Morning All.What a lovely day I had with actors rehearsing Mullered yesterday!
Its such a great thing to be back in the studio with a team who are already 'performing'. So Natalie, Jordan, Karl, John and I get to play together again. I am not sure I have said it before but I have to admit to being a bit of a serial lover! Its being in that light delightful space that does it. And well, these guys in particular too - I refer you to my earlier blog about 'Luvvies', Love, Murdering Your Darlings and Generosity, Blog 21. Enough said.
So the first part of the rehearsal was the gathering, bringing all the props and set into the space and placing and setting them and then the costume parade. That's fun thanks to the main character being Thomas Briggs, the first person to be killed on the railway in 1864, and Franz Muller, his murderer.
Great Victorian formal wear for both characters of course. Every gentleman was expected to wear a coat, vest, and hat. To walk around in shirtsleeves without vest or coat would be the modern-day equivalent of traipsing about in one’s underwear. Very unseemly, and most ungentlemanly! So a vest, coat and hat are essential with a visible accessory or two, in our case a pocket watch for Thomas.
The other characters are set in 2013 so costume is pretty much everyday young people's uniform - not that I would wish to stereotype of course!
Set positioned, music set up, costume parade ticked off and script revisited for memory, we began the orientation work. As this is a group who have worked closely before, there is already an established common language, in fact Jordan and Natalie have worked together for over five years now, and
Karl is back for about the sixth time, and John for his second time, (why does this sound like a prison sentence?!). So we can immediately cut to the chase, as we don't need to do the 'forming' stage. However we do need to acknowledge that we have been off living other lives since we were last in the space together. And one way to do this is to begin with a story circle.
Yesterday I was also accompanied by my trusty old Truth Stick, which serves as a story telling stick too. Natalie was surprised to see my old friend and tells me I haven't brought it to rehearsals for a few years now! My stick (this image isn't my actual one) is a brightly coloured snake. So the story circle begins with an opening question to Jordan. The answer must take no more than 2 minutes. (Its important to add here that this is not a therapy session and actors are invited to only share that which they are ok with sharing!)
'Tell us about a moment or experience of anger you have had over the past few weeks' - and so the story begins, with Jordan holding the story stick. And so we go round the circle, stories about moments of curiosity, conscience, loss, indecision and more. And we listen, sometimes painfully and sometimes erupting into hysterics. The exercise takes an hour and then we break for lunch, and we are ready to hit into text when we get back.The afternoon is worker like, returning to the script which is one of Olly's that I like a great deal. Step by step we revisit every moment, scrutinising it from every angle and refinding and revitalising it. There's great new stuff surfacing, and as John said with the benefit of a few months gap between productions, there is a wealth of new ideas and hunches about character and dynamics.
Good day all round, we sketched through the first 15 pages of the 50 page script, so today we should get a wiggle on and get through to the end.
My day was rounded off perfectly with dinner with my good friend Simon Grennan, one of the powerhouse artistic team of Grennan and Spearandio (if you are interested see my Blog 8A for more about their Truce project on which we collaborated last year). We went to Julies in Holland Park on the recommendation of Theresa our Communications Manager. Thanks for the suggestion T - it was fabulous - I highly recommend it! And thanks to Simon for footing the not insubstantial bill!
Have a lovely day.
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