Building It Up

Now that the actors are starting to deal with their moves and lines with confidence (books down in 6 days now!) the play is really starting to take on a life of its own.

Despite my optimism of my last post (2 whole weeks ago?!?) the next 2 or 3 rehearsals were a bit flatter than I'd hoped for and I found myself unable to find ways to inject enthusiasm and dynamism into the performances.

I think that it's unsurprising in retrospect. The actors were still all very much 'on book' and struggling to remember their moves, juggle their props (sometimes literally) and handle their scripts all at once. And my higher than usual workload has meant that most evenings I'm feeling a bit drained and finding it difficult to raise my energy levels and enthusiasm for rehearsals. Not that I'm disliking the process, and I definitely think that we're heading in the right direction, but I am definitely conscious that, as Director, I need to take a lead in ensuring that the production and the actors' performances are vital and exciting.

Last night was a real turning point. We rehearsed the first section of the 2nd-half of the play. This is the point at which the pace turns up a notch and the play should become an exciting farce, rather than a gentle drawing-room comedy. This coincided with our actors finding a new confidence in acting without their scripts in hand, and delivering their lines at a good pace. Over the course of the evening we reduced the run-time for this section from 35 mins to 24 mins. Even allowing for a certain amount of starting and stopping, this is good progress.

We had a couple of people present for rehearsal for the first time and they were able to bring fresh eyes and ears to the work in progress. Their comments have pointed up some areas which we need to examine very soon. But their overall comments are along the lines of "I can't wait to see the completed show" - which is very encouraging!

The whole cast is also committed to finding and fixing problem areas in the blocking and the dialogue. And in the post-pub production meeting (attendees: the stop-out-late cast and crew reprobates club) we talked about many aspects of the production and solved at least two problems which had concerned me for some time.

I've come away from the past weekend with a renewed enthusiasm for this work.