The Final Furlong

So, tonight, we hit production week on Three Kinds Of Me at the New Venture Theatre. As I’ve doubtless mentioned before, it’s only on for two nights, so you’re well advised to book your tickets up now, by clicking on the link to the New Venture Theatre.

I think I’m right in saying that it’s one of the most challenging things I’ve ever directed. Now, this might seem a bit rich, considering that I’ve already gone through directing musicals (bit of a test, since I’m about as musical as a blanket) shows with casts of kids numbering forty or more, or most recently, a Greek tragedy, and, by way of comparison, 3KM is simply me offering advice to a good friend who’s performing her own script. You’d think that, at the very least, that last fact alone would cut down on the amount of time we spent discussing what the playwright really meant. In theory, I didn’t really need to be there at all.

But Sarah has been patient enough to indulge my theories and suggestions on how to best present her text. It has, as I’ve indicated, been a surprisingly difficult process, not least because we’ve made every effort to make it as simple as possible. People who have worked with me before, upon hearing me declare that I wanted to make this production uncomplicated, were no doubt clearing space in their schedules for that inevitable moment when I finally said in a musing tone, ‘actually, I’ve just had this idea ..’ It appears that easy is not as easy as it looks.

A recurring conversation in rehearsal was what this production actually was: was it a play, or was it storytelling? It certainly lends itself to the latter, as it’s delivered in epistolary fashion, meaning that the entire narrative is packaged in smaller chunks. There’s still an over-reaching narrative arc, with a beginning, middle and an end, but just not necessarily – as you might have guessed – in that exact order. In the end (or, to be exact, quite near the start) Sarah and I agreed that it was indeed a play, rather than storytelling (Sarah has experience of both). The distinction is important, as different things come into play when you – well, get into a play, particularly in a play like this, which is largely about story-telling. Don’t worry if you’re not keeping up; I’m not sure I am.

When directing, I tend to start out from a single image that I find striking and arresting. Due to constraints of time, budget, and occasionally, simple logic, I can’t always deliver that image on stage, but that doesn’t matter – it gives me enough of a foundation to make decisions throughout the entire production, and can be a great influence on style and theme. With this production, interestingly enough, it was all about telling the story. Of course, I’m aware that every production is about telling the story, if you’re doing your job right, but since 3KM is simply about the power of one woman’s voice as she attempts to discover who she really is, I considered it vital that the production itself was as unfussy as I could make it – there could be no attempts to hide behind tricksy directorial flourishes. At least, I said all that, and then found myself concerned if we could maintain the simple elegance of a young woman standing in a black box for a hour and a half. In the end, of course, there is a sort-of compromise between the two: it really is simply a woman standing in a black box for a hour and a half (which sounds more and more like a David Blaine magic trick each time I type that), but we have introduced small little grace notes that I hope enhance, rather than distract, from what is being said on stage.

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If you get a chance today (Monday 15th October), do try to pop along to the Google homepage, which today celebrates one of the most important comic strips of all time, Little Nemo In Slumberland. Little Nemo was not, as you might have thought, an abandoned clownfish, but rather a 1905 newspaper cartoon that filled the entire page (and this being the time when a newspaper was about the size of a reasonably sized six year old child). As time went on, newspapers discovered they could make significantly more money by hiring their space out to advertisers, but for a few glorious years, Winsor McCay’s creation tumbled Alice-like from his bed into a dream world of wonder. Nemo literally tumbled, too – from frame to frame, the fairly wordless cartoons seeming stationary as Nemo dropped out of one panel down to another. The strip was magnificently cinematic in an era when cinema was barely a flicker in a projectionist’s booth. As a sidebar, McCay is usually credited with creating the first animated character in cinema history with a distinct personality – Gertie the Dinosaur.

Little Nemo’s presence can still be very firmly felt in today’s cartoons, from ‘In The Night Kitchen’ and Alan Moore’s work, and most certainly in the Sunday cartoons of Calvin and Hobbes. The Google cartoon is a thing of gorgeousness, and certainly a good gateway into Slumberland if you’ve not yet heard of Little Nemo.