They have wise feet

Julie, Natalie and Richard are standing in a blue plastic paddling pool, while the others wrap them in huge polythene sheets. This is - trust me - a transcendent moment in the life of the Xanti. Water, face paints, coloured paper leaves, and lots of laughter, but also hard work trying to create a vivid and appropriate world for these characters in the last sequence of the story. Matthew's work with singing on the in-breath paid off - suddenly everyone went into the piece on which he'd worked with them yesterday. And it felt it might be possible to create this place where 'everyone's life was like a river' on stage (although the paddling pool didn't cope with some vigorous fish-spearing with the bamboo poles and sprang various leaks.

So it looks like we will want to have real water, which creates various logistical challenges. As does the trapdoor for Finn and Clovis (there are no trapdoors in the new Unicorn stage - the floor of one theatre is the concrete roof of the other). Not to mention the crashing megatherium skeleton which appeared in the script today.

Five days work and we've travelled a very long way. Let's see what everyone makes of it at the sharing tomorrow - there's always the danger that what seems thrilling in the rehearsal room doesn't communicate to anyone else: 'you had to have been there'.