It’s been a big week for team Lee Harvey Oswald– we’ve now worked our way through Part 1 and Part 2 is well on its way. Gemma and Adam haven’t stopped fighting but Alex assures me that it’s all part of the play especially when Richard Hay, our brilliant fight director, is in the room. We are still on the hunt for Hilary’s perfect period glasses (for professional and not personal use) and Patrick is edging ever closer to having read the entire Warren Commission Report (no mean feat as it stands at 26 volumes!).
Now that we’re half-way through the rehearsal period (something we refuse to talk about in the room), I thought I’d share a few insights into the production’s working methods. I met Alex Thorpe, the director of the show, whilst we were both working as theatre facilitators with Almeida Projects. This is my first real step into the world of professional directing, and I am in some ways surprised at how similar Alex the facilitator and Alex the director is. After the first day’s read-through we spent several days with the cast going through the script and throwing out questions about the text whilst putting it into context. We then started looking at individual scenes in act one, with the cast reading through each scene, unpicking meanings, the story development and their character’s intentions (as in life, what they say they want might not be what they’re really aiming at and what they don’t say is equally as important as what they do). Then, with all of that information, we start putting it on its feet (sketching).
It strikes me that Alex is excellent at asking questions of the actors, being open to their ideas and not moving them around the space as he imagines it ‘should’ be done. By really interrogating the text and what the playwright Michael Hastings has given us and selecting any research that is helpful to the development of a character or scene, Alex is facilitating the cast to get inside of the text and then asks them to make choices that are the truest to our (now) shared interpretations of the play. It is fascinating to see how each scene fills with colour and detail as we all get to grips with it. Like a facilitator, Alex’s method guides the rehearsal process to ensure that everyone in the room has a creative voice, takes ownership of the work and has a real investment in it; it also makes for a really creative atmosphere in which to work, utilising the brain-power that we have in the room (this is an incredibly intelligent cast and make no mistake). We’ve got two more weeks to go and I’m really looking forward to going through the same process with the next section of the play and then tying everything together for our first run through. More anon.
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