LEB: BLOCKED AND BLOGGED

Well, we’ve made some major progress this week on the play which is always pleasing to report. We’ve been rehearsing for a couple of hours each day (with a break now for the weekend) and I’m delighted to say that we’ve succeeded in blocking the entire play from start to finish! Of course at this stage the whole rehearsal process is a very rough and ready affair. The real intricacies of the scenes, the emotional dynamics and so forth will come later as we really work on each section, but at the moment we’ve successfully worked out what’s happening in each scene, where people will be on the stage and so forth, as well as putting particular thought into moments that require specific choreography, such as a moment when one character attacks another. We’re rehearsing in small spaces at the moment, so it’s important to go over scenes a lot to make sure we know exactly what we’re doing at each given moment so that when we get into the larger space of the Studio itself, it’ll be much easier to open out what we’re doing and keep the action the same, but just play it out more to the audience. The audience is a key aspect when blocking a play. In the Studio, the audience surrounds the stage on three sides so it’s important to make sure there’s always a decent balance onstage, that anybody seeing it from any angle will be able to see something at any time, though obviously different angles will get different overall experiences of the play, which makes it all the more interesting to stage. On Friday’s rehearsal we were joined by Nicole Wait who watched what we’d done so far and provided feedback, it’s always useful to have someone not involved with the show come in to give an honest opinion on it, so this was a useful exercise.

Having blocked the whole thing, we’ll be rehearsing again on Monday to go over what we’ve done and start working more intensively on particular scenes. After that, we’re taking a break of about a week as Frith, Steve and myself are all going on mini-holidays, but we’ll be regrouping on the 9th of July to carry on with the work. There’s also been some good developments in the production side of things. Firstly, Jake has taken care of the publicity side of things so by next week we should be starting to put up posters here and there and start the advertising campaign. I’ve also been into the Playhouse to talk to George from Stage Management and then Dave, the Studio Technician. George was very helpful in securing us a few of our trickier props or furniture items, such as an armchair and a crate, while talking to Dave was invaluable as he’ll become an integral part of the show when we get into production week. I’ve been asked to draw up a rough schedule for production week and a rough idea of the lighting and sound plan, which I’ll bring in to him next week, and I’ll also pop into the Costume Department to ask about some of our trickier costumes.

So, with developments onstage and backstage, it’s all shaping up nicely, and I’ll hopefully be seeing you all with more good news in the next blog!

Joz

LEB: The Read-Through

Today was the read-through and the first rehearsal for Last Eyes Blinded. The read-through is always a somewhat relaxed affair, it’s about getting a general handle on the play and asking any questions that need asking, so this wasn’t a massively high-pressure situation. We simply all gathered at my house and, after I’d finished interminably eating a yoghurt, we started reading through the play, stage directions and all, to get an idea of what we were doing. It’s at this stage that a few major decisions start to be made. Of course when I wrote these plays I had no idea what sort of space they might be performed in or what sort of budget might be behind it, so a lot of the ideas behind staging in the script are ideals, many of which we couldn’t possibly realise on our small budget. So it’s at this stage that we start to have ideas of what the set will actually be like, and we do now have a working diagram. This means we have to bear in mind that certain sections of the play will need to be staged differently to how they are written as the furniture onstage will be slightly different. Also, as we read through certain sections or lines are considered for revision and editing or even complete cutting, depending on whether they feel natural or even necessary as we read it aloud for the first time. This is the sort of thing we can work on as we rehearse those particular scenes, after we’ve seen if there’s a particular means of staging that section that works better than another.

After the read-through we had to wait until Jake turned up so he could take a few headshots of us all for the flyers. Jake had spent the morning sorting out all our marketing issues, talking to the people at EcoPrint who will hopefully be producing our posters and publicity material. Jake had also had a very helpful talk with everybody at the Playhouse and came with important information on one particular trouble-spot, that being a gunshot that is fired during the course of the play. To use an actual gun onstage would, we knew, involve certain legal and safety issues, but we now discovered that those issues outweighed the necessity of having a gun onstage at all, and so we have settled for an offstage sound effect which will work much better over all. This is a very useful thing to have discovered this early, and will save unnecessary confusion later. Tomorrow rehearsals start properly with the blocking of the first duologue scene between Frith and Ollie, and rehearsals will continue all this week. Also, we’ll hopefully be going into the Playhouse to sort out any other contractual and admin business that needs doing at this stage. See you all in the next blog!

Joz

Last Eyes Blinded – Conception to Rehearsal

Well, hello there. I’ve been asked to write this shiny nice new blog for you all, to keep you all up to date with how the production is going. Ironically, we’ve actually already had the first rehearsal, but I need to write a bit about the conceptual stage first, so here we go.

As a few of you might know, last year No Answer produced the first part of this trilogy in the Salberg, which sold to not a massive audience, but a very appreciative one who were keen to see more in the future. There were no concrete plans to perform the second play, even though it had been written, but we had all secretly hoped that when the time got a little nearer, we might be granted permission to come back and perform again. If we wanted to put forward a production for the Playhouse’s approval, then we needed a decent idea of how it was going to shape up, so we started thinking about our approach to the second play quite early on, back at Christmas in fact, particularly with a view to casting. I was to be in the cast again reprising the role of Mundane that I played last year, and it was decided that Steve Bennett, who played Musk last year, should also return to play the role of Anguish, due to a certain connection between the two characters. We wanted to cast Tom Learner, who played the role of Also last year, in the role of Beaujolais, as in Paperwork he was practically mute and it might be nice to give him more to do. However, Tom was sadly uncertain if he’d have enough time to commit to the project, so instead we are rejoined by Ollie Malam, who played Gerard last year and conveniently enough has the same coloured hair as the actress playing his sister. This meant all the male parts were cast and in the female roles we have newcomer and fellow UEA student Frith Taylor as Miracle; Samantha Scott, founder of Haystack Productions as Bridget; and Alice Phelps, perhaps familiar as Hermione from John Cox’s production of The Winter’s Tale as Bella. General wonder boy Jake Anders will again be our Creative Support Director, sorting out all that complex behind-the-scenes stuff that we actors find so difficult ourselves!

With a cast and a general idea of what was going on decided upon, there was nothing else we could do until several months later, when we officially approached the Playhouse with hopes that we might be allowed to perform again. Our friends Mark Powell and Abigail Harte in the Participation, Education and Outreach department could see no problems with us coming back and sent us along to Tim Croall in Marketing, who helped Jake and myself out with how we should submit our production for inclusion in the brochure. After that it was back to uni for me, and I was notified by email by Mark that Philip Wilson, the Playhouse’s Artistic Director, had ok’ed the production and so we were officially placed in the brochure for the autumn season! After this major development it was time to think more actively about how to put the production together. It’s a massive honour to be included officially in the brochure this year, and it means that it’ll be a great help when it comes to the marketing side of things. The next job was to draw up a rehearsal schedule, trying as much as possible to avoid people’s absences, though sometimes this is inevitable and we’ll have to work on scenes without a particular person.

Jake had already started looking into marketing and suchlike by visiting printing companies and trying to find advertising slots, but for all of us on the creative side of the production it was simply a matter of waiting until the read-through, when the play would really start to take shape.

Last Eyes Blinded

“God loses faith in mankind, she destroys everything. And the people scream at her indifference, and the animals scream with them.”

The weight of sin proving too much for a negflectful God, Earth has been abandoned and destroyed in a firey Apocalypse. Five individuals, however, have survived the catastrophe and now gather to question why they are still alive. Miracle, driven mad by her fear, attempts to rule the others through barbarity and horror, while her brother Beaujolais desperately tries to restrain her and inspire love in the others. The tired and despairing Bridget steadfastly attempts to protect herself from Miracle’s wrath and care for her senile, dying husband Anguish, while the young bride Bella mourns the loss of her happiness and finds peace in a kind of wisdom ahead of her years. As they struggle together, a final figure arrives, hiding from the misdeeds of his past, a demonic monster now at peace, and somehow familiar to Anguish’s dying mind.

Last Eyes Blinded Poster

Last Eyes Blinded Flyer

“Last Eyes Blinded” is the sequel to “Paperwork,” produced last year by No Answer to great acclaim.

4th, 5th and 6th September 2008 – 7:30pm
Salberg Studio, Salisbury Playhouse

Tickets £7 (£5 concessions) – Available from salisburyplayhouse.com or from Salisbury Playhouse Box Office (01722 320333)