Week Twelve: A Brave New World..?

Week Eleven and a brave new dawn for some here in the shape of a new play specially commissioned by Richard Cameron for Theatre by the Lake  and also for the main house team, Great Expectations adapted by Neil Bartlett. For us in the new play which will be performed in the studio, we huddled round a table, pencils in hand in the upstairs bar area, while the physical-theatre-created-Dickens crew did dynamic stuff in the main rehearsal room with a movement director and everything.  Roma & the Flanelettes is a play about a challenging subject; the survivors of domestic abuse.  Don't let that put you off! Trust me.   Set in a small community, the very different characters we meet all have tremendous obstacles to overcome, while relief from these challenges comes for them ( & us) in the shape of Motown classics, performed by us as a Karaoke group raising money for good causes. A new play is an exciting prospect and we jumped in, taking our first few steps through the set and beginning to figure out how each of us might dress, sit, react to all the things going on around us etc. My character is an outsider to the Northern  village ( a Southerner no less ) and so my task is to explore that special position, as well as to try to get inside the life of a woman who stayed in a marriage for 15 years, despite her husband's cruelty.  We are incredibly lucky to be offered such a  great opportunity by Richard, as well as his presence in the rehearsal room for this first week, so we spent the round-table talks quizzing him about his creations, with Stefan ( director)  making vital links between us and him, seeing how all the questions & answers will guide us towards the best outcome.  All new plays are uncertain things by definition, but so exciting to be the first climing into something. Virgin turf. Heady & heavy stuff! A difficult subject that is already provoking strong feeling in us all as we try to get inside this world. Next week we'll have crucial input to help us flesh out back stories etc from key workers in this area;  we'll be meeting refuge staff & police liason officers who know this world well.  Meantime, we occasionally pass our colleagues from Bedroom Farce & Dry Rot in the corridor or Green Room and the different atmospheres of both worlds collide; us reeling from a tough scene dealing with Roma's story, them all fizzy and alive with having just been creating Dickens' world with only themselves and a few doors! I jest; they're all doing loads of wonderful things that luckily we will get to see early on for a change as they go into  their tech a week before us. I can't wait to watch my friends & colleagues perform! These strange varying combinations of plays and people you experience when doing a job like this are fantastic and unique to rep.
 And so to the strange combinations of the schedule! Just when we thought we were getting into the swing of switching shows, we realise that the schedule doesn't only change day by day but also week by week. As we rehearse play three, plays one & two take turns to be the Saturday night special, meaning another mental adjustment to the rhythm of shows. You now try to carry alternate weeks' programmes in your head.  Coming back to Bedroom Farce after two weeks of Dry Rot felt scary initially, but once up & running, we enjoyed the new-found feeling of 'play' in the show. Mentally checked off the list of worries, we move merrily back to Dry Rot, only to bump into Bedroom Farce  again on  Saturday night. The relief is that we all felt odd; also relieved that the audience I think are none the wiser as to our slight paranoia! It might be something the director could spot, having seen the play so many times and knowing us well as performers, but this strange phenomenon doesn't reach the paying audience.
Finally, just a big shout out to George Banks whose quick thinking got us through a fairly major technical glitch in Bedroom Farce on Saturday. As I sat in the dark 'bathroom' waiting to go on, I heard lines never written by Mr. Ayckbourn and much additional carpentry offstage courtesy of George.. turns out a vital speaker had failed, leaving us without a pretty important telephone sound effect.. Didn't happen in the good old days, when stage management did everything manually!! Live theatre. You can't beat it. You don't get these thrills watching Corrie.