Honey I love you...

Another rehearsal another scene….

Finally had a full cast! Meaning that we managed to get a lot done… after I had begun with a moan about attendance and commitment.

2 scenes are now completed, and need just a bit more tweaking and props etc… so I am happy, happy, and happy!

I feel we are working well together as a group and have come a long way since our first rehearsal. Each week we begin with a warm up activity and a trust activity, although these provide more laughs than anything else! Especially jennies game which made us all tell each other we love one another… however some members of the cast i.e. me and Zoe were not so good at keeping a straight face as Jennie and Frank!

Mark also paid a visit to my rehearsal which I thought was really nice… despite the look of pure shock on my face!! And it meant we got to show him what we had done so far and how far we had come as a group. I am so proud of my cast and what we have achieved so far!

We’ve now come to a kind of creative block and this means I need to go off to the home and collect some more memories for us to be able to develop the piece more…. So I awoke at 7.30am on Tuesday morning left at 9.20am and got to the m25 and ended up sitting on the m25 for 2 hours with my engine off!! There had been an accident and all lanes were closed! So I had to cancel on the home and re arrange to go in another time! Nevertheless this will not stop me! I shall go back and get more memories!!

So all is well again…

Rehearsals...Nag...Smiles!

Rehearsals began just under a month ago and so far we have had four…. I am so stressed out already!!!

The first rehearsal went well, and it was mainly there for us as a group to “ find our feet”, as I have already done so much planning, I pretty much already had the main themes, ideas and scenes planned out they just need lots of devising.

We marked through the first two scenes and used some of the props I had bought from the imperial war museum! Which was a big help, especially when doing reminiscent theatre as it needs to be sensory so lots of props and an elaborate set design (well what ever can be afforded) will aid the performance more as well as help the audience, which will be the elderly residents themselves to really feel as though they are there and to remember what we are portraying more clearly in their own minds.

The second rehearsal saw the creation of two mini scenes, this was fun to create as they are more interactions between actors, using the memories I have collected and it was nice to see other people’s interpretation on these memories rather than just my own.

Rehearsal three involved us developing on what we have created so far, this is the first time I have ever really been a director and I quite enjoyed the role as well as taking everyone else’s input. Within this production I want every member of my cast to have their own say and input. Different ideas and views on things will only help the production more. Especially as we don’t have a script!

We played around with different people doing different roles and then putting another person in place of someone in a scene, and this worked better and so now because of this, roles have not been picked but in fact chosen for us and are now more fitting.

Today was rehearsal four… there were a few less cast members than I would have liked but, nevertheless we still ran through and worked on a scene, played around with dialogue and some movement and found which worked best and made the scene work well.

Without sounding naggy I feel like I can’t tell the cast members that they need to be at a rehearsal as they are helping me out, but I feel that some people are not taking it as seriously as they need to and feel that missing rehearsals isn’t really a big deal but it is as it is holding the production back and it means that we are just going over what we have done. Or rehearsals have to be cut short, but time is running out and rehearsal spaces won’t be available soon.

Otherwise the production is going well and my I’m done nagging so am all smiles again!!