Friday was an excellent day!
We had a four-hour session of meeting and greeting actors, chatting, measuring actors for costumes, catching up on design conversations, updating production schedules- all very exciting.
In terms of set design, it looks as though we’re going to pursue ‘the cardboard way’- which I think is great. Also, some super ideas emerged, in conversation with the actors, about costume possibilities… one intriguing offer was the idea of having one character in a wheel-chair. I love it- the collective creative brain at work!
At the moment I’m making sure that we have as much technical information together as we can: the SummerWorks Festival need our technical requirements by June 28th at 5:00. Just combing through all the information so far to give the festival as full a picture as possible of how the play will look/feel etc, so that they get a sense of it before the technical rehearsals. I’m very slow at admin. and planning in this area- so I’m glad to have a couple of quiet days to sift through it all- and I’m getting the information from the design teams, it’s just that I’m putting it all into the form- (yum!).
SummerWorks has a similar technical process to a number of festivals- you have a four hour slot to get your play into the space, do all of your lighting and sound cues, run the play (if you decide to do that) and get out. It’s a great exercise in having an organized team. And there’s little time for indecision, which I like… Also, as a director it’s challenging because up until that point you’ve only been able to imagine the play in the performance space- and you really never know of you’re ideas are really going to work until you see it all coming together in the theatre space. For the actors the challenge is understanding how the space works, how it affects the play- it’s a swift learning curve for all the production/cast peeps.
However, I do like the impact that this condensed technical time can have on the design and organization of the play. For example, projection. The play we’re doing is set in London, UK and we’re performing in Toronto- so I’d like to be able to bring the ‘character of London’ into the production. This can be done through costume, set design, the actor’s bodies, the physical/spatial relationships- and through (perhaps) including projection of some kind. However, projection takes a lot of work, it’s another design element that needs careful attention and it can get fantastically complicated in a technical rehearsal… So, we may or may not go down this route… The designer and I are still in discussion about it…
A few weeks ago I was in London so I took a lot of photos on slide film- and one option that we’re talking about it using an old carousel slide projector… I think that the production is going to have a ‘poor theatre’ approach overall- so it might make sense to incorporate a ‘retro technical approach’… and if we go that route then we can use it in rehearsal and the transition into the technical rehearsals will be ‘easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy’, as they say. It might also be a fun, slightly subversive expression of projection, (it’s old, it’s clunky, there’s an ugly-beauty to it), which makes sense for the world of the play. A lot of the play is set on the Thamesmead Estate- (which is all 1970’s Brutalist architecture).
Okay- I’d better get back to thinking about music and sound cues…
I will write more about the play very soon- promise!
And I did say that it’s set on the Thamesmead Estate in the UK…
Here are a couple of photos that you may recognize of the Thamesmead Estate… from the film A Clockwork Orange
Oh man….I can't wait to get started. And I love the idea of a recyclable set…