Rehearsal Notes, Dec 10th/11th

The piece really came together in these rehearsals. The pressure of the looming performance meant that as actors and collaborators everybody stepped up and worked especially hard.

We realised that the most difficult thing about the staging of this play was not projecting our voices or making our movements clear; the hardest thing was remembering the cues for all of these things, as some of them were as tiny as a “point” hand sign. If one member of the group didn’t commit to a movement or line, the whole energy drops and it is no longer a full Brechtian ensemble. Writing down moments on a script is vital, and I found that any movement I didn’t note down, I then forgot in the next rehearsal.

Learning how to manipulate the props in the space was challenging also, particularly when certain members of the group had not learnt their lines. This demonstrated how important it is to be off script when working as an ensemble as everybody is dependent on each other. Including the tents, banners and rostra meant a whole new lot of logistics needed to be thought out such as the journey the “STOP BEING EMOTIONAL” sign travels and how we can weigh the tents down outside. Learning how to incorporate all of these elements of performance was an interesting task, as it demonstrated to me that as an actor it is my responsibility to organise these things before the issues arise. An example of this was when we secured a car to use as lighting in the dark performance space.

These last minute and pressured changes really helped the group engage fully with the performance and make the most out of rehearsal time. Having a full day to focus on the play was worthwhile, because then we could focus entirely on the task in hand and not only achieving the best grades possible but also creating and performing the best piece of political theatre we could.

SCRIPT ANNOTATIONS:

A mark of my track onstage