Venue booked, rights secured, dates set, it is getting exciting. My job is to help channel that excitement into a grounded energy so Jacob and Sam can keep doing extraordinary acting work as they also do the admin, design the website including ticketing, source the costumes, props and set (lots of trips to the tip shop). Alex Sangston joined us to play Saul and he is such a great addition to the team with his lovely energy, sense of humour and awesome acting skills. Janet Smith came to rehearsals to be “on the book”, we are so grateful to have such wonderful support from our friends and colleagues. With such a great team in place rehearsals continued to be amazing.
We are now running the play and lines are almost down. We continue to allocate a substantial amount of time at the beginning of rehearsal to Alexander Technique, movement and voice. These fundamentals have to be daily practice or the actors will not be “show fit”. Bodies need to be free of unnecessary tension, voices have to be free and able to be clearly heard from the back of the theatre, and a quickening of consciousness needs to occur to keep “in place”, and stay present with the other actors.
I made sure they did a sensory exercise at the start of each run so “place” was as clear as possible. Before each scene I reminded them to think of “What just happened, what are they doing right now, and what's the first thing they want” (thank you Howard Fine). At the end we debrief and I ask the actors “What worked, what didn’t and why” (thank you Howard Fine). I was delighted by the actors ability to analyse their work and work out how to solve what isn’t working.
See you next week…
