Little Angels – director’s blog 4

The lights are positioned and focused, the paints dried, the grass is laid and the satellite dish is up…meaning we are raring to go! There are lots of little limbo states during production week, periods where you’re waiting for the next event to happen. I’m currently limbo-ing before the company arrives at 4.30 for our tech part 1, which we continue tomorrow at 10. The tech for those not ‘in the know’ is the setting of the technical elements, principally the lights and sound into the piece more formulaically, getting the levels right and the length of the transitions from state to state. Its also the first time the actors get into the theatre space, so there’s time to be spent working out the time it takes them to get from the wings to the stage and where props and set need to be positioned. It can be quite a fraught time, with a temper being known to be frayed from time to time. But I think we’re pretty well set and I’m envisaging (and hoping) it’ll go smoothly.

Certain elements and decisions as a director you can’t make until you’re in the actual space with all the actual elements. For example, lengths of music and there in and out points, you can’t set until we know the lengths of journey into and out of the stage space. Positioning of set always needs a refocus in the space, especially as the studio is a thrust stage so you always have to be conscious of making sure you are effectively playing to all three sides. Everyone has paid the same amount so everyone needs an equally good view of the action. I’m always very conscious of this and it needs constant modifications by watching from different positions throughout the tech and dress.

Filling these little limbo moments is difficult I find, as its hard to concentrate on other things, you just want to get going. We are at the stage of needing and wanting an audience. There comes a point in the process where you can’t really see the wood for the trees, you’re too close to it to be able to see it objectively. By this I mean the clarity of choices made, hence the clarity of the characters and story. Until an audience sees it, then lets us know their thoughts, its hard to truly know what you’ve got on your hands. Could it be the greatest play ever written (probably not), or could it be the worse play ever written (definitely not) but where exactly does it fall? The production becomes such a precious thing to you, you love it and nourish it and therefore become very protective over it. Nobody likes criticism, you want everyone to love it, but that’ll never happen. I suppose the best we can hope for is that it communicates to some people. That it has meaning and significance and causes the stirring of feeling and engagement in some way. That would be nice…but we’ll have to wait and see.