions from various members of the ensemble. The plan is to show the gentler side of the scene, the ritual, as a reenactment, but as the mood changes to violence and devastation we will communicate this through a series of tableaux, with the lights playing an important role in both obscuring and illuminating the pictures.
I had very little idea how to bring The Threat of International TerrorismTM to life. We discussed in which contexts you might find a group of people passing judgement on another individual that they don't actually know, and what emerged was the idea of journalists creating their story for Anne. Initially Callum acted as Editor and the other speakers contributing to tyhe creation of a single news article. But hearing the dialogue it seemed that there were a number of different agendas and angles, and so we gave each speaker a specific publication that they work for. This coloured their delivery, and does mean I will have to change the line allocation to make sure that all the lines are appropriate to the publications featured, but it really started to come alive and gave the scene a sense of context. We settled on The News of the World, Woman, The Independent, The Big Issue and The Daily Mail as the featured publications, and I envisage each journalist pacing in the space, dictating, either to a recorder or another person, their angle of Anne's story according to each publication's social or political standpoint.
While I worked on this scene Lynda took the spare performers away to work on The Girl Next Door. I had pre-warned the cast that I imagined this scene being a song, and when Zoe suggested karaoke this seemed even better. I was delighted with the outcome - it was hilarious! Somehow fitting the dialogue to the tune of My Way, we ended up with a Sinatra impersonator, a Japanese karaoke nut, a jazz club singer and a reluctant performer all coming together to perform their rendition of the song. I don't think there are going to be too many outright funny moments in this show, but Scene 14 will certainly be one of them. All I have to do now if find a karaoke version of My Way.
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