Week Fourteen: Getting Off the Book

So week fourteen and  we go into the big learn for the two remaining Summer 2012 shows, when everyone gets down once more to their own particular way of fixing their part into their heads. At the same time we also marvel at how the  shows currently up & running can still seem surprising and/or scary to us depending on their place in the schedule. We know these parts full well and have the moves all set in our heads too, but the experience keeps changing, making you sometimes feel baffled with this thing you apparently know so well. These 'run in' plays are now at a stage where normally when doing just the one show, fresh ideas  spring up during performance.  Our rehearsal schedule means that you might not remember that fresh idea once you step off stage, because your head is whirling with lots of other things from that day's rehearsal of play three.   Actors are a hungry bunch,  we want to keep fine-tuning our scenes together, finding better or different ways to reach our characters' story, not get stale. To keep playing. We look forward to getting play number three up and having time to reflect on all three plays and the moments when we'd like to make a different choice.
  On top of that, we're also finding our own way to reintroduce ourselves to whichever play we're doing for the first time in days. The  performance that feels oddest for me is the Saturday night stand-alone of either Dry Rot or Bedroom Farce, when the memory of the  other show performed over the past two days hangs on and leaves you feeling woefully underprepared!  I find myself looking at my much-battered and written-on script for Bedroom Farce, something I haven't done in all my days as an actor at this stage in a show's life.  Normally, the physical script is deliberately left aside as you go into running and running a play. In this bonkers schedule  I find it helps me 'kick in' to the right place, although I'm still fine-tuning this process, the need differs from part to part. Weird.
 The key differences between the Roma cast and the Great Expectations cast with learning parts is that the other guys are all talking diagrams and crib sheets. It seems that their world is much more 3-D than ours in Roma.  No huge shock, it is a Neil Bartlett adaptation and he loves his physical theatre interactive stuff.  In Great Expectations, the way the actors interact with their set is as much a part of the learning for them as their lines. In Roma which is much more naturalistic, I must admit to still struggling with how to note my place on the stage, as we are on a traverse stage, decorated with  identical chairs at all four corners. It's not helped by  the fact that every time my character is in a scene it says, 'Jean, (seated)'. Hmm. I've taken to giving either end of the space a name, but fear not, on the night and in the space, all will be much clearer than it is in the rehearsal room! We have the pleasure of rehearsing in the upper bar of the theatre, which we can't mark up as you would in the rehearsal room. The brilliant stage management heft all props & set into the bar and heft it all back out again every day. Amazing work.
As well as the particular demands of the different productions actors, like students sitting exams can have their own preferred way of fixing a part in their head. I have sometimes felt the need to see all my cues and lines on one piece of paper; either with the world's smallest hand-writing ( a labour of love in itself) or a massive sheet of A1. A task that might be terrifying you then can become manageable. You don't wander about with a massive sheet of paper in front of your face obviously; by this stage it has become a reinforcement that you do actually know what you're doing! A really handy bit of homework!
 While all this is going on the Olympic torch came trotting through Keswick town centre, so of course we had our rehearsal time adjusted to allow us all to scamper across town to wave at it. It's good to be reminded of what's going on outside the bubble that is TbtL mid-rehearsal/run. Someone was overheard in the greenroom a few days ago saying that he felt like he'd only ever had this job; that somehow all this endeavor here had erased his entire cv out of his head.. it can do that to your brain this mullarkey. We were warned about this..