Makers Diary: Dress Rehearsal

This morning I sent out another round of e-mail invites and put a reminder on the portal-staff and student pages. I also got the programmes printed in full colour and they look great. Charly and Ed have offered to usher and so will Lorraine, so I think I am covered.

Olu is now going to come on Sunday and he will be bringing a friend with him.

We managed to fit in an extra session this morning between 9am and 12 noon. We used the extra session to work on the participation toolkit. I am so pleased, it was a great deal more successful than in previous sessions; all of the performers worked together as a team to generate material, it was fantastic. There was a particular soundscape that was really moving and powerful. Richie took some really exciting risks in the session and produced some really solid work as a result. I think the urgency of the situation has knocked some of the humour out of him; I think that he is the most nervous of all of the performers now.

We managed to fit in two full dress rehearsals and pretty much the same issues and notes came up for both of the runs- despite my notes and feedback after the first dress.

The costumes in the first dress run caused some issues as I suspected that they might. Debbie only needs to make some small adjustments to her entrance and undressing but Nikki needs to totally re-think and re-devise her entrance and undressing. Richie’s costume and entrance in terms of dress issues was fine. He is struggling with the shoes but just needs to take them home with him tonight and keep practising his routine in them. All of the performers are going to need a little help from each other to undress; Debs needs help with a zip, Richie shoes and a few other issues. After the first dress run, we spent a little time working on and re-adjusting the entrances and undressing so that in the second dress this would run much smoother.

Richie’s entrance is not all convincing; he is going to have to really work on that tonight. Debbie’s entrance was great; she really sets up her relationship with the material, texts and themes. It is a real shame that Nikki had to re-devise her entrance because her floor work was really exciting and created a distinct relationship with her texts and the themes. The new entrance that she has devised does re-configure this relationship and her performance persona but it approaches the material from a slightly different angle and actually one that I suspect is more truthful than her first.

The opening text still needs work but we are just out of time. Even though Nikki has the text in front of her in the first dress she kept stumbling over her words and it sounded as though she was just reading it. I would prefer her to have learnt the text but they need to sound spontaneous, even if she is reading them off stage. I gave her notes after the first dress and suggested that she needed to take a position on each of the statements and then deliver the text to express that position or attitude. It is not just the words but the way in which she chooses to express them and her attitude to them that is interesting. This was also an issue that came up in the final section of the Moon text that Nikki has. Nikki needs to infuse and deliver the text in a way that tells the audience her stories and how she relates to the texts.

Richie forgets his texts all the time and does not seem clear on what he is supposed to be doing and when…..arrgghh. Unfortunately he does not have the experience to cover and just keep going and the girls do not know their own structure of texts well enough to cover for him or rescue the situation. This is not good at all and I am concerned.

We did not manage to get any audience for the participation other than Lorraine, so it is really difficult to judge how this will manifest itself tomorrow but then that is the nature of this type of work; it will not be complete or whole or any work at all until the audience are there creating the work with us.

There is nothing more that I can do now-tomorrow we are not going to have time to run through for the performers because we will have to set the space and have to set the lights and rigging so that we can have a tech rehearsal. Tomorrow will be our first time in the space with our props and costumes and I am not allowed to change or move any of the lights or rigging…this will be a challenge. I have not made a lighting plan yet, because I have no idea how it will be set and what will be available for us to use. I will have to make those decisions once we get there. This is going to make the set up and tech much longer and more tedious but there is nothing I can do about that. I am hoping that I will be able to create some strong colour washes because I want to create moods and atmosphere rather than light any specific elements.

I can’t believe that tomorrow we are doing it with an actual audience…..although I have only booked 5 tickets in total, despite my widespread ads on campus and the portal. I am just keeping everything crossed that we do actually have an audience or we don’t have a performance at all.

I am going to be techie for the actual performances, so I need to make sure that I get some really good footage because I will be concentrating on cues and lighting rather than what is happening in the performances, I would rather have sat in as part of the audience but that is not looking like an option. I will just have to carefully review the footage afterwards.