Three Kinds Of Rehearsal

A night off tonight. Earlier this week, we'd become terrifyingly aware of the concept of four weeks being actually quite a short amount of time. With that in mind, we went through diaries and plugged up any spare night going with an extra rehearsal. Turns out that there's not a great many spare nights between now and curtain up. Not that we're using a curtain, but you get the idea.

We had booked in a rehearsal for tonight, but we pulled it - giving ourselves a chance to gird our loins before things really kick in, and anyway, I suspect that Sarah's boyfriend would quite appreicate actually seeing her before Halloween. Because between now and then, the rehearsals get quite intense.

One of the reasons the rehearsals are now getting a bit intense (apart from the subject matter) is the method of rehearsal we're using. We're doing something called 'actioning', which is something I've tended to avoid as an actor. Very roughly speaking, you endow every single line - every one - with a seperate 'action', a word that describes what your intention is within that line alone. It doesn't have to be (and possibly sometimes shouldn't be) in the context of the lines that surrond it on either side. In terms of performance, it can make for something of a jolting, even unrealistic narrative, which is possibly why I've previously always been a little wary of it. In this sense, I suspect it's more of a director's tool than that of the actors, if only because it makes the director's life easier - they can simply engineer their actor to be in a particular place/postion/mood at a particular time.

Of course, the key word there is 'tool' - it's not the end, but a means to an end. Something I've become very aware of while directing Three Kinds Of Me is that while I might generally be the same kind of director whatever project I work on, I'll employ very different tools depending on what the show is - a one woman show about mental health, for instance, or a big cast Shakespeare. I've known a couple of directors who operate in exactly the same way no matter what they're directing - knockabout farce, or mid-80s AIDS drama. One director, in particular, I remember saying absolutely nothing in any rehearsals, but would spend the first five minutes of the following rehearsal passing around little notes (no bigger than a Rizla) before another wordless rehearsal. Incidentally, I seem to remember that my only note said something like 'Speak slower, speak louder'. To be fair, I'll concede he had a point.

Because we're doing this 'actioning', the intial bout of rehearsals are going slower than I'd expected - not too slow, but certainly not as quick as I'd first planned (to give you and idea, I'd hoped to do five pages on Tuesday. We didn't quite manage one). It means everything is very textured and toned, and as the subsequent rehearsals follow each other, our 'muscle memory' will kick in, and we'll start speaking in a shorthand. It's one of the most endlessly interesting projects I've had the pleasure to work on, and I'm looking forward to continuing the journey.

By the way, tickets went on sale this week, which means that we haven't just imagined it, or anything, and the play will actually happen. I think I mentioned before that it's a very limited run, (only two nights) and tickets are already selling. Pop along to the new venture theatre ticket page to relieve yourself of a few quid for the pleasure of a great one woman show.

It's Connected To The Arm Bone

Managed to do something painful to my shoulder the other day. I was trying to get something down from the top of the wardrobe, and I slipped. I put out my hand, slipped a bit too much, and my hand slammed against the wall, while my body ended up staying pretty much where it was. Bone ground against bone. All a bit painful. I looked it up on the internet, typing in 'Have I dislocated my shoulder?' (and google can get a bit disturbing with what it offers you as you're typing in those first few words). While it's still - a couple of days later - reasonably wince-making, it doesn't appear that I've done anything to worry about, although I'm very aware that my body is doing extra work to stop my shoulder being quite so painful, meaning that even writing this blog entry is something of a exhausting chore. But that's okay; I'm reasonably confident that it's probably something of an exhausting chore to have to read it, too.

I haven't won the lottery this week (actually, that's a lie, I won eight quid on the Euromillions, you may have seen it reported in the national press) so it looks like I'll be unable to avoid returning to work next week. This is something of a worry, since I've felt this week that my mind has been finally clicking into place with regard to all the creative stuff that I've had on the boil since, well, forever. A good few of the short stories that I've been working on are almost complete, by which I mean they're a couple of drafts away from their final incarnation. I'm very aware that once work hits back in again, I might end up being too physically and emotionally exhuasted to work on anything. I'm always in awe of those people who have full time jobs and families who still manage to create thier novel, play or whatever, although I'm fully aware that procrastination and re-runs of Fraiser are the real enemies here. In a good news/bad news situation, I'm about to lose one day of work a week. Good news: this means I'm no longer working seven days a week, four weeks a month. Bad news: significant hit on my already meagre funds. Good news: a full day when I can actually catch up on the writing that I always say I can't get around to writing because I'm working seven days a week. Bad news: I might be lying to myself.

Another thing that I've been managing to work on this week is surgery on a play I wrote last year, called Four Play. It was part of the Brighton Festival Fringe, and seemed to be very well received, even if everyone agreed it was too long. I need to lose about forty minutes from it. Now, it's not just the precious writer part of me that found this difficult - I'm quite happy to hack out huge parts of anything I write, but there's a technical aspect to Four Play that means that I have to consider very carefully logistics of timing even when I'm editing out just a few lines. But I've had a few ideas this month that would seem to allow me to do that - I just now need to re-write the damn thing in the full knowledge that the next draft (and quite possibly the one after that) will be an incoherent mess. But it looks like something good might come out of it, and as much as anything, I should really acknowledge and thank the vast amounts of encouragement that I've received from those who saw, and were involved with, the original productions. More news on that as it develops.

The two other things I'm working on at the moment are a one-woman show, and improv classes. The one-woman show is written by, and starring a friend of mine, and it's the first time (as far as I can recall) that I've been a 'director for hire', which has its own, unique series of pressures. Luckily, it's being produced with the New Venture Theatre in Brighton, which I've always found to be an encouraging and nuturing atmosphere.

The other thing - the improv classes - aren't being held at the NVT (although I will be running acting classes there next month). It's been a while since I've been directly involved with improv, although it's really how I began to perform when I was in Brighton. (like most drama students, once I got my degree, I immediately stopped acting for about five years). I will be producing an improvised play next May as part of the Fringe, and it's going to be helpful to start up a 'boot-camp' for those actors interested in getting involved before the auditions kick off. Although, in truth, the workshops are as much for me to get my game back on as they are for any improvisers wanting to improve their skills.

As usual, details when I know exactly what's going on (I'm just waiting for the venue to be confirmed). I'm aiming to get a couple of the short stories finished (by which I mean final draft finished) by the end of this week. The aim is to enter them for writing contests (something that I've never done before), and once I've got enough, put them together on a kindle collection. Hell, if everyone else is doing it .

Three Kinds Of Me

So, I have a new upcoming project. This one has a bit of a quick turnaround, as the show goes up in October. That doesn't leave a great deal of rehearsal time. I'm not yet sure if the fact that it's a one woman show will make rehearsal more or less difficult. It's by no means a foregone conclusion.

One conclusion you may have correctly drawn from that first paragraph is that I'm not in it. The one woman in question is a good friend Sarah Charlsey (she's such a good friend that I even manage to spell her surname correctly occasionally), and she's written the piece that she will be acting in. It's not precisely the first time I've directed a friend - it's not even the first time I've directed Sarah - but this time, the dymanics are somewhat different.

First of all, I've been asked to direct someone else's creation (we'll pass over the small detail that I wasn't actually first choice. I'll keep that in reserve if things aren't going my way in the third week of rehearsal). Normally as a director, at least at this level, when it's all local, and a compartively small amount of people are watching, you choose your own project. Therefore, I have in my head (as I imagine a great many directors do) a bubbling pot of various images for possible in-the-future productions that may never happen. I have great opening images for both Three Sisters and Twelfth Night, both of which I imagine are far too expensive for any venue I currently have access to. Likewise, I have a whole series of ideas for a show that I tell anyone that will listen that I definetly will write a script for one of these days (it involves Victorian women using silks and Arial skills. I have yet to convince anyone - including myself - that that little detail isn't just for my benefit).

However, the goal posts change somewhat if you are directing your friend in the script they themselves wrote. I'm not exactly expecting to have any arguments regarding costume ('but they have to be wearing a Thomas The Tank Engine jumper, that's what the real David was wearing!'), but you never know. Quite often as a director (and indeed, as actor, designer, or most anything else) you play around with the expectations of the script: you know that such and such a scene is a moment when everyone's royally annoyed with each other, so you see how it will work if each actor plays it really positive and nice. Usually, the audience will pick up on the tension anyway, in a passive aggressive way. I'll let you know how it all goes; the first rehearsal is this week, after I get back from Edinburgh.