Another Day Closer to Dying...

22.7.08

Well, one full week (and a bit) of rehearsals are down. And I am really happy the way that things are turning out. Our Leontes, who has only been in one play before - and it wasn't Shakespeare - is coming along in leaps and bounds. In the first read-through he was having trouble with the language. Now, he is speaking more naturally and is freeing up his body much more. We also have a 10 year old playing Mamillius and they work really well together on-stage. The actors playing Hermione and Mamillius knew each other from before the show and have brought this into rehearsals well.

We have also had the first rehearsal with Camillo and Polixenes. These two actors are fantastic and willing to push the envelope; I really am quite glad that they are willing to be romantic together on-stage. And, as an aside, their stage business really is hot! It is fantastic the way the two work together to bring out Polixenes's flirty nature as well as Camillo's desire to be loved. Tomorrow night we will run the first scene (I.ii) in its entirety. This is going to be fun as we have just been running it piecemeal up until now an so to see it flowing together is going to be great.

For this production, we are going to be using most of the Globe's entrances. We will have people coming and going from all sides; you will never know where to look to next. I am inspired by the traditional practice of having an entry and exit door. In this style, the actors came in one door, came down-stage to deliver their lines, and then left via the other door. Winter's Tale seems very much written for this style since there are very few scenes where more than two actors are the centre of attention. However, this poses some challenges as the Mezzanine is quite hard to access from backstage but this just means getting things sorted so the actors have time to practice with everything in place so they don't hurt themselves.

We are planning to rig lights and get the set in order this weekend - watch this space for developments.

So far, we have avoided the taint of naturalism very well. There are still parts where the actors want to fall back into this style of acting but this is, I hope, mainly due to not knowing their lines yet. Hopefully, learning lines will fix a multitude of things which, at the moment, are not looking as good as they could.

The costumes are going to look fantastic! We have very different styles for the Bohemians and Sicilians. With the latter being very formal - at least of the beginning of the play - and the former being very free in mixing the time-periods of their costume pieces and layering lots of items over one another. We are also going to have lots of makeup for the Bohemians. Lets face it, one of the great things about theatre is the ability to put on makeup!