The Room Where It Happens
As I have grown older, my boredom threshold has grown infinitely shorter. I love the job where I just have to do a couple of days filming. The corporate market provides many opportunities where really big and demanding jobs can be over in four or five days and the one-off quality of the event, the one chance to get it right aspect, really appeals to my nature of being able to move on.
So having spent the first three weeks of this year in a rehearsal room with the same three actors working on the same play marks a big behavioural departure for me. And I have loved it.
This is the room where it happens. As an actor I can cope with the excitement of the preview and trying things out in front of an audience. I love the cards and presents of a press night. The excitement of showing something for the first time and, of course, the mix and mingle afterwards, but quite often by the Saturday at the end of that first week, I'm ready to get into my car and drive home and not return. Job done.
Yet rehearsals are a constant challenge. A journey of discovery. A chance to explore and a place to fail.
As a young actor, I was at the mercy of several directors who instilled a feeling of "getting it right" in the rehearsal room. I frequently didn't get it right. I felt I'd got it wrong. It was a long stint at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 80s that empowered me to feel that what I was doing was as valid as anything else. That my choices were the ones that were important. The great directors I worked with there, the late lamented Howard Davies among them, moulded my choices and my decisions into their vision. That was their genius.
So the play I've been working on for the last three weeks and which opens to the public on Tuesday has been moulded and shaped by the three brilliant actors who are part of it. I may have had a vision as to how the play worked, but their performance in rehearsal has made me reassess what the play is about. It has pointed out to me differences in tone and texture of the material we are working with, and, above all, it has surprised me with the story that the play has to tell.
They have created the moments. They have taken the story and made it their own. I hope my presence in the room has enabled them to do that and given them the tools that they will need to do that at 7:45 PM for the next three weeks. After all, it's the actors who step onto the stage. As a director, we have to hand it over to them.
We just have to sit there and watch it in the room where it happens.
"The Ruffian on the Stair" starring Lucy Benjamin, Gary Webster, and Adam Buchanan opens at the Hope Theatre on Tuesday 29th of January at 7:45 PM. It plays through until Saturday, February 16. Performances Tuesday to Saturday at 7:45 PM.
Tickets available here though they are selling fast and some nights are already sold out.
the-ruffian-on-the-stair
So having spent the first three weeks of this year in a rehearsal room with the same three actors working on the same play marks a big behavioural departure for me. And I have loved it.
This is the room where it happens. As an actor I can cope with the excitement of the preview and trying things out in front of an audience. I love the cards and presents of a press night. The excitement of showing something for the first time and, of course, the mix and mingle afterwards, but quite often by the Saturday at the end of that first week, I'm ready to get into my car and drive home and not return. Job done.
Yet rehearsals are a constant challenge. A journey of discovery. A chance to explore and a place to fail.
As a young actor, I was at the mercy of several directors who instilled a feeling of "getting it right" in the rehearsal room. I frequently didn't get it right. I felt I'd got it wrong. It was a long stint at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the early 80s that empowered me to feel that what I was doing was as valid as anything else. That my choices were the ones that were important. The great directors I worked with there, the late lamented Howard Davies among them, moulded my choices and my decisions into their vision. That was their genius.
So the play I've been working on for the last three weeks and which opens to the public on Tuesday has been moulded and shaped by the three brilliant actors who are part of it. I may have had a vision as to how the play worked, but their performance in rehearsal has made me reassess what the play is about. It has pointed out to me differences in tone and texture of the material we are working with, and, above all, it has surprised me with the story that the play has to tell.
They have created the moments. They have taken the story and made it their own. I hope my presence in the room has enabled them to do that and given them the tools that they will need to do that at 7:45 PM for the next three weeks. After all, it's the actors who step onto the stage. As a director, we have to hand it over to them.
We just have to sit there and watch it in the room where it happens.
"The Ruffian on the Stair" starring Lucy Benjamin, Gary Webster, and Adam Buchanan opens at the Hope Theatre on Tuesday 29th of January at 7:45 PM. It plays through until Saturday, February 16. Performances Tuesday to Saturday at 7:45 PM.
Tickets available here though they are selling fast and some nights are already sold out.
the-ruffian-on-the-stair
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