Halfway Hall

We had the first evening of auditions last night - the next is on Sunday.

A very good turnout - I could cast the play from those alone, if I were to choose to. But that would be unfair on the people who are coming on Sunday, so I won't!

We've even had a couple of new prospective members coming along, with at least one or two more expected at the weekend. It's very gratifying that people want to join Ottershaw Players - we've obviously got a good reputation to attract new members - but unfortunately there aren't enough parts for all the exisiting members, let alone the new folks. I hope that if people don't get a part they understand that it's nothing personal!

The hardest decisions to make when casting are having to leave out someone who is a very talented actor. Sometimes they are just not physically right for the part (too old; too young; too tall; too short; too stout; too thin) and even though you know they would give a corking performance, if only the character was different, there's just no way you can shoehorn them in. I sometimes wonder, when telling someone these reasons for not casting them, whether they really believe you, or if they think it's just an excuse.

All I do know is that on Sunday night I'm going to have some tough decisions to make...

Readthrough

Last night we had a readthrough of the play. This is for the benefit of the group membership, so that people can get an idea what the play's about and if there are any parts they would like to audition for.

From my point of view it was a great success. Around 25 people turned up - most of them to read - and the majority will be auditioning. Which is great because they all read very well and lifted the script off the page to a certain extent already. I knew that the play was amusing, but I hadn't realised that it was drop-dead funny too!

Hopefully we also have a handful of people coming along to audition who were unable to attend the reading. If so, I'm going to be slightly spoiled for choice and at least half of those who showed an interest will end up disappointed.

Ready... Steady...

Go!

Wednesday night we had our first technical crew meeting. Our fabulous stage manager hosted (thank you Lyn!) and Claire & David, our brand-new design team, showed us a model with their ideas for the set.

Our usual designer, Alan, keeps telling us that he wants to take time off from designing and building sets (though on most productions he will turn up with a fantastic idea and then build it anyway!) so this time around we've granted his wish.

Claire and David have been involved backstage with quite a few productions. Claire has wanted to do some set design for a while and the ideas she presented on Wednesday show a great flair for the job, even on a set which I asked to be very simple - just two standalone doorways and a window.

Most of the evening was spent discussing the set design and we batted around a few ideas about how it would work. Claire's going to incorporate a couple of changes - mainly simplifying the build of the window and swapping over the two entrances, from left to right and vice versa. We also discussed and settled on the colour scheme.

David has some great ideas for how to build the set and we're going to spend some time rooting around in our storage/build/rehearsal hut on Sunday to find flats which we can incorporate into the set.

Also on the agenda was wardrobe. My Mum is looking after this and already has lots of great costume ideas and has started sourcing materials and patterns.

We touched briefly on sound and lighting, but at this stage we don't have our personnel - our preferred lighting guy is happier getting involved a bit later in the process.

After 3 hours of enthusiastic and productive talk we finished up. Now we're looking forward to a reading and two audition sessions next week...