I have been very bad about keeping my blog up to date. I have been busy working on my new play which is going to be workshopped in April and is nowhere near finished and there is nothing like the threat of public humiliation to get me moving. I have also been teaching some writing classes. I am also lazy. I should learn to type. It takes me ages to type stuff. I installed a DVD to help me and all that happens is a parrot keeps popping up and telling me it is time to rest my wrists, god knows what it thinks I am doing on here.
The thought of having a painfully unfinished script read has kept me away from rehearsals as I work on creating my amazingly productive three pages a day – woohoo! I have only been in a couple of times but I am in for a full day tomorrow and hopefully more days next week. Writing for theatre is a real shot in the arm for a writer, you are actually involved in and wanted in the development process. You get to keep making improvements and tweaks, your script is still in your hands as it were.
The actors have time to play with their characters, to find their way into the story. A lot of time is spent working on scenarios and moments that happen ‘off’ the page which are hinted and are important to the script and the story but never explicitly shown. For example, in the play there is a moment that is alluded to and worries other characters, a moment between Pete and Bethany. In rehearsals this moment is explored, improvised, acted, discussed and it lends depth and understanding to the dynamics between the characters on stage.
This is what goes on in the first part of rehearsals, it is not a case of reading and learning lines. It is all about the characters and how the actors make those characters their own. In the process the writer leans a lot, in my case it is knowing what your characters bring to the play and the stories that have happened to them are as important as the one they tell. Like any real person a character carries their mistakes, hopes, fears and past with them.
A writer must know their characters and have done the back story work because the actors will not miss the gaps in your story and you can bet your last penny that whatever you thought you had got away with, skirted paste, you haven’t. You will be held to account, in the best possible way. I am lucky, the actors without exception are dedicated, talented, hardworking and smart.
I like being in rehearsals, I enjoy seeing the actors and director work together. I am engaged by the layers they discover and develop but at the same time I want to take a step back, to let them get on with it. if I am honest there is something liberating in handing it all over into capable hands. I have messed about with, rewritten, scraped, started, moulded, abandoned, resented, and loved this script on and off for four long years and now I want somebody else to snap it into shape. I feel like a mother who has kept their spoilt child at home too long and is now sending a slightly out of shape and flabby son into the army, to be made into a man who can make his bed complete with hospital corners. I want the ‘team’ to be gentle and firm with it, to get rid of the slack, enhance the positive and camouflages the flaws. But I want them to slap it into shape and like a cowardly dictator I prefer not to be present when there’s blood shed because of me.
I’ve been told that tomorrow the actors have questions about the script, I bet they bloody do.
1 Comment
March 12, 2008 at 8:45 pm
I find it interesting to read about these mysterious stages of the production- ones that the audience have no knowledge of but that have such a significant effect on what we will see.
Really looking forward to the play, good luck with the new one.