Leo days 13-17, November 16-21

Tumbling gemstones.

It's always so satisfying seeing the various elements come together. Though it can be quite the challenge getting all the jigsaw pieces to fit together. Particularly with a show like Leo, where there are well over a hundred sound and light cues to support and join the many quick scenes and solo speeches. (Is this one a true soliloquy, or who is Leo talking to?)

Thursday we finish building light cues, set sound levels, and spend the afternoon with all designers and actors finally together, assembling the pieces late into the night. Then, as crafted as each moment--and particularly each transition (always tricky those transitions)--is, it seems that from Friday on we're mostly consumed with tweaking and adjusting and reworking the moments of change. Micheline keeps a careful eye on the actors too. (Though of course it shouldn't happen, I've seen productions where the actors' work virtually halted and in worst cases regressed when we get to tech week. Thankfully that isn't the case with this production!) It's a war on two fronts, running the show afternoons and evenings followed each time with one set of notes to tweak the sound and light cues, followed by another set of notes for the actors.

As the pace picks up, it gets trickier as assistant director to contribute in a timely way without getting in the way of the designers and directors vision and their quick collaboration as veterans who have established ways of working together and no time to waste. As for the actors, there seems only room and time for a single source of notes to integrate into the runs or one single precious hour per day when the actors can work on stage with tech other than the runs. I do get to see my observations addressed, but through the discrete mechanism of midnight emails summarizing my thoughts, read by Micheline the following morning and the relevant points addressed either at the top of the afternoon or after she's had a chance to see a run and decide if she agrees with my conclusions.

While the foundation is very strong, Micheline and the designers keep changing as much as they dare for as long as they dare. New sound and light cues are added, existing cues are re-shaped, actor blocking is altered. But essential ideas are unchanged--we've done our homework, no need and no time for second-guessing!--and as the days go by, the nature of changes get narrower and tech notes in particular take less and less time. I'm reminded of gemstones in a tumbler, gradually loosing their hard edges and being transformed through repetitive motion into smooth, shining, brilliance.

We aren't quite brilliant yet. It's always terrifically difficult to generate the final polish of a show without the one last, most important jigsaw puzzle piece: the audience. It's now 7:30 and the audience of the first preview performance has JUST been let in as I type this sentence (ah, the joys of laptops with wireless internet access!).

Perhaps it's not a jigsaw. Perhaps it isn't gemstones. Perhaps it's Frankenstein's monster.

Hopefully it'll be a little better behaved. And a little more polished.

Leo days 9-12, November 9-15

Tempus Fudge It

How did we get here? The further we go, the longer the days seem to get. Seem? Heck, we are now into extended days of 12-14 hours, though mercifully most individuals are spared the full brunt of the long days. Then again, so much happens in so many different places that it's hard to keep track of who's doing what when.

Last Thursday we ran the complete show for the first time for the designers and a couple other GCTC types to see. Design meeting squeezed into lunch break. Then into revisiting the show scene by scene and "act" by "act"--Micheline has divided the 90 minutes of uninterrupted performance into five sections so that we can run segments and feel some continuity while still maintaining focus on a clearly delimited portion of text. Meanwhile, Friday we squeeze in another lunchtime production meeting. Costume and prop elements start coming in piece by piece. Things are simultaneously getting clearer and messier.

Then, after a break (air!), the actors move into the theatre for the first time on Tuesday. It's their first glimpse of the actual theatre space and the actual set they'll be performing on. Here's where the days become marathons for director and stage management, as we mix rehearsals with actors in the space with technical work building lighting and sound cues. Both actors and designers have the challenge of shooting a moving target: the space changes the actors' performances, and the lighting looks are set based on best guesses of what the performances are likely to be, though already we've made unanticipated changes that will require adjustments to lighting. Meanwhile, a change in what lights are turned on during rehearsals (not even actual theatrical lighting yet!) works further changes on the actors, as do their costumes--worn briefly for a scene presented to the media. It's easy to imagine the ping-ponging of performances responding to tech elements and vice versa over the remainder of tech week. If only there was more time to allow this back-and-forth resonance to evolve!

By the end of Wednesday, I can start to see the daylight beginning to break over the dark mid-rehearsal slog. We still find plenty of "we haven't found this" moments and we're not yet at the point of saying "yes, this is it!" But I can now just make out the outlines of what the final "yes!" will look like, and it looks good.

As we go home bleary eyed after long days, and come back still bleary eyed the next morning to run the next marathon, it's nice to feel that the show, not yet there, will be there.

There is enough time.

Leo Days 6, 7 and 8 - Nov 7-9

Breaking the rules and goofing off...

...is not at all what we're doing these days. Mid-way through the middle week of rehearsals, we're between the exciting stage of initial discovery and still some distance from the exciting stage of all the elements coming together as opening night approaches. But as we "get the work done," I find myself looking for glimpses of not simply "doing the job".

They say you can't break rules until you know them, and as someone very suspicious of rules I'm glad to see Micheline so expertly throwing them out. For instance, there's a simplistic notion that acting has to be about doing things to the other actors on stage. Micheline often pushes the actors to focus instead on their own characters, affirming that this is both what real people do all the time and also a more interesting activity to watch on stage. Another sacred cow is to always "raise the stakes", which often gets reduced to making choices to trigger the biggest emotions. Micheline, however, will focus on the most effective and affective emotions, often quite different from what's biggest. Instead she asks: "What's the choice that makes the story interesting, that draws the audience in?" Where a simplistic approach would push a struggle to an explosive fight, Micheline will it say something very moving about disagreeing with someone you love, where the restraint is what makes the action beautiful.

And then there's the silliness.

Unfortunately for this blog, that's pretty much all in the domain of "you had to be there." There's the prop candy being blatantly eaten when we stop to talk. The infection of Spanish into day to day conversation. The actors themselves getting "high" on air when rehearsing the marijuana-smoking scene. It's painfully unfunny to recall humour in a humourless way, but I'd be failing to capture the spirit of the work if I didn't acknowledge that the planning, discussing and testing out of possible staging choices wasn't filled with a low simmer of playfulness bubbling through rehearsals.

Unfortunately, that wonderful energy can be hard to put into the work itself. Each of us has heard and said any number of times that they call it a "play" for a reason, that doing the job and having fun should be synonyms, not antonyms. But now, having reached a stage where the play is blocked and a first "stumble through" is shared with the designers, but still far from feeling that we've "found" the play, applying that rule is hard to follow.

Leo Days 2, 3, 4 and 5 - November 1-4

Oh, the whirlwind/whirlpool!

Not to say things are bad. Not at all! But the play's recurring image of a whirlpool is echoed in the enormity of discussion and exploration that's made this past week both so short and so long. Where did it go? And where have we gotten to?

I had meant to follow up my first post on the pre-rehearsal background with a belated introduction of the players. But if the point of this blog is the how of the rehearsal process, there again seems far too much how to delay it with any who.

So, what's been going on?

Day 2

Table discussions. In other words, reading scenes, discussing what happens, or what needs to happen. While remaining very open and having many uncertainties about how to deal with individual passages, Micheline clearly knows why she likes the play and how it needs to be presented to convey this quality. Thankfully, the cast get this vision and buy it.

This gets translated scene by scene into who the characters are to each other and how they treat each other for the story to have the qualities of youthful optimism sympathetic, human imperfection that gives the play its power. Each of the actors shares their readings of each scene, naturally gravitating to the point of view of their character. Micheline negotiates the validity of each of these different positions, usually finding common ground between them and her opinion, though usually there's also a degree of adjusting and evolving of opinions on everyone's part to achieve a consensus. And while specific interpretations are far from set in stone, we manage to keep arriving at interpretations that not only explain what the text means but that identify what makes it meaningful. I note that the litmus test for a scene's analysis being truly satisfying is when the actors and director get passionate about expressing their interpretation. It isn't enough to say "the scene can be about X," it needs the extra layer of "...and it's great that we get to put X on stage." This is happening with most scenes, and it's a lot of fun to watch, and occasionally contribute to. As much as I liked the text on first reading it, my respect has grown immensely through this work.

Day 3

We finish the re-reading of scenes in the first half of the day. That is, after Day 1, it took this long to negotiate through a single "annotated" reading of the play. We've learned a good deal, identified many questions which we know will only be decided through trying out actions on our feet, others we hope will be settled once on our feet. But with 3 weeks of rehearsals, we're keen to get the show on its feet--though I can feel the fear mixed with excitement among the actors.

I've been scolded for interfering too much with actors I've directed in the past. Probably with good reason. But I'm struck by just how actively Micheline intervenes, how specific she can be with her requests as she gives the actors blocking, adjusts a physicality for purely practical reasons or an emotional interpretation. Grossly simplified examples: "Don't look at the floor, we can't see your face," or "Don't be upset by what he's saying, we need this scene to be about being built up and feeling good about who you are." All this despite the fact that Micheline swears her blocking will all change, that she invites a sense of play and change, and despite the fact that she's not imposing a pre-designed plan for action or story and freely uses ideas from the actors and adjusts what she asks as the shape of the play emerges scene by scene.

I realize that Micheline has the quality I hope to cultivate in my own directing: keeping loose about unimportant details, the better to perceive which seemingly tiny details will affect the very essence of the play, to help build a message and feeling for the audience. We could decide later on to change every last choice being made about where to stand, when to sit. That's not the point of this stage of the work even though that's the form it's taking (sometimes vaguely, sometimes very precisely). But the real underlying work is to feel out in minute detail what the play needs to be like moment by moment to have maximum impact.

Day 4

More of the same. We continue working the scenes, in order. Broad questions about what scenes are about from our reading on days 2-3 are getting answered, though some individual moments (lines, crosses, transitions from one scene to the next) are opening new questions.

Meanwhile, a lunch hour production meeting gives me a glimpse of some of the technical activity I'm otherwise been mostly removed from. The set is being built, though some of the more distinctive elements are still being tested. Costume elements are being hunted down. Top priority there is shoes, as this affects how actors stand, walk and hold themselves. Likewise, a rehearsal skirt is delivered for the one woman actor so she can feel how her clothes will impact on how she can move.

At the end of the day Micheline says she works slowly. But the stage manager and I agree that it's more that she's careful, rigorous. She takes the time to get to the essence of what a moment can be, to not let slide a vague line or unclear action. But when the meaning is known, she can be very efficient. She won't leave a scene alone just because it's plausible or can work one way, if it's not totally clear or not serving the purpose of the play as fully as she knows it can. But when these issues aren't at stake, she can find a way to stage the text in no time or turn an ugly stage picture into a pretty one with just a word.

Day 5

We're still not through the play in our sequential staging of the scenes. But we're where we need to be. Actors are starting to put their scripts down and work from memory. The text presents a challenge in the form of frequent, sudden scene transitions interspersed with direct audience address. These are getting more comfortable to negotiate. Recurring and contrasting movements is starting to appear, giving the play some overall shape, if still a bit crude and haphazard.

We'll finish blocking next Tuesday, after which we'll move from these initial staging choices, based on finding the essence of the play, to more specific and refined choices. Pretty stage pictures, pointed gestures, careful echoing of one scene's action later, these details will come later. But the architecture of the production's story and style are coming together.