Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Day 9
I remember when i started I had no idea what i was supposed to be doing in rehearsals.
So i tended to sit around looking nervous. And worried about how bad I perceived my play to be.
Of course the actors all though i was thinking how really bad they were; and it didn't really help that I had no answer to any of the questions they asked me.
I would say things like "It just turned out that way" which might have been true but were, in fact, completely useless.
And I used to feel hopelessly inadequate because I never knew how they were supposed to say the lines.
It took me ages to understand that wasn't my job.
That instead my job is to check the text. Try to notice the difference between a line that is difficult because, for reasons of their own, the actor may be encountering difficulties with exactly how to say it, or what to do with it... and a line that is difficult because it needs changing.
On the whole this play seems to be working far far better than ever i imagined it would. But today we hit a passage that did need a rewrite.
And it was a real pleasure to think about what in the writing was causing the problem and how it could be sorted out.
Which i think I just have.
And I think the play is all the better for it.
I maybe wrong, however.
Only time will tell.
I remember when i started I had no idea what i was supposed to be doing in rehearsals.
So i tended to sit around looking nervous. And worried about how bad I perceived my play to be.
Of course the actors all though i was thinking how really bad they were; and it didn't really help that I had no answer to any of the questions they asked me.
I would say things like "It just turned out that way" which might have been true but were, in fact, completely useless.
And I used to feel hopelessly inadequate because I never knew how they were supposed to say the lines.
It took me ages to understand that wasn't my job.
That instead my job is to check the text. Try to notice the difference between a line that is difficult because, for reasons of their own, the actor may be encountering difficulties with exactly how to say it, or what to do with it... and a line that is difficult because it needs changing.
On the whole this play seems to be working far far better than ever i imagined it would. But today we hit a passage that did need a rewrite.
And it was a real pleasure to think about what in the writing was causing the problem and how it could be sorted out.
Which i think I just have.
And I think the play is all the better for it.
I maybe wrong, however.
Only time will tell.
Labels: day nine
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