We Had An Epiphany
- Matt
- Apr 6, 2017
- 3 min read
Don’t worry, we cleaned it up again.
Hey guys, You are stuck with me (Matt) again. Today I want to chat about our rehearsal on Sunday (I know it is supposed to be a day of rest but there is no rest for the wicked with shows coming up). Including some tender loving, juicy realisations and admin.
So instead of enjoying the gorgeous sunshine of Sunday (how aptly named), we were locked away inside a theatre with blacked out windows working hard towards our upcoming performance. This was not an ordinary rehearsal though. This was a full cast rehearsal! The first I have seen and indeed, the first we have had for quite some time.
This was a great opportunity to go through the whole piece and look at the sexy subject everyone loves. Logistics. Does anything incite more joy than asking, “But how are we actually going to do that?”. For the first act this is incredibly important as, being promenade, it is no use saying this scene is upstairs because it looks nice if five lines before one of the characters was on the other side of the room. We also timed scenes which would be running parallel to one another and whilst two were 10 seconds apart (yay), a third was almost 3 times as long (boo). Hey ho, out comes the script-cleaver again for another merciless butchering session.
This close to the show, the hard work everyone has put in is really coming out. In between scenes where lines get lost and others that are just missing that little spark there were moments that shone like diamonds. Everywhere you looked you saw an incredible delivery or a well thought through reaction, a simple gesture or an actor on the same wave-length as their character but then you saw whole scenes drift by nearly flawless. By far my favourite scenes on Sunday were between our two lovebirds. There is such a tenderness there that at times I completely believe their affection. At one point I was so engrossed in their blossoming romance that when it was interrupted by our blundering king, I was genuinely disappointed. If we can get everything to that standard I will be a happy little Artistic Director.
Another great thing about full casts is that you can get a glimpse of the whole piece. You can see the journey of characters and the changes that take place. For example you can see the evolution of our prince from a socially inept fool unequipped to lead, to a self-assured and confident man, still ill-equipped to lead, but at least aware of this fact. Our villain would have been great to watch travel from confidant to dick to tyrant but, when working with actors there is always one hangover or conflicting schedule. Another journey I am enjoying immensely is our dear old king. He may be playing catch up to our other characters but every time I see him, he is stronger and stronger. One thing that did concern me however was his eagerness to die. I have never known an actor so keen to be killed off. It is his first death you see and the novelty of lying about half the time has yet to wear off. We treated him well but lost one star on trip advisor for our lack of pillows.
As we rehearsed the conclusion we hit upon something. It didn’t work.
It just wasn’t right. At times it was missing something, at others it was a bit hole-filled or just didn’t make sense. However, everyone was so invested we quickly cleared away the diseased lines and filled the holes with a few nifty edits. Now it is slick. Slicker than the floor at the end of a Grimm fairy tale.
When we had finally read the whole scene through it was all so clear. Franki explained to us what she had only just realised (she wrote half the damn play). We have several messages about issues such as gender, consent and people’s rights to love. And in our finale, they all come together and our fairy tale holds a shard of broken mirror to the real world. The moral stands out as clear as a wart on a hags nose. The dilemmas faced by our storybook characters are of our world and cannot be resolved even by fairies with wands and insane men dressed as teapots. But by placing them in a fantasy setting we make them clearer for just a moment. For that moment, a solution stands out clear, right the wrongs and punish the wrongdoers, it is only a story after all.
If it is so simple in their world, why can it not be so in ours?
Don’t forget your tickets are available here for £6.50.
Matt.
Artistic Director and frequent annoyance.
Comments