We start the day with the two drug sections that Andrew and I investigated yesterday. Just a small group of people, me, Richard Stewart and Bryan Demore. Lauren Williams, our stage manager is there as well.
We hop in the pool and swim around with the conversation that happens between Peter, (when he’s experiencing heroin for the first time) and a character that called “The Voice” in the script. I’ve asked Richard to be the lead speaker for this character- and I also believe that we’re going to involve more of the company to create this scene.
We have lots of imagining and debate about what and who the character of The Voice is…and we arrive at a fascinating option: The Voice is The Voice of Invisible Possibilities, Wisdom and Forces that exist in the universe, unseen. It seems quite a grand idea to arrive at while still sipping on coffee, but it also seems to make sense. And Peter, (who is 14 year-old boy at that point in the play), is too frightened to grab onto the ‘tail of opportunity’, so it leaves. Until a couple of days ago I’d always thought The Voice was just the voice of Heroin… but this new interpretation makes more sense, considering the themes of freeing the poor and social revolution that are in the play… For a social revolution to take place, we need to believe that change is possible. And sometimes, in struggling with poverty, change just doesn’t feel possible.
We’ve talked a fair bit in rehearsal about the physical experience of poverty- what does ‘grinding poverty’ feel like? I’ve had the experience of working with teens in under-privileged areas in the UK and it’s awful when you meet young people who feel trapped by a lack of possibilities in their lives and trapped by a lack of money… This feeling of being trapped, being stuck in the ‘sweet and sour misery’ is one of the themes of the play… And freeing the poor from that dis-empowered misery is another.
So, we power through the second drug hallucination and it’s all making sense now! We’re ready to get this mamma of a scene on the dance floor and shimmy, (but that rehearsal is for another day).
The afternoon is more fun with Paul Tessier as Pollack the Lawyer- Pollack visits his client Smackheaded Peter in Wormwood Scrubs Prison. It’s an old Victorian prison, in London, notorious in the UK for overcrowding… here’s a picture from the Victorian era; the cells are still the same size, but have (at times) had four men in them, 23 hours a day.
After the scene work we have some excellent free play with Bryan’s monologues (as Smackheaded Peter) and before we know it- it’s time to go home.
A thought-provoking day…