Day 8 Tuesday September 18 2006

- the streets around the Tarragon are filled with movie production vehicles - they're shooting a film version of Hairspray - Christopher Walken was seen getting touch-ups on his make-up

-we're up on our feet today - blocking - that's the grown-up version of "okay you go over there and then I'll say" - as the stage pictures get created you can see actors' impulses bring lines to life and moments come into sharper focus - the process is luxurious in some ways cause we get to approach things at a snail's pace and revisit them as we work - you try it one way then another and meaning is uncovered and sometimes whole new ones discovered - and then when you run a scene it all goes by so qickly it seems to all get lost - it's not though and in terms of the playing we are still in early days - the shape is what we're after - it always reminds me of a visual artist's preliminary sketching - I loved seeing the Degas exhibit at the National Gallery some years back - his paintings of dancers included the changes in hand positions that he refashioned but left in - I'd never seen that done - it made me aware of the work that went in to the piece while at the same time suggesting the movement of a dancer - one painter friend poo-pooed the work saying it was old and staid but I found abstract worlds in the cheekbones of the dancers - and I loved being able to glimpse the work in "ghosts of drafts past"

we're away from the table work and that's a big change - there have been some high points and low moments too as changes come in - some of the scenes take off but I've seen a somewhat dispirited playwright as new offerings get dissected - Victor told a story of a playwright gathering up a new draft after a read at the table - without so much as word he simply took all the copies he'd printed out and deposited them in the wastebasket on the way out the door - next day he was back and the new draft sailed - it's a task for the brave - a metier to test one's mettle