Four days to go

Well four days till we have an audience. The cast has done a brilliant job, they're ready to go and I am impressed with them.

The only issue is whether the costumes, lighting, sound and other effects and the cast are working together. Tomorrow we have all the costumes, the smoke, the smells, the props, and the curtains up, but getting the cast and the bits and pieces working together is my big worry.

There is much to do. I spent much of the afternoon hanging curtains, these are the 'set'. I also went to hang the gauze, which was a major effort and I discovered the way we intended to do it won't work.

Tomorrow we are without the stage manager and lighting operator for the morning and various cast have given me ultimatums about when they can start and finish.

What it seems is that it's harder and harder to get actors to rehearsals and to get techs and backstage people at all. Today people are working weekends and evenings and anyone with technical skills wants to be paid. Not having a set seemed to be one way to ensure that we could strike the set each night (as we have to) and save effort and energy.

Well the play looks good.

22 days till opening

First full run tonight. Much later than I would have hoped and not in the venue. The first half held together well, the from act 3 it looked much worse.

Still haven't seen any stage blood, don't know about many of the costumes, music .... oh and we still can't get the whole cast in one place at once.

On the plus side - the edits are working, the cast is strong, my flu has nearly passed.

M and Lady M are very strong. The relationships are excellent. The cast are of a very high qaulity all round. We have a new witch which requires bringing her up to speed with the play. But it's all good.

Opening video for show - spoiler

The video has been created to open the show. It's supposed to look like a webvideo ....
http://www.vidcast.co.nz:80/VidCastPodCastProductionbyTandemVoiceBooth/Player/tabid/86/VideoId/202/Default.aspx

thanks to Tandem Studios for the talent and the production, to Scott Koorey for the music and to a distant cousin of William Shakespeare for the script.

Okay I take it back

After all my high sounding commentary in the posts 2 and 3 days ago I spent today's rehearsal simply blocking. There was nothing much else going on.

Rehearsal Sunday 29 June

I'm calling everyone for rehearsal at 2 pm. The rehearsal is at the theatre.

Acting and direction

In the last post I mentioned Meisner, Stanislavsky and method. I'm not wanting to seem to be trendy or throwing around names of acting schools without understanding them so just a little here on what I meant. I know only a little about Strasberg, Meisner, Stansilavsky, Adler and some of the 20th century approaches to acting. And, for example, I'm not keen on apparently repititious meaningless exchanges as a way of learning to react (Meisner is well known for these exercises). At the level of theatre I work at we haven't time for weeks of exploration.
What is clear to me today is that if you are aware of modern theatre you can't help but be influenced by these schools and theories. The alternative is what I grew up with - the first few rehearsals are blocking (Stand here, move there, sit down, stand) followed by rehearsals which are tweaks of the first (sit in the middle of the line, put the gun there, say it with more passion).
What I want to see is something approaching genuine characters with motivations you can understand who move around for convincing reasons.

So I do use the blocking direction I grew up with but I have rudimentary and superficial but useful interpretations of these schools which inform my directorial style. I am drawn to what I understand from Meisner as the idea of trying to get actors in the now (what the repetition exercises are supposed to create). So that there performances are genuine in that they build from the energy and actors around them, and may differ from night to night but are motivations and reactions to others motivations. I think Meisner called this Affective Memory.
In Stanislavskly I like the idea of using imagination to understand where your character is and go with that. I mean for example neither of my actors playing Macbeth or Lady M have murdered or conspired to murder anyone as far as I am aware, so they need to imagine what it is like and go with that. Strasberg on the other hand (again as I understand it) wanted actors to draw on their own souls and psyches and reproduce their reactions to earlier events in their lives, or their psyches (I believe this is called emotion memory).

What I would say is each approach is useful for different actors. In other words where I can't get something out of an actor I may change approach. Some actors need to go back to when their pet rabbit died when they were 8 and use that to power their performance about losing a parent, another actor in the same role might simply imagine having lost his father to an assassin while a third may instead just get in the now and take on the enormity of what is being said.

I'm no expert. But I do like having a range of tools. As I eluded to earlier - our other issue is not having the luxury of spending 8 hours a day, every day, on this and not having necessarily the best material to work with. So when all else fails clever work-arounds (cheats) are really useful, that is if the actor can't stand without waving his hands around - get him to lean on things in every scene.

Progress

One of the goals I set for myself for this production is to make the relationship between the Macbeths and their murder of Duncan plausible. This has been the underlying problem with nearly every production I have seen and most of the movies.

Last night working with the two actors I have for these roles I believe we made huge progress in cracking this dilemma. Both are fantastic actors who can convey subtlety as well as a broad range of emotions and motivations. I was momentarily scared as we worked on Act 1 Scene 5. Lady M was terrifying as these lines came to life:
"Thy letters have transported me beyond This ignorant present, and I feel now The future in the instant."

After we had finished I realised how much I owe to a newsgroup called Act Pro that I used to be a member of and to people, conversations and experiences which have developed my rudimentary understanding of Meisner, Stanislavsky and method. We had both Ms in the moment and alive to the motivation in the script and alive to the intentions of who they were and where they were going. Add to that drawing on their own personal experiences to make the moment alive with genuine emotion and we really were creating.

This is shaping up as the best production I have done. False hope / vaulting ambition? I too as a director am caught in the desire to create something based in authenticity - not just for the actors and the audience but also for me.

Macduff

One of the many things on my list to try and improve in this production over others I have seen is to make Macduff stand out. Normally he is invisible until he is tested and he leads the attack on the castle and kills Macbeth at the end. Banquo is always easy to spot, but the Malcolm, Macduff, Ross, Angus, Menteith, Lennox distinction is harder to make.

The Court Theatre here in Christchurch did a production set in Japan a few years ago, a tribute to Kurosaka I believe. In that production Macduff was given a ludicrous hat. Even then he didn't stand out that well.

In this production we're opting for Macduff as someone who is sees through the thrall and sees Macbeth for what he is. Maybe his goodness means he isn't (as easily) enchanted. That means he stands apart from all the others, perhaps is more modern in his dress, and at the beginning of the play looks askance at Macbeth. If he is also socially awkward it might explain why he isn't trusted by Malcolm and seems to have missed the victory banquet.

This standing aside positioning and scrutiny of Macbeth combined with a touch of a puritanical view of the world worked today in rehearsals, and the actor playing Macduff seems to be able to use this to make the character of Macduff strong and distinct.

We may still give him some distinct costuming - but no dumb hats.

Next rehearsal - Sunday at 10 am

Act 4 Sc 1
Act 2

Read through and first cast get-together

I'm looking forward to getting the team together tomorrow - although there are one or two people who can't make it, notably the production co-ordinator Victoria. Although I've read everything and talked through a hell of a lot I still feel under-prepared.