Tuesday 24th/ 25th two in the morning

Today was one of those days when loads of things appeared to go right, and did go right, but all the same at the time of writing it feels a little flat. These things happen.

Two things in particular have gone well. Firstly the play has been moved from the 11.30 slot to the 9pm slot, un horario central. Which is better for all concerned, from the point of view of audiences, actors and the director not having to wait until 1 in the morning to have a drink. The news came through this evening and the whole company is delighted.

Secondly, I’m moving. Furthermore there’s action on the workshops, so maybe I’ll get to do some more. As for the rest, will save for the morning. If 2am is not late here, neither is it early, and it is, as a friend might say, a school night.

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Wednesday morning. Five weeks in. During the rehearsal last night we worked on 4, then did a run. The run was technically OK, but lifeless. I was a bit disappointed, but better to happen now than later.

However the rehearsal of 4 was one of those rare rehearsals. Where you’ve worked something out, something that appears to be functioning, and yet it still it feels as though the scene is lacking something. CG returns to confront JR two years after it appears MC has disappeared. To begin with the scene feels like a repetition of the three previous conflicts. But this time there’s a difference, as the therapist/ patient scenario does not apply. We’d worked on V finding ways to communicate her anxiety to JR, and it was all fine, but never convinced. Then, working the scene again, not really knowing what the answer was, it started to become clear that, as opposed to the three other scenes, the less eye contact there is, the more CG is in her own head, the more dramatic it becomes. In classical terms, the conflict of this scene is no longer between therapist and patient, but the patient and herself. We did the scene with V never looking JR in the eye, reversing everything, and suddenly it was transformed.

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