Tempus Fugit

Well here we are in week five (apparently - so I seem to have lost a week somewhere). Had a very kind notes session from Ros today following our Act II run on Friday (1hr 22 minutes!!!) and we all seem in a pretty good place psychologically to approach the week. There is a long way to go, though...
Looking forward to cracking things technically this week and trying not to obsess about electro-classical guitars, which is my preferred solution instrument wise (and the least convenient as I already have a classical guitar (lovely instrument, but too quiet for the venue - and seriously too quiet for some of the prosc. arch tour venues). Ooops - called in to rehearsal, so must dash!
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Tempus fugit... I wrote the top bit on Monday and it's now Friday night. Much has happened since then. The electro-classical guitar has become a matter of fact (although the DI boxes have yet to be rigged, so we've not actually tested it in the space...) and we've just completed the first complete run of the show. It's still way too long, so a considerable amount of revision is slated for next week before we open on Thursday. I think it's in pretty good shape, but as I seemed to spend much of the run in Father Dougal Maguire mode, perhaps I'll leave those judgements to the creative production team...

So - more work tomorrow morning, followed by another run of the whole thing - which should help the performers to get a sense of the whole as we've worked in a very focused, yet fragmented manner up until now. There's a huge mountain of work to be scaled in the next few days, but I feel strangely calm about the whole thing - probably because I know I've got Monday free to work on cues, scene order and music parts (oh yeah - and to get a haircut. It seems no-one around hear knows a good barbers to go to around London Bridge and I'd like to avoid a sheep-shearing, so any posts on this subject would be gratefully received...)

Bedtime now. Sleep tight everyone xx

For a few hours the bungalow had been beautiful...

Fire in the rehearsal room today. Metaphorically that is. In addition to the daily combustion created by our indefatigable company, today saw the arrival of flaming Lawrence Evans, Theatre Centre Associate Artist, who brought a certain magic to bear on the destruction of the Carters' bungalow. Anyone experienced in the ways of UK health and safety will know that real fire isn't an option for an open stage touring show. (Whereas in most other countries, avant-garde theatre nonchalantly exposes its audiences to naked flame regardless.) From such restrictions creativity can flow, however, and so look out for that moment when it arrives in the show. I shall say no more.

Naked Natives

'Can we go from Naked Natives?' asks Ros. (This is a line from the girls at Maia's school, not a costume decision, in case anyone's worrying...) We seeem to have been rehearsing these schoolgirls for years.

In fact we have. The first sketches of this chorus moment came in Clerkenwell in 2004 with the Drama Centre students. Then more last May in the workshop week. And here we are again, finding more detail every time. 'Melanie's the ringleader', observes Ros, to general agreement. 'She's the one with secret copies of Heat magazine under the bed every night.' 'Just like me' observes Willie, who takes to the role with relish (so much so that he's a little blurred above). Sam meanwhile is doing a magnificent yellow-fever death just out of shot. And within moments, all these schoolgirls will be shanty-singing dockers (assuming they can get their skirts off rapidly enough). The magic of the emsemble.

A footnote on rehearsal periods. I saw a terrific piece in the London International Mime Festival last Thursday which had also beeen developed over more than two years. It had also had twenty-one weeks of rehearsal, fourteen on the constructed set. Just as well we've got such a tremendous team on this show to create this epic journey in just five weeks (which for English children's theatre, however, is positively sybaritic - as Miss Minton might say). And as you can see from Nicci's entry below amazing progress is being made.

John points out to me that one of the lines I've written will almost inevitably come out as 'catshit on your tongue', which justifies a minor adjustment. Sam and Donnaleigh are being heroic about a particularly convoluted section of text where the doubling of the crows (detectives Trapwood and Low) and the twins reaches its peak. And we resolve an ambiguous moment when it had appeared that the Professor was trying to remove Miss Minton's corset during their first cup of coffee together. All I'd intended was that he offered (and was prevented) from calling her by her first name. No wonder Willie and Julie thought the scene implausibly racy...

Patience and a good ear

A piece I've written for the programme about adapting the book.

Patience and a good ear. They are the things Maia needs if she is to write down the songs she hears in the Amazon. They are also what I’ve needed over the years I have been writing this play.

When I have told people I am adapting Journey to the River Sea, the response from people who have read the book has been to tell me how much they loved it. Which is good – and not so good. Good, because it shows how many people think as I do, that Eva Ibbotson has written a wonderful book. Not so good, because it makes the job of adapting it even more daunting. There are an infinite number of ways to disappoint when you change something which people love as it is.

And adapting is change. Take the length of the play, for example. If you simply read the book out loud it would take many hours. The play will last closer to two hours, so some (most!) of the words have to go. As soon as I start to make decisions about what stays and what goes, there is the risk that we lose something which another reader really likes. There is no way to avoid that, particularly as I want this to be a play which can be enjoyed by people who have not read the book as well. (Although I’ll be thrilled if we inspire people to read it as a result.)

One difference between coming to a play and reading a book is what your imagination has to do. When you’re reading (or being read to) the pictures are ones you create in your head. That’s why people can have strong feelings about what actors look like in a story they love. When I talked to Ros, the director, we both wanted to make sure our audiences got to use their imagination as well. That gave me the freedom to create places by what the characters say and do. There are some early scenes set on a boat for example – I hope you will ‘see’ that boat where Maia and Clovis meet for the first time as vividly as you would if you were reading about it.

This way of telling stories goes back to the very beginnings of theatre. In film and television we ‘cut’ from one location to another mechanically – two events which did not happen in the same time and place can be recorded separately and pasted together. On stage, we will also be switching rapidly from one place to another – and at some points there may be two places on stage (and in your imagination) at the same time.

What I have tried to do when writing the play is to be true to the spirit of the book. I feel there is something special about the ideas and emotions and ‘feel’ of the book. I have tried to be faithful to that, rather than try and fit in every detail. But every change I have made has been done with the aim of giving our audience an experience as rich and funny and thrilling as the book is. Like Eva Ibbotson I was fascinated by the image of an opera house in the jungle – a huge theatre built deep inside the Amazon rainforest. The contrasts in that image are some of those I have explored in writing the play.

I travelled to the Amazon to find out more about the world Maia would have known. The people who paid for the opera house to be built were incredibly rich, but that wealth came from the work of people who were paid miserably if at all, and treated in appalling ways. The opera which was seen in that theatre, with its extravagant scenery, vast orchestra, and huge voiced singers is in one sense the opposite of all that is ‘natural’: the spontaneous living world of the rainforest untouched by technology. I walked through the rainforest and I sat in that theatre and both experiences were extraordinary. I hope the play manages to give you a sense of both worlds.

Look out too for how we decided to tell the story of what happened before Maia came to the Amazon. This is one of the ‘new’ elements – something which happens in the play which does not happen in the book. I knew I wanted to include the story of the ‘curse’ on the place the Carters live, but it would have taken a long time to act out the events, and meant introducing new characters who never had anything to do with Maia. My solution came from what I discovered about how people in the Amazon tell stories. I researched the rhythms and styles of traditional storytelling there and thought about what kind of language I should use to write that section. In the same way as it felt right to make the Goodleys an opera company in the play, and bring the peculiar wonders of opera on stage in the adaptation, I wanted to give a sense of another type of theatre, one which has its roots in Amazon life. I hope that comes across in the writing and the design and staging of that part of our story.

In the end, however, what I want is for you to go on a journey with these wonderful people which is as fulfilling as the journey you take with Eva Ibbotson’s book. It’s a different route to the same place, that’s all.

A day in the rehearsal room!

Well what an amazing 2 weeks has passed us by (so quickly)! The rehearsal room has been a colourful place to be in with dancing, singing, exploring and acting! I cant believe we are in week three already! We are at such a positive stage at this point in rehearsal we even did a staggered run of Act One on Friday. The daily rehearsal room consists of lots of exploring of characters, working the staging of the scenes and how are we going to get the props on stage!!! I have written so many notes, ive nearly finished my second notebook!!! Eveybody is working so hard, there is such a fantastic team atmosphere!

Proptastic

The Stage Management have props coming out of their ears. Today myself Beatrix and Nettie spent the afternoon in the Covent Garden Antiques market looking for...
Opera glasses
Monocle
Mirror for clovis
silver tray for semolina
leather pouch for clovis
baskets
a whicker bird cage
a fob watch
our trip was very successful finding almost all of the above save for the silver tray, but they are not exactly hard to come by. Now I find my back aching from my all too heavy rucksack. After our covent garden frolicking I headed alone :-( to Hammersmith where the charity shops and cheap market bizarre style tiendas yield all sorts of wonders, it was here that I finally found something that, with a little tinkering could pass for a bird cage, three interfitting baskets (think russian dolls) I plan to upturn them, knock their bottoms out and lash them together thus creating one big tall basket (genius I hear you cry, lets see if it works)

Now I rest tomorrow we have a dance rehearsal and I plan to strut my stuff in the jungle and try to get some of those capoeira kicks to head height, so that passerbys will think me Jackie Chan, and will believe it with such conviction that I myself will start to believe that I am Jackie Chan and... I digress.

After dance tomorrow I don my ASM cap and will head to the national theatre props hire store where I am told an old fashioned insecticide pump awaits, this will be for Mrs Carter to use as she sprays any foreign foods that come her way.

Will I have to stop being your little boy?

One week in and work is non-stop. I arrive this afternoon to find on one side of the rehearsal room Matthew working with John on Clovis's opera scene. For those of you who don't remember that from the book, that's another change. Little Lord Fauntleroy is now an opera performed by the Goodley Company, which gives even more tension to whether Clovis's voice can survive. But it does mean for poor John that he's got to sing the beginning of the song in a demanding falsetto.

Willie meanwhile has been working on Mr Goodley's show-stopping (or at least show-stealing) numbers, and I passed David sat in the Unicorn stairwell practising on his guitar. On the other side of the rehearsal room, Ros and Nicci are with Liam and Lucy discovering what goes on for Maia and Finn when they first meet in the jungle. Can Maia trust Finn, can Finn trust Maia?

The rehearsal room is now lined with fascinating spiders - not jungle creatures but diagrams created by the actors connecting names to aspects of each characters' personality, her or his inner life, desires and wants. Tony drops in for a bit of rehearsal and in the break we talk about how rare it is for directors to see how each other work. Ros talks about how over the last two years she's been physicalising more of the process of actors discovering what is going on for their character at key moments of the play. Each section is discussed and those big moments of tension, or change or emotion identified. For example, looking at Clovis singing there was: when Clovis misses the note and his voice cracks; when Clovis regains his voice; when his voice goes irrevocably deep and when he runs from the stage. All of which may happen in one or two minutes, but everyone present (Mr Goodley, Sergei and the twins as well as Clovis and Maia) expresses in a word and physically what they want at each point. It's a version of a process many actors and directors use in exploring text, but Tony, Ros and I have an interesting discussion about the possible variations. Here it's a looser and more pragmatic process than the one I sat in on as an Assistant Director to Max Stafford-Clark. As you might know from his Letters to George, he works with actors assigning a (strictly transitive) verb to every line, which can do your head in. But it gives a ruthlessly specific framework for a scene and forces action to take place on stage. Which isn't so far from the aspirations of the various improvisers I met at the weekend's Devoted and Disgruntled event brought together by Phelim McDermott. But it's too late for more on that now.

the waltz of doom

ok so i think i have got this thing workin....

well this is only going to be short but thought it might be of interest to note how i am gettin on with the doomed waltz!!! when willy takes me in his arms and swirls me round, i feel like am absolute princess, not the actual ten tonne elephant my boyfriend Paul described me as i practised with him...thanks! what is proving difficult however, is leading in the dance. i find it really hard to have the strength and clarity of my body to lead the lovely Sam around the dance floor. it usually ends with us giggling as we step on one anothers toes! however we are improving and soon we will be way better than the ever graceful willy and julie!!! Now where is Paul hiding? doesnt he know i have to practise leading him....

The Company Bonds...

Hello - David here. Thought I'd be the first cast member to blog otherwise it will just be something we talk about in the pub - where we have been for the first time tonight for essential cast bonding.

Restraint was shown by all following a long day involving Capoeria, singing, instrumentalism, costume design presentation (fab designs from Nettie) and obsessive cleaning (both character based and in the green room... The Guilty Know Who They Are - but can always attribute it to character research).

Good to feel we're getting a hold on the production's concept - albeit a very loose hold at this stage.

More later...

Now come on the rest of you lazy actor types... get blogging!

The life-cycle of the moth...

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence.

Not my words but Harold Pinter's, from his Nobel lecture Art, Truth and Politics which is a tremendous exploration of what it is to write a play as well as a condemnation of the 'tapestry of lies' which sustains our politicians' power. It has a fantastic account of how the openings of Old Times and The Homecoming emerged, so fits with today's title, the opening line of our play. It emerged from a very different place - I'm conscious that the profoundly good things which we've heard yesterday and today in the first two readthroughs come from Eva Ibbotson's book. Not just some of the best lines and situations but the passion and the humour too. Although the surface of the script has moved further and further from the book, I hope the core of both remains the same. I'd be interested to hear (so do post comments or entries) on how people who know both the book and play feel about all that.

We hit one of the areas of departure today when Sam rightly pointed out that The Mayfair Academy for Young Ladies, the Edwardian girls' school where both book and play begin, is in the novel rather a good place to be. In contrast, I've picked up on the comment that 'even the best teachers have trouble trying to make the Rivers of Southern England seem unusual and exciting'. It feels to me a better way to contrast the ideas of education in the story if Maia begins in a Gradgrindian environment of facts and rote learning. But I also realise that from the very first line I'm therefore shaving away complexities which exist in the novel. We've lost the marvellous sisters Miss Banks and Miss Emily for example, but in getting down to a manageable number of roles to be divided between eight actors, some characters (lots!) were always going to disappear.

The challenge is for the texture of the production - physical, vocal, visual, musical - to create its own depths. Like the lovely relationship which emerged this afternoon between Anna (Sam) and Dora (John) - Anna eager to enjoy conjuring the horrors of the Amazon for Maia and exasperated by Dora's softness. Who knows if that moment will find a place in the production - or how may people will consciously notice it if it does? But like a beautifully crafted sentence - and Eva Ibbotson has many of those - it adds depth and layers which an audience can absorb, as readers do good writing.

This was going to be a brief entry. I'm hugely behind with everything else I should be doing, in part because of a coffee spillage all over the keyboard as I was typing up the rehearsal draft last week. But then maybe I should have got it done before Christmas like I planned. I wonder how Harold Pinter is with deadlines?