Blocking

When you first rehearse a play, in the am-dram world, at least, the main task is to complete the "blocking". In general terms, this means getting the basic shape of the play ironed out, so that the actors know more or less where they will be standing at any particular time, which entrances and exits they will use, etc.

Professional companies nowadays tend, I believe, to let the blocking emerge in a gradual basis over the first half of the rehearsal period, as an organic outcome from each character's actions. Each time I direct a play, I think that I will start trying to push our little amateur company in the same sort of direction, but I never quite manage it. Apart from the time factor (we have two rehearsals a week, 2.5 hours on Tuesday and 3 hours on Sunday, whereas professional companies have a 37 or 40 hour week!) there's also an understandable reluctance on the part of amateur actors to approach rehearsals from that direction.

[One day I'd like to persuade a handful of people to take a whole week off work and we'll prepare a one-act play in that time... One day...]

So, now we've finished blocking the action for our little escapade and we have an overall structure which I think will work successfully. Now we'll spend the next 2 or 3 weeks consolidating what we've done and polishing sections (around 10 pages at a time). I'm hoping that this is where the exciting things happen. It's now that we start to put in business and really start building the characters.

Cast

In the end it was a mix of difficult and easy decisions.

There was only one person who auditioned for the lead role of Lord Arthur, and luckily he is emminently suitable for the part, so that was a shoe-in.

On the other hand, we had 12 ladies auditioning for 5 parts. And at least 5 of them put their names down for the role of Sybil. So that made a really tough choice.

With the help of my trusted advisors, though, I think we managed to choose the best candidates for each role. I certainly hope so anyway.

I've spend some time this week putting together a rehearsal schedule. It's a tricky task, trying to guess how many pages we will be able to work on each night in the early stages and splitting the text up into manageable chunks so that you don't have to call all the actors for every rehearsal. I think that I've just about managed it though.

Next big day is Sunday when we have our first read-through with the cast and we finally get down to proper rehearsals...