It's a good man does it.

Good rehearsal today. I'm amazed how much little things can affect my mood, and how much that affects rehearsal. I had a good day today; took the day off, got free press tickets to the four big screenings at the Brighton Film Festival (The King's Speech, Never Let Me Go, Howl and Somewhere. I'm so excited!), took myself to the cinema (The Social Network. Sorkin and Fincher are on top form as always and Andrew Garfield further proved his worth as my future husband. Go see it.), and then went to my favourite cafe to do some reading for my course. The guy who works there was nice to me and gave me my coffee for free, and the whole day put me in such a good mood that i smiled all the way to campus.

We got started slightly late, and since we aren't rehearsing tomorrow as we normally do because of a drama society fundraiser, i decided that we'd block both act 2 and act 4 today, so i was eager to get going. We had a very quick warm up and got straight in to act 4. It all ran pretty smoothly, and there were some really beautiful moments, even in the first run through. Act 2 also went very well. We had rehearsed half of that before, and it is the act with the least amount of people in it, so my job tonight was relatively easy. Again, there were some beautiful moments. I was amazed at how much we managed to get done. My two leads are wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to them having learned their lines so that i can fine tune the moments where there are just the two of them on stage. The rehearsal ran long, but we managed to get everything done, and now the whole play is tentatively blocked. This is where the fun starts for me. I like fine tuning, rather than placing people. The detail is what interests me, and that can only get done once the basic blocking is in place.

One issue that i have to deal with is that there are one or two people in the cast who need a lot more work than others. I'm not sure how to go about giving them the attention and direction they need without making them feel picked on or singled out. I don't want to damage their confidence, but at the same time I need to call them out. I might run some one on one rehearsals to focus on specific areas, but the characters only really appear in large group scenes where they have lots of people to bounce off, so I'm not sure this will be the most productive thing. I really don't want them to feel insecure, but I'm not sure what the most tactful and useful way of dealing with this is.

Tomorrow I'm doing more work on act 2, trying to get it looking smooth and polished as much as possible. Lots of my cast are in the fundraiser, so I'm rehearsing with the cast i have, but i think it'll work out. Better that than cancel rehearsal and lose a day.

"Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed."

 Hope you had a very happy Halloween.

Science is fun

Thank you msnbc for brightening up my evening. I like it when geeks get rude.

The phallic mushroom


 Herpetologist Robert Drewes at the California Academy of Sciences is reportedly thrilled to have a 2-inch-long, penis-shaped mushroom from the African island nation of Sao Tome and Principe named in his honor, Phallus drewesii.

"He wasn't offended by it," says Jameson. "I mean, wouldn't it be cool to have a new species named after you?"

Drewes initiated extensive biodiversity studies on Sao Tome and Principe and dedicated more than 30 years of his life to research in Africa. The shroom's discoverers said they named Phallus drewesii after Drewes because of that dedication.

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How can you not smile?

Make me dance, I want to surrender

This has been in my head for the past 2 weeks and it only gets better.



I love Stuart's weird little dance.


Very quick one today before i pass out from exhaustion.
We did act 3 today, and it went a lot better than i thought it would. One of the main actors in the act text me about 10 minutes before rehearsal started to tell me that he was ill and wasn't coming, so that cast a bit of a shadow, but luckily my fabulous producer Sarah was there to read in for him.

For the most part everything went well, although slow and stilted, like yesterday. One hindrance was the changing of rooms. Due to room booking difficulties, which i explained yesterday, we have to keep breaking up the rehearsal to move to a different room, and today half an hour was lost because the people who were in one of the rooms before us didn't clear out when they were supposed to. After a stressful 10 hour day on campus I didn't take this particularly well, but i think the cast picked up on my stress and blasted through the act once we got going in a very focused and professional manner.

I'm growing more confident with every rehearsal.

On an unrelated note, my fabulous boots arrived today, and not only are they stunningly beautiful, they are also unbelievably comfortable. I wore them for over 11 hours today, running around like a mad thing from rehearsal to meeting to newspaper office to another rehearsal and they didn't hurt one tiny little bit. Also, they make me 6 foot 1, which can only be a good thing.
I'm never taking them off.

Stand by me

Stand By Me from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Playing For Change
Song Around The World
 
My mum sent me that today and it made me smile, so i thought I'd share it.
 
So, week 4 of rehearsals, today we ran through Act 1.
 
The way that The Crucible is set out, there are no scenes, just acts. This means that breaking down rehearsals is difficult, because a lot of the time there are 10 or more people on stage. As I've said before, directing large groups makes me slightly uneasy, if only because I'm worried that people without a lot to say will get bored and resent the fact that they have to come to a 4 hour rehearsal just to say 5 lines. I don't want people to be bored or resentful, i want people to be engaged and happy.
 
So today, in Act One, I had 10 people. We started off with me explaining how the play was going to work in the space, and explaining the set and costume concepts I have come up with. We played some warm up games (and i mean that literally, the room was FREEZING! I had them all running around like mad things so that we wouldn't all get frostbite) and then got stuck straight in.
 
I feel slightly like this rehearsal process is running backwards. We are starting by blocking the scenes in the space, then going back in to develop character and motivation behind the blocking. It's not the way i like to work, but the restrictions on room bookings in the actual performance space means we have to do it this way. After next week we won't be in the space until the week of performance and i want to make sure the staging works in real life the way it does in my head. I felt kind of bad for the actors, being shoved straight in to blocking a scene they had only ever read in read through, and doing it in front of the rest of the cast. I know that i would have felt uncomfortable acting in that situation, and one thing i really try to do as a director is never put my actors in a situation i would not feel comfortable acting myself. But needs must, as they say. All of the actors did extremely well, and didn't seem fazed.

We went through the act slowly, with me moving people about, trying to make the scene look natural and uncluttered, which is tough when there are supposed to be 10 random townspeople in the bedroom of an unconscious 10 year old girl. The acting was rather stilted, and it was slow going, but that is to be expected on a first walk through. After just over 2 hours we finished blocking and took a break for dinner. Coming back after half an hour we ran the act once without interruptions (for the most part) so that i could see how it flowed, and how long it was. Although far from perfect, and running alarmingly long (50 minutes for one act. At this rate the play will be over 4 hours long!), it looks strong enough, and i let the cast go early.

Tomorrow we do Act 3, which is the real bitch. Everyone is on stage for almost the entire thing, and i need to make it look credible, uncluttered and engaging. My leading Lady has bronchitis, so I'm focusing on the acts that she has less to do in, but it's far from ideal. I think I'll get a good night's sleep. I'll need it.

Ooh, in unrelated news, I'm going to a Halloween party as a tattooed lady this weekend, and I've been playing with tattoo designs. This is my favourite Egon Schiele drawing, which i got bored and drew on my arm this morning.
I love it. My friend is tempting me to get it done for real. What do you think?
Dad?

This is gratuitous.

This video makes me giggle like an idiot. Seriously, every time Eddie Redmayne or Ben Wishaw come on screen i turn into a gurgling mess.

I think it's best if you ignore the other two, they're just not as good.



Would it be alright with you guys if i married Eddie? I think Lucy Redmayne has a certain ring to it.

And if he says no, then maybe Matthew might say yes?

I don't know what i can save you from

I got dumped this afternoon. Not quite sure how i feel about that.

On a slightly brighter note, my dad is hilarious, and just sent me this as a response to my previous post:

Sorry you had to find out that way...

But yes, according to the Rev Danny, who sees clearly now the rain has gone, both Seana and I are very gay indeed. Compound gay in fact,because even now we sometimes play Bobby Dy, Lou Reed and the Grateful Dead ON THE SAME EVENING.

And, to further blacken our names,we sometimes do so in the company of consensual (evidently equi-gay) friends - many of whom you know and might have liked until the news came out. Damn, you've even stayed with some of them, in their nasty gay houses.

I guess I might have to clear my 'frequently played' playlist before Ivisit any doctrinaire countries, because there's hardly a single straight tune there. Apart from Mozart, who seems to be a hetero little squealer. Keep pure. I think you should stick to brass band music - but check there's only one oboe player.

xxr

leave to no faith when faith brings blood

I defy you not to smile while listening to this.

 

Really good rehearsal today.
After a completely infuriating day (my computer got a virus last night and i spent 3 1/2 hours trying and failing to get it fixed when i should have been working for my seminar tomorrow) I was tired, cranky and ready to be disappointed with my cast. This is the first rehearsal we've had where everyone has turned up and i had a whole rant about dedication to the play and the rehearsal process planned. I did give them a brief telling off, highlighting how great they COULD be if they turned up, on time and prepared to work, to rehearsals, and then we started the read through of the second half.

It was slow going at first because of edits that i had to make after people dropped out last week, but everyone was focused and seemed to get in to it. The second half ran at almost 2 hours, which is worrying me slightly. I'm not sure what the run time of the show is, but i know any audience starts to resent you after three hours. We'll have to see to that.

After we had finished the read through i gave them a break for 15 minutes, then brought everyone back in for a discussion. I like doing this, partly to gauge people's reactions towards the play and their characters, but also as a way of getting them thinking about the larger ideas of the production. We ended up talking for over an hour and a half, discussing each of the characters in turn, their motivations, their relationships and their effect on and within the play. Everyone was very engaged and came up with some very interesting points, some of which had never crossed my mind.

I came away from the rehearsal on a high, extremely satisfied with the comments that had been made, and with the mood of the cast as a whole. If they keep up the level of enthusiasm and insight that they showed today then the play might not be cursed after all!




On a totally unrelated not, I've been making fun of this website on my facebook today because i find it ridiculous.

http://www.lovegodsway.org/GayBands


The list of gay bands basically means that me, my parents, my friends and almost everyone else i know is gay, which i think will come as news to most of us. The logic behind the safe bands is even more questionable (how is Tom Waits considered "gayer" or more subversive than Amanda Palmer in her full Dresden Dolls glory?). While it is fun to mock such obvious bigoted stupidity, and I'm sure that many of the suggestions for bands were sent in by people who find the site as ludicrous as I do, it also terrifies me to think that there are people in the world who cling to such small minded, fearful, hate-mongering ideas and call it religious purity.
 
With the recent spate of teen suicides related to gay bullying, and the start of the It Gets Better project (which is amazing, check it out http://www.youtube.com/user/itgetsbetterproject), buzzing in my head as i was re-reading the play, these lines of Hale's really stuck out for me, and i thought I'd share them.
 
"Beware... cleave to no faith when faith brings blood. It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift: no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it."
 
I may not be a religious person, but i cannot understand how "judge not lest ye be judged" and "love thy neighbour as thyself" could possibly be mutated into something which causes such pain to confused teenagers that they would rather die than live to see how great life might get. It makes no sense to me.

Do you look for a whippin'?

Week two of actual rehearsals. I woke up angry, having received a barrage of text messages from cast members saying they couldn't make the read through today. Mondays and Tuesdays are rehearsal days, and they've all known this for weeks now, so my patience is running thin. I send round a text saying that the read through is cancelled this evening, making clear just how pissed off I am. I then text my Proctor, my Elizabeth and my Mary Warren and ask them if they have the afternoon free, so that we can get the first half of Act Two up and running. They all say yes, so the day isn't a total loss, but it means i have to change my rehearsal plan AGAIN.

I spend the early afternoon planning the rehearsal between Proctor and Elizabeth. Act Two is probably my favourite in the play, if only because it is the one with the least people on stage. So many of the scenes end up with about 15 people standing around, and while that is something of a spectacle it's a bitch to choreograph. I think this will be the last large cast i work with, the whole thing seems more administrative than creative.

Anyway, i plan some silent improvisations and look over the scene, and when we start our rehearsal i explain how the stage will be set up and how the scene will run. Again, I'm slightly nervous with actors i haven't worked with before, and the fact that everything seems to be going wrong with the play has put me on edge, so i don't come off quite the competent professional i would like my cast to see me, but once we start working it all runs pretty smoothly. Both actors are great, very focused, eager and easy to direct, and in two hours we come up with a workable version of the scene. I leave to go edit my page of the newspaper and eat something, and we meet back in two hours for the second half of the rehearsal.

The next part we are rehearsing comes directly after the scene we did earlier, so it's not too hard to get in to, and the actress of Mary knows both of the other actors already, so the room is pretty relaxed, but for some reason the focus has gone. Everyone is hyper and the scene quickly deteriorates into pantomime. While it is amusing, it is also tiring, and after a while i have to call the room to order. I wanted this rehearsal to be like the ones on Thursday and this afternoon, where we could run the scene a couple of different times, exploring different motivations, but the energy of the group means that I'm forced to be less experimental, more prescriptive in order to ensure we stay focused on the task at hand. I'm not sure giving specific direction this early in the process is particularly productive, but we ended up with a satisfying, if not perfect version of the scene. I sent them away telling them to learn their lines so we could come back to it next week and try and do it off book, in order to really focus on performance.

The day, although different from what i had planned, extremely tiring and more than a little frustrating, ended up being productive and relatively satisfying. I'm hoping that by working the scenes with fewer people in them first, when we come to larger cast rehearsals i can show the rest of the cast the level we have already achieved, and that will encourage them to work equally hard. I recognize that I'm avoiding working with the larger groups to a certain extent, and that there is only so long i can keep this up, but for now I think I'm building my confidence with the group, and getting a better relationship with the lead actors, which will hopefully stand me in good stead for when i have to choreograph the larger scenes.

Basically I'm a chicken and I don't like telling groups of 15 people what to do. This is a flaw I have to work on.

Clockwork colour

A little video i made of a creative hair show i did at the beginning of the summer.



Loved that make-up.