Thursday, December 08, 2011
TREE OF KNOWLEDGE: before the first preview
I tell myself there’s no need to be frightened. Or nervous, even...
At the start of the week, there were two days of technical rehearsal that were the calmest and most creative I have ever experienced.
Everyone was working together so well. As if making up a new theatrical language as they went along - incorporating the text with the set with the lighting with the music and with the projections in a way that moved me profoundly. Because all this highly technical, highly skilled and highly co-ordinated activity was happening at the service of the text, and I could trust it all completely.
And then yesterday the actors, who hadn’t done a run for 5 days, did two dress rehearsals that made giant strides towards incorporating all this new and amazingly complicated information into their bodies’ creative intelligence.
And then a few people were in for the second dress rehearsal, and it all seemed to make sense to them.
A perceptive piece in the Herald on Tuesday mentioned a dream I’d recalled. A dream a friend of mine had in 1985, around the opening of LOSING VENICE, when she’d seen me naked on the Traverse stage.
It’s like that: all these precious dreams, intimate moments in my deep heart, exposed on the stage.
Worse than naked: flayed. Held up as an object for dissection.
But there it is.
Nothing to be done.
The fear has to be acknowledged. Given thanks for even.
And then we’ll see.
At the start of the week, there were two days of technical rehearsal that were the calmest and most creative I have ever experienced.
Everyone was working together so well. As if making up a new theatrical language as they went along - incorporating the text with the set with the lighting with the music and with the projections in a way that moved me profoundly. Because all this highly technical, highly skilled and highly co-ordinated activity was happening at the service of the text, and I could trust it all completely.
And then yesterday the actors, who hadn’t done a run for 5 days, did two dress rehearsals that made giant strides towards incorporating all this new and amazingly complicated information into their bodies’ creative intelligence.
And then a few people were in for the second dress rehearsal, and it all seemed to make sense to them.
A perceptive piece in the Herald on Tuesday mentioned a dream I’d recalled. A dream a friend of mine had in 1985, around the opening of LOSING VENICE, when she’d seen me naked on the Traverse stage.
It’s like that: all these precious dreams, intimate moments in my deep heart, exposed on the stage.
Worse than naked: flayed. Held up as an object for dissection.
But there it is.
Nothing to be done.
The fear has to be acknowledged. Given thanks for even.
And then we’ll see.
Labels: preview nerves
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