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.
Ottershaw Players' production of the Constance Cox play, based upon Oscar Wilde's short story. Rhoda McGaw Theatre, Woking. 28th - 31st May 2008 at 7.45pm. Tickets: £10 (£8 concessions) Ottershaw Players Box Office: 01932 702091 boxoffice@ottershawplayers.co.uk Rhoda McGaw Box Office: 0870 060 6645
1 comment:
I allowed Teechers to be blocked "organically" and I think it worked. But then it's different with kids, as they much preferred the idea that they were making some of the decisions themselves.
As for putting on a play in a week, when I was at uni I put Twelfth Night on in two weeks. We auditioned it weeks before, gave out scripts and then spent two weeks working 9-5 on it (even the day after the Summer Ball which finished at 5am!). It was knackering but a fantastic experience. But then we were students with no jobs...
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