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