Monday 9th

We moved into our rehearsal space. It’s a room above a car park in what V says used to be the offices of coca-cola. To get to it you have to walk through the car park, though a secret passage way, up an unlit flight of stairs and along some empty corridors. In a side room there’s a heap of files, the oldest of which dated from 1966. The room itself has a large puddle which takes up about a quarter of the floor space. There are no chairs, and the loo, which has no light, is flushed using a bucket. It’s the most secretive, basic space you could imagine, but it gives us space to move.

Which probably lead to one of the most satisfying rehearsals in a while, the actors finally released from the chores of text work, meaning I could put my English version of the text aside for the first time. We used a fencing exercise and a kind of blind man’s buff to amplify the scene (3) which Ana has been struggling with. For the first time it contained the lightness or playfulness it requires. We worked from 7 until 10.30, which didn’t feel too debilitating, although the lead-up to the rehearsal, ie all day, felt a little gruelling.

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