Monday 13th April Bartolomé Mitre

Tonight I stopped off in a bar on my way home, ordering steak and chips and a beer, all good and much needed after not having eaten properly since Friday. The bar was simple and pleasant, with the inevitable TV. Which happened to be showing a natural history program giving a ‘top ten’ breakdown of the most disgusting creatures on the planet. The flies section was accompanied by an animation of a morph like figure vomiting. Followed by a section on dung beetles. Followed by a weird bird that scavenges off giraffe dung, and feeds off giraffe blood. I fled before the program got to number one.

It’s been that sort of a day and, as I feared, it looks like being that sort of a week. Omar appeared with tables and chairs, which are functional but scarcely dazzling. Around 5pm, as I was trying to run through 4 in the space, Karina called to say they had had a row about money and Omar had threatened to take the chair which he hadn’t brought yet home with him. Something of course he’d never do, which she should have realised, it was just a gambit, but she was not in control of things. Needless to say Omar appeared 20 minutes later, with the missing chair. However he then went through the slightly melodramatic process of calling everyone together to explain how he was now subsidising the design budget. Karina arrived and I left them to talk it through and 15 minutes later peace had broken out, some kind of solution achieved.

We did a run at 8, and had to be out of the theatre at 10. Everything felt chaotic, with no time to make adjustments or even give proper notes. F was preoccupied, and all three actors were adjusting to the chairs, the lights, the music. As is normal, but the chaos is sharpened by the lack of time to acclimatise. Like turning up in La Paz on the same day you’re going to play Bolivia…Maradona can testify to the results. Thankfully the piece has shape, and that seems robust, but it lacked life. Not entirely surprisingly, but it is frustrating that we cannot work through things in a sensible and effective fashion.

Before letting people leave I called them together and explained that, in spite of the fact we’re working around a fucked-up timetable, we had to remain focussed and concentrated, in order for the play not to go backwards. Omar promised to have all the design elements ready for tomorrow evening. Tomorrow Claudia and I will work more on the lighting states. Claudia is a pleasure to work with, but I’m not entirely convinced by the laid-back approach to the incorporation of technical elements. I chatted briefly to Ana after everyone had left. Ana said that technical weeks were always like this, and of course they are, but it’s frustrating and dissatisfying that the rigorous approach the actors and I have taken over the past 7 weeks is not replicated now. I fear the whole week will be like this. Minor chaos and dung beetles.

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