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...
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