And They're Off!

After a couple of weeks back and forward getting the rehearsal schedule sorted - and avoiding other rehearsals and productions in the theatre - I finally got the schedule set in stone.  Not literally - in reality it's set in silicon bits and cloud server memory.

And so, last night, the intrepid cast (both of them!) and their director (me!) sat down at a secret location (an actor's living room!) to talk about the script and record a readthrough.

I was pleased at the level to which my actors have been reading and learning so far.  Already they have many questions about their characters, actions, strategies and objectives which challenged my knowledge of the play (in a very good way) and promised a very exciting and fruitful ongoing rehearsal process.

The readthrough served several purposes:  It was the first time I got to hear my chosen cast reading the entire play; it was a chance for them both to hear the lines they've been playing with over the past couple of weeks in context with their playing partner; it allowed them to experiment with tone and delivery at an early stage; and finally, it was an opportunity to record the whole play for later download or burning to CD, in order to assist with learning lines.

This was also an opportunity for me to listen closely to the play and makes notes about various aspects of the production we hadn't yet thought about and which we discussed after the reading.  Clegg's clothes and hairstyle; Miranda's dresses; how to hit someone over the head with a vase; cigarette smoking and swearing; nudity and naughty photos!  I have to stress that we decided there would be no nudity and no naughty photos - though my intention is to make the audience think they've seen something that they haven't seen in reality.

Our next rehearsal is on Sunday (memo: record the football!) and it's the first of many in the Green Room studio space where we'll perform in February.  The first opportunity to get parts of the play on its feet in the actual venue.  This is a luxury I'm not used to.  My previous group never got to use the performance venue until the get-in day, just before the public got to see the show.  Getting used to the room and space and making it our own over a 10 week rehearsal period is a great privilege.

Not that we'll be doing too much movement at first.  This is such a wordy and emotionally packed play that we'll spend a while reading and exploring the text before we think about moving it around.  That said, there are a couple of tricky 'action' sequences that we will look at early on, just so we can get a handle on where we will go with them later.

We've started.  Now it starts getting exciting!