Bernarda Alba – Director’s Notes

Exactly half way through a six week rehearsal period and things are going well …. perhaps too well – if that’s possible. The House of Bernarda Alba (or HOBA or Bananaraba as some of the cast have taken to calling it) is a taxing play for a male director – we have a cast of 14 women – but they are all pulling together and working extremely well as an ensemble. I have also been joined in all our rehearsals by Ged Murray, who not only has doubled testosterone but has been doing wonders ‘on the book’ and has started his stage manager’s duties well ahead of schedule.
Some of our first rehearsals had us playing games for a while so that we all got to know one another, but then we got down to the serious task of blocking the pieces where all 14 cast were to be on the small studio space at once without it looking like a rugby scrum.
Some important directorial decisions have been made: whether to use mild or strong chorizo; what colour traditional Spanish Gazpachio should be, and other food related matters.
The back-stage crew are also working exceptionally well as a team with no artificial demarcations of responsibilities. As a director this is all very invigorating – virtually everyone who has attended the rehearsals has brought an open mind and invaluable ideas to the process.

Andrew

Pericles – Director’s Blog 3

 

Pericles Set Model

We are one rehearsal being off getting through the whole play, although this is an ambitious 10 page section in two hours, minus time spent waiting for flaky late cast members and our walking warm-up. But good to be ambitious! Last rehearsal we attacked the brothel scene involving much large fabric, which will be used by the bawd’s (ladies of the night) to wrap up their ‘clients’. As you may imagine this isn’t the easiest section to rehearse…part embarrassment, part imagination, part director-feigning knowledge of brothels (of course I’ve never been in one) However, we gallantly pushed through with the help of a bit of blue mood lighting and Goldfrapp. Frustration was in equal measure as we didn’t have two key cast members for this section, making any sort of detail impossible and hard for the other cast member who has waited long for their section. Attendance ‘tis the curse of youth theatre and one probably never to be cracked with a cast of 35…but generally attendance has been very good. We have talked about the brothel looking and feeling like a harem, reflecting the North African routes of the story. So plenty of lounging, cushions and fabric – camels and sand may be too far but the feel should be of openness, mixed with a dark edge. The bawd’s will come up and from all the different levels, beneath, above, from the sides – like insects invading from all nooks and crannies. As brothels go it probably looks a little too pretty and nice at the moment, the bawd’s are meant to be rotting and a few years past their sell by date, so homework is to work on our rottenness.

 

Once you’re in full scale production it’s difficult for your head to be elsewhere, it becomes all consuming, taking over your life, dreams and everything you see and hear becomes related back to the play ‘…ohh perhaps that crate could work in Tarsus…’. In an ideal world there would be one project to focus on but the reality is fitting it in with the myriad of other pushes and pulls that life and particularly work bring. My other production project I’m working on is An exact science? with our Young Actor’s Company, which I run within the building. This is a devised piece around the questions and ethics of genetics and identity, the main focus of the piece is still in development but I have just confirmed working with writer Cathianne Hall, who will be writing for and alongside the devising process. Juggling two very different pieces is challenging but we’re still a while away from science’s production week. But again that’s the reality and you need to be able and flexible enough to switch your mind and creative energies between projects…whilst also for me creating workshops on ‘African storytelling’ with 7 yr olds…its diverse, its unusual and sometimes takes you a while to figure out who you are, where you are and what you’re meant to be doing that day. Latest model box images are attached from Kelly and the final design is close, to be finalised in the next couple of weeks (cost permitting) Exciting times ahead and revisiting the start of the play next week. This for a director is a tense moment…do they remember anything? Were they even here way back then? Was what I did a bit rubbish the first time? I’ll let you know next week.

Pericles – Director’s Blog 2

Three weeks of rehearsal down and we are just over halfway through the play, so we’ve been shipwrecked once (only one survivor) had a grand tournament (men playing with big sticks) a marriage (bride died (or did she…?) and was thrown overboard), a babies been born then surrogated out and we’re just about to enter a brothel…so your usual dramatic Pericles fair. We played about with the tricky second ship/storm scene last night, which involves about 20 cast members, so logistically it’s a bit of a pig to get through. Practically realising ideas and concepts in your head can be a difficult process especially with large numbers and cast absences (thank you stand-ins) and I think I might need a rethink slightly in concept – the idea is to use large curtains which track across the stage as sails which the cast can manipulate as if blowing violently in the wind. Its difficult imagining this without them in rehearsals, as saying “yeah, there big and might be here somewhere…”, is difficult to imagine – so we’ll see about trying to rig something up in the rehearsals.

 

I’m pleased with how characters are developing and I’m trying to encourage the cast to think about pushing their characterisation beyond what we would deem as ‘realistic’. Shakespeare requires a slightly larger playing than realist theatre and the characters in Pericles are a curious mix of melodramatic, eccentric, contradictory…and some are quite ‘normal’. There needs to be dynamism in everything we do, which is clean and clear with an economy of effort. Drawing you into the characters, their lives and the story rather than the shuffling of feet and over exuberance of movement is crucial. We are finding our feet with the language as I think it feels like wading through treacle a little bit for some of the company as it can feel like a translation process. The understanding and playing of intentions and feelings is right though. This is crucial to effective playing of any text as if you don’t know what you’re saying then the audience has no chance. Especially with old language that isn’t used anymore, as the audience may not understand the word but if the intention behind the word is right meaning will be conveyed (the lesson here endeth…) So next week we’re onto sudden movements of time, jealousy, attempted murder, flower picking, pirate’s and brothels…it certainly ain’t dull. Julian.  

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Pericles – Director’s Blog 1

 

Pericles

This is my first director’s blog for all of you millions of people who may be interested in how our production is going. We’ve just finished our second week of rehearsals on Shakespeare’s epic adventure story with our cast of 35 senior youth theatre members. So far so good and work is progressing well and to schedule with the cast picking up on the stylistic concept and ideas of the piece. It’s rather a mad tale of ship wrecks, lost loves, reunions, jealousy and brothels (well only one actually) The text is sweeping and epic in scale which will be played at a high intensity with a strong pulsing rhythm throughout, making it possibly feel quite filmic whilst remaining very firmly theatrical. I firmly believe in the traditional Shakespearian style of a sparse stage which we will populate and define with people rather than large staging monoliths.

 

 

 

I have just had the first design meeting with Dawn Allsopp and Kelly Sago who are co-designing alongside Lydia Denno in a three pronged design attack team. This I’m sure will lead to multiple creative heads in the pot and so far discussions and sketches reflect the journeying aspect of the text and need for the set to function around and through multiple locations. We are thinking of how to break up the space and there will be a forestage thrusting out into the auditorium to allow maximum proximity to our audience and engagement with the worlds piercing into ‘their space’. I’m very excited by the possibilities and believe we have set a strong concept down on paper and I look forward to the next design stage in late January. Next week I will talk more about rehearsals and how they are progressing but for now goodbye. Julian Ollive.