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.
