Monday 30 July 2012

A World Premiere and Beyond..

Whew. What a week. A world premiere is a bit of a beast at times. Untested in front of an audience, the team often up the pressure to ensure that things do go as well as possible when all is finally unveiled. On this occasion, it meant running the play six times in three days which felt like cruel and unusual punishment at times but which meant that it was thoroughly in our memories by the time we reached Saturday night, at which point of course, we said goodbye to that play for almost a week! Our director knew that and knew how important it was to have the play run in as much as possible, so now we forgive him the harsh few days. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, eh?
The audiences so far seem to love the show which is all that matters at the end of the day & bookings are going thick & fast for the next few weeks. As word of mouth kicks in we should be doing great business for the Theatre by the Lake!
Now of course we actually begin the repertory in full flood. Three plays now all up and running and rotating in a merry whirl. Anyone actually know what's on when? I've taken to carrying a programme with me everywhere as trying to remember  in my case just leads to much dithering & confusion.. Basically with three options to play with, we now have a schedule that runs in a three-weekly cycle, to allow most choice for visiting audiences, as the bulk of folk turn up from far afield for a week's holiday. The clever people at the theatre have thought this through, trust me folks.
This week, because of the past two weeks having been dedicated solely to the last plays in our cannon, we have refresher runs to remind us of the other worlds we left behind before tech weeks, as well as our first matinee on Wednesday. Today for example, we are performing Bedroom Farce in the morning then watching Doll's House do their refresher in costume this afternoon before performing Bedroom Farce to a live audience tonight. Then it's into Dry Rot country tomorrow.. so no rest for the wicked. We must have been really bad!
Watching Doll's House this afternoon will complete all the pieces in the jigsaw for me, filling in the gap of what exactly that cast has been up to creating that show while we were busy rehearsing Bedroom Farce. Great things have been said about it; I can't wait to see it. We had the Great Expectations crowd in watching one of our dress rehearsals and it was lovely to hear them chuckling away and then hearing their response afterwards. This bunch of people have become very important to all of us; we get along very well, something you can't guarantee and which doesn't happen that often in this funny old game. We are very lucky, very lucky indeed.
From here on the journey changes through August's relative calm towards the new projects to be explored and workshopped with the theatre's new writing team as well as personal projects that members of the cast have brought along to road test in readings.
Somewhere in all this, we are all promising to organise days out walking, rowing, sailing etc etc.
At this rate, November 10th will be here all too soon!

Sunday 22 July 2012

The Final Push for the Studio and Beyond..

Sunday morning and the close of a week of final rehearsals for the new studio play. We have run it three times in quick succession and now can collect our thoughts for the tech week and the promise of real live audiences by the week's end. We've passed the writer's test, he seemed happy, crying like a good 'un through our first run! Of course we mustn't forget our special secret invited audience for our dress rehearsal comprising our colleagues from the land of Dickens. That is quite frightening to think about too much! In the studio, you are up close and personal with the audience; there's no getting away from who they are and where they are and as we all know each other really well by now, you will hear a familiar laugh or similar reaction and for a second you might get distracted from the task in hand! Roma & the Flanellettes asks a lot of the actors involved; there's a whole heap of tough subject matter and big emotional baggage to carry around-  for some more than others - and the nature of the piece means that there's no relaxing even for a second inside that, because then the ball gets dropped as we say in the trade! There's quite a bit of vital body minerals to replace at the end of a run..and lots of strategically placed boxes of tissues behind the scenes. That all starts to sound a little off-colour. It's not meant to put anyone off, just paint a picture of how things are in this particular story.  Of course it's a world premiere, so that might mean that those reviewers down there in that there London might actually get on their bikes and come and see the wonderful stuff we're turning out here in the Lakes. They tend to have all sorts of convenient excuses as to why they don't bother to come to see shows more than a stone's throw from Drury Lane..Still: what counts are the very happy folk in the audience and it seems that Keswick can thrive without worrying about what critic has written what about who, which is how it should be! I'm one of a growing number of actors who do not read reviews. Somebody clever  once wrote about how a brilliant review can harm an actor's performance- it isn't just about being frightened of reading something awful that someone has written about you, oh no. If you are made too aware from an external point of view about a particular moment, because a reviewer has raved about it, you can end up trying to recreate that moment and of course, failing!  The basic fact is  that reviews are not written for us but for the theatre-goer, so another reason not to read them.  Oh, and the fact that often the person writing them is a twerp who wouldn't know a decent bit of acting if it bit him on the bum. Bitter? Moi? Certainly not.
One other minor event to cover this week  I suppose is the main house opening of Great Expectations, which we attended on Friday night. The theatre was packed and the show was beautiful. The actors 'up there' who we were all rooting for as you'd expect, didn't disappoint and for their second only public performance of an ambitious adaptation of a great novel, it was a splendid sight to see. What better thing in a summer rep company than to get your actors all playing different parts within the same play?  Like the five-hander Shakespeare tours I've done where you each play four characters, some of whom  must eventually meet, there are inevitably going to be times in Great Expectations when a particular actor is going to have to change in front of your eyes into someone else. On a sixpence. How will they do it? Suddenly it happens and the simple inventiveness delights everyone. You hear the collective intake of breath from 380 people. It can't be beat! Hats off to all who put it together and all who played.  Read more about the creative team on TbtL's website!
Off now for a bit of r & r, or washing & cleaning the flat that has become a morass of filth. At least the sun's out and I can get my laundry dry in a day. Glamorous business this world of show. Ttfn.

Monday 16 July 2012

Tech The Third Beckons...

Well, well, well.  Here we are at the end of July and the cautionary words of our leader, Ian Forrest back in May rise up from the memory and smack us in the face. He said we'd be tired and he wasn't wrong. The thing is, anyone who has lived a bit, worked a bit and travelled a bit has experienced tiredness. So you think you know every kind of tiredness. Had to wait in an airport for a missing flight? Had to go without kip for a teething baby? Been kidnapped and chained to a radiator? ( too much?)  Ok maybe I have gone too far using those metaphors, but relatively, the way everyone is feeling right now compared to three months ago, folk are pretty much at full stretch, even perhaps breaking point. If tempers are going to fray, my money is on  them fraying sometime in the next ten days!  We were warned about this tiredness and still we choose to go out for a beer or two, head off into those hills for a spot of fell-walking, go visit friends & family on our one day off.  Strangely it would seem that we always have to find out for ourselves about the blooming obvious instead of taking someone's word for it even someone who knows from lengthy experience.. I don't know! Ian must despair of us lot at times!
Saturday night we bade farewell to Bedroom Farce and  Doll's House for two weeks and settled in to the final technical phase of our Summer 2012 season.
The Great Expectations set has gone up and is now looming in the main house in all its Gothicky finery. I snuck in to have a peep and watched as the lighting effects were being added and played with. It looks incredible and I can't wait to see my talented chums get on it and bring Dickens' splendid story to life.
On a far more minimal but no less exciting platform, Roma & the Flanellettes is now being rehearsed for full 8 hour days this week. Suddenly in this marathon stint at TbtL, we in the studio show find ourselves with our evenings off, as the production team all  focus on pulling the main house show together and we get to have a final week's work to fine-tune the new play that has yet to be tested in front of an audience. So, the plus side, we have some free evenings; on the downside, we're back to 10 o'clock starts. Swings and roundabouts ( Actors always have to have something to complain about!). We've recorded our Motown songs and they've been mixed beautifully by Matt Hall at the theatre. Young Jess Ellis as Delie would give any X-Factor finalist a run for their money  singing A Love Like Yours and Nicky, Steven & I do a pretty decent job backing her up even if I say so myself. I have a whole new respect for backing vocalists after this experience. Unsung heroes and heroines of a good pop song!
Today we had our final costume fittings and finally got to see our Flanellettes group costumes. I think show-stopping is a fitting description...! Our designer Thomasin Marshall has done a great job plotting how each character looks throughout the play and has taken all our concerns and ideas on board gladly. Her inspiration for the karaoke costumes came from a group called the Marvellettes; check them out on Google images! We can now picture ourselves more fully in the world of Roma; costumes take on a new importance in traverse or theatre-in-the-round productions, where the three-dimensions of a proscenium arch is missing. For my character, as an outsider, I really wanted to feel that she would look like that and that her clothing would evolve as her story changed. I think we got that right today, which is just grand.
So two good full days ahead for us to go over the play in detail before our first run on Thursday. All will I am sure be well. Ever so slightly nervous of performing it in front of the writer and our colleagues before going into the studio space and our tech next week.
I keep thinking of that calming piece by Julian of Norwich;  'All shall be well and all shall be well & all manner of things shall be well'. Or words to that effect!
It'll be alright on the night.
To all my esteemed colleagues, toi toi toi.

Monday 9 July 2012

Stop Counting Already!

That's it. I can't keep counting the weeks now, it just makes me come over all peculiar and unnecessary; especially as I have started to get enquiries from the world outside about my availability in November which doesn't bear thinking about right now. This action-packed schedule has meant not only scrambled brains, but  that  also our token day of leisure can simply become a day of frantic 'enforced' enjoyment, as you think of the  immersive week ahead and all that is still to be learned and remembered, as well as the acting that goes on top of those basics. You want to make the most of this lovely day of freedom, but what to do? Choices choices.
It's easy to feel torn between high-tailing it first thing on a Sunday morning, heading for a high hill somewhere for a long day's adventure and doing all the other things that 'normal' folk take for granted; go to the pictures, a country fair, watch the tennis/ alternative major sporting event of the day,  get rained on up a hill, barbecue etc etc. I might be going on rather a lot about this, but we are very much in a hot-house kind of bubble in this summer season thingy and the edges can get a bit blurred. Reality can feel a long way off. It's a rarefied atmosphere without a doubt. I use the hot house term without a hint of irony, as we squelch our way through a truly soggy July, tussling with the vital sartorial question of what to wear when being rained on almost constantly, while inside any sensible rain garment, you heat up to about 24 degrees.   Now that we have dressing rooms we do at least have somewhere to stash a change of clothing, dry off after another near-drowning and prepare to run about in a nice hot building, so a degree of composure can be restored.
 The tunnel of play number three is proving long and a little tortuous in places, but again you find yourself checking off the plus points:
I am working.
In a beautiful part of the world.
With one of the best bunches of people I have ever worked with.
I'm loving performing in two fab shows.
My digs are glorious.
There are excellent tea shops everywhere.
Not that bad then really.
So into this fourth week of rehearsal for Roma & the Flanellettes and we are knuckling down to the final learn which is inevitable in a new play as rewrites pop back and forth between writer & cast. We have been really lucky to get into the studio space to rehearse and to feel the banks of seats on two sides, which is so easy to forget about when in the upstairs foyer!  We are much more at home in the space now and are working to open the show out, while enjoying the intimacy that a small performance space can bring. This week we get to record some of the key Motown tracks featured in the show. A little light fun was had last week with a BBC Cumbria recording of excerpts from David Ward's  book Noisy Owls & Dead Nuns about funny show reports from the theatre. If the powers-that-be like the article, it may end up on Radio 4 Today Programme no less! These show reports are brief summaries of every show intended for the director,  including a summary of anything out of the ordinary or off-script that can sometimes occur- like the jammed door in Dry Rot, or an audience member getting involved in a show like last week in Bedroom Farce. Someone in the audience had clearly been in a production at some time and was to be heard quoting loudly at key moments and at one point uttered the punchline to a joke that Jessica Ellis should have said first. Much to her disgust! We have our own spy onstage in Bedroom Farce in the shape of Adrian Metcalfe who as Nick has the unenviable task of lying onstage all night. So he has to find ways to entertain himself!   Many of the TbtL show reports seem to feature consummate professional Peter McQueen who appears to have got up to all sorts here over the years, a lot of it involving his trousers or undergarments. I'm saying nothing. Buy the book!

Monday 2 July 2012

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..