Flurry

A flash flood of activity this week with rehearsals commencing for The House of Bernarda Alba and starring in a short film as the eponymous Businessman/ Backpacker. Tomorrow I’m participating in a workshop with acting coach Mark Westbrook at the Bothy. I have also continued rehearsing my audition pieces for drama school (see the previous posts), as well as researching funding/loan options should I eventually be accepted for the MA. I have arranged a meeting on Sunday with a theatre director who hopefully wants to work with me in the near future, and I am turning over ideas in my head for penning a 2-hander to feature in the Fiendish Plot’s 2009 season at the CCA. There’s my full time drama-teaching job as well as the work I’m doing with the Quaker Quest committee and I am left feeling quite bushed tonight. But I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course- It’s certainly better than the creative torpor of the last few months.

My preliminary work with the cast of Bernarda has been lovely, although I am chary of committing myself too early to staging/ character/interpretation decisions without first seeing what the actors themselves are bringing into the mix. While KM, my assistant director, is doing a fabulous job, making every effort to pin me down on what I intend to do, and I have several options in mind with regard to costume, sound, the general mise en scene etc, I would rather resist making firm decisions until I have a better grasp of what the actors are doing. I sense the company traditionally favour a safer, more unequivocal and linear approach to the production process from their visiting directors. I need to be strong. Last week I met with Martha, my scenic designer, and spoke of my wish to keep things extremely economic and emblematic. The drawings she’d done were beautiful- an incredibly detailed and realistic Andalusian villa, complete with intricate set dressing. She’s a really fabulous artist. But the drawings were not what I was after at all. To commit to this kind of detail before we’ve really even begun rehearsals might easily ruin any chance of achieving a vital, organic flow to the action. So I am stubbornly resisting the production teams’ ideas being imposed prematurely- at least until the actors have been blocked. Meanwhile I will continue working on the time-honoured principle of ‘Less always = More’.

What does thrill me is the cast’s realisation of just how funny the play is. Yesterday, one actor- Glynis(Poncia)- confessed that she’d been labouring under the assumption it was ‘a slit-your-wrists drama’, and was beginning to realise it really isn’t.
It may end tragically, and the action depicts the most frightful physical, emotional and psychological abuse, but the play is also riotous good fun, especially the opening act…Or is it just me and my sick sense of humour?! Bernada’s brutality, Poncia’s blasphemies and the mourners’ salacious asides feel like delicious black comedy to me! It’s a fine line we’ll be treading but I’m not afraid of audience laughter, as long as we can bring them back from there – which I’m confident we can. (I loved what Pinter said in the interview he gave to Charile Ross just before his death when he said he had two intentions as writer: the first was to to make the audience laugh... and the second was to stop them laughing.) I want to give the audience a more complete experience than the usual po-faced, arty-farty student productions of Bernarda that clog up the Edinburgh Festival each year. I just have to convince the cast that I they can enjoy it a lot more. Right now their shoulders are hunched up in guilty, restrained laughter- like naughty school girls being dared to shout “Bugger” in Lorca’s sacred, poetic sepulchre!

“Am I allowed to do that?!”

Yes! You are! Do it more!

The filming I did on Tuesday in the Tron bar and King St was with 6 students from the RSAMD. An expenses-only job but I liked the themes and the writing- and having not much experience of working on film I felt more comfortable with a crew who were learning the ropes too. Being on half-term from school I was available for once. I adopted the advice I’ve often read in acting-for-camera books about establishing a close rapport with the cameraman. Kerr kept commenting on the nuances I was adding to the close ups, which helped add to my confidence as the day went on. AS a stage actor it’s never been a medium I felt entirely comfortable in , but I am keen to get more experience working with the camera. I’m quite good at it I think. The production team are each going to edit together 4 individual cuts of the footage- and I hope that by the end of March I’ll have some good material to put onto a DVD show reel.

I’ve eased off a little on tinkering with my drama school audition pieces these last few days. I don’t want to over-prepare. It’s interesting, not having acted in such a long while, but my approach is different for having had the long rest. Connecting the flow of thoughts for both characters has become the main focus, rather than the emotions or the atmospheres per se. I am really enjoying acting too. After the first few days it began to feel easier, and consequently I’m giving myself less of a hard time than I would in the past. I’m more relaxed. Doing them for video has certainly helped me, in the absence of a director, to make the necessary adjustments to the speeches. I’m pleased with the choice of speeches: they suit me well.

Lord Foppington Fopp from John Vanbrugh's The Relapse

College production 1980