Monkey in the Wilderness

It’s the day after our showing, which just leaves me to reflect on how the whole project went before wrapping this blog up. First of all, we started the day with brief hour and a half of rehearsal, running through our scene changes, a few bits of lines, and the songs. Dinah made a fantastic speech about the work we were doing, about the three things that made good acting: talent, application and courage. The first, she said, was already taken care of, because all of us were at Guildhall. The second is what we were effectively learning every day during our lessons at school. Courage was what Dinah really wanted us to go out and show that afternoon, and I think we all did it brilliantly.

First we watched Group A’s showing of Nina Raine’s Rabbit. It was really good to watch, because as a play and an exercise it was quite different to Port in a lot of ways. At the same time, what Christian (who directed it) and Dinah later commented on, was how universal the themes were, and how both plays demanded the same sorts of qualities from us as actors.

We got in to start at 2pm, but unfortunately had to wait half an hour because there had been a mix-up with the staff about the start time. Thankfully Dinah took the edge off our already frayed nerves by starting a discussion with the other group about some of the common themes between our two plays. When that looked like it was in danger of drying up, she got every up and we all played with beanbags until the staff arrived!

Then we did the showing. I can’t really say anything more than what I already have – everyone showed real courage and commitment. For the first time, I think, we all really saw the jounry of the play. It was a journey we’d seen in part in rehearsal once we started running the play in sequence, but it was great that in our final run of the play everything seem to really fit together. I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite like I did when we sang Hometown Glory for the last time, but it felt fantastic and a little terrifying at the same time. The most unexpected thing was watching the effect that we had on our audience. People were genuinely moved, some to tears. Wyn talked to us the day after about this – about how good it was as an actor, to get this kind of reaction from an audience, especially one made up of fellow students. It was much more honest and heartfelt than the stereotypical whooping and clapping that can often happen, and I think for the first time I really realised what it means to “affect” an audience.

So that’s Port! We’re on to Chekhov next term, which hopefully means a new, more punctual blog…

Yesterday was our first day of rehearsing all day from 10am til 6pm. We spent the beginning warming up, using the beanbags, going into fragments of scenes from running, etc. and then spent some time working out how we could transition from each scene to the next smoothly. Then we ran the first six scenes of the play in sequence. Although we’d had a chance to start seeing how the play fit together as a whole, this was the first time we’d ever done any kind of run. If anything, it was frustrating that we broke for lunch when we did, because the way the rehearsal had progressed up until that point felt like the perfect point for Eleanor and I to do go on and do Scene Seven. What was particularly about the scenes that had gone before is that they all conveyed the toughness of Racheal. Seeing her with Nana in Scene Four was heart-wrenching, particularly because we’d never really watch the full scene before. Also, Dinah decided to put back the phonecall to Billy that she’d cut from the end of Scene Six, which made a big difference to the trajectory of the play. It showed Racheal refuse to fall apart even when her marriage to Kevin had totally collapsed.

We ran the last two scenes after lunch, after having had some time to rehearse outside. One of the things I was struggling with was trying to convey the truth of the scene without feeling like we had to lock down and stand opposite each other in order to connect. One of the things that helped was trying to make the exchanges less emotionally heavy, although I feel like, after our rehearsal, we might need to restore a bit of the balance to make sure the whole scene has enough weight. After finishing off the run of the whole play, we then got a chance to run Scenes Five, Six and Seven in sequence, which was very helpful to watch. Eleanor suggested that her and I run Scene Five for ourselves, so that we have a chance to see what that early stage of Danny and Racheal’s relationship was like, rather than looking purely from the perspective of the scene that we’re playing.