Day Three of Rehearsals: Wednesday 9th May
Two rehearsal bonuses today – writer Gurpreet on hand and we were once again in our performance space. As usual, began with our tai chi warm up and focus. Thought we were doing quite well until director Mukul informed us the one move we have learnt takes a professional half an hour, that’s how much stamina and control they have! We still have a way to go…! Then we performed our 18 scenic images to Mukul, designer / stage manager Ni and Gurpreet, ending with the Bengali song we learnt yesterday. A quick pee break and we were straight into an on your feet run of the play – this time using our animal characters and mannerisms for an OTT version. Needless to say switching between a grizzly bear and a vulture and being in other people’s scenes too was exhausting and we were all rather sweaty at the end but it threw up some interesting things to think about in terms of character relationships and how another person in the play may influence our actions, even if they are not physically in the scene. Taking everything to a primal level helped a lot.
We then worked on groups of scenes – angels, girls and boys – until the end of the day. It was refreshing to be able to play around with the scenes and question the lines and the subtext without the pressure of blocking, but having the freedom to move in the space. It feels like we are already adding so many layers each day and asking more and more questions about the play.
