EQUUS – director’s blog 2

Just finished our first ‘proper’ week of rehearsals, meaning we’ve got the text up and moving and began to set some movements and make some decisions. I’m always reluctant to use the word ‘blocking’, when describing setting the actors movements in the space as it feels very rigid and unimaginative – like directing by numbers. There is certainly a good percentage of the play which is mapped out in my head, which is inevitably dictated by the design decisions I made with Lydia a few weeks ago. For example, you can’t get around the set so once you’re off on one side, that’s it you’ve got to enter from that side again so I have the entrances and exits pretty much mapped out already. However, subtleties within scenes, when characters sit, move and stand, can’t be dictated beforehand as those decisions need to be made with the actors, in discussion and with everything justified. I spoke early on about about ‘wants’, which essentially in theatre terminology are objectives. What your character wants leads to actions, how does your character go about achieving that want? The way you go about that action leads to an emotion, which is affected by the circumstances of the scene. For example, if your objective is to find your friend and at the moment they’re not late and you have time to make the show you’ve booked for you’re probably not that bothered but 20 minutes later and you’re going to be late, you may now be anxious and annoyed and probably looking frenetically for them. So we are working on finding the characters wants and letting that lead us movement wise.

EQUUS is a fantastic play for discoveries and for highlighting contradictions in people, which is important to remember, that people are essentially contradictory, we may believe one thing but we may also believe in something else that seems a binary opposite to the earlier belief. Dora, Alan’s mother is a case in point – on one hand she is a deeply religious lady, who believes in the judgment of God but she is also deceptive to her husband, buying a TV behind his back and allowing Alan to previously go and watch TV next door without her husband’s knowledge and knowing he doesn’t approve. So then we need to look at the ‘whys’, why does she feel the need to be deceptive? Each rehearsal we build up a casebook of these characters, which hopefully enables us to be rigorous and truthful in our work and to communicate the realism of the piece and to essentially I suppose allow us to understand how all this has affected and been a cause of Alan’s condition and subsequently his crime.

We are working chronologically through the play and I am trying to work swiftly whilst allowing time for decisions to be made and discussions to be had. Everyone seems to be happy and on board and my shameless introduction of the rehearsal biscuit barrel seems to be doing the trick…hey whatever works! Next week we have a group analyst coming in to talk with us, who is much like a psychiatrist so we hope he can provide useful insights into the workings of a psychiatric hospital and the condition which Alan is suffering from. And we’re also going to visit some horses!