Good Omens

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Orrrrrrrr mannnnn….What do I choose?....Where do I start? The first workshops for every company have been delightful, creative and to quote the Egyptian “A pleasure.” There has been so so much that could be classed as blogworthy…I’m honestly struggling…I think I’m going to pick up on two moments… one that reaffirmed something basic and a moment where I made a discovery that motivated me to reassess something I thought I had a complete handle on...

So the first one…I had the gold company work on some 4 line scenes…an exercise entirely stolen from a practitioner I admire but then adapted for use in youth theatre…it entailed giving pairs of actors a 4 line scene (the title gave it away really) and then getting them to build the entire story within which this fraction of a scene existed. Getting people to dig this deep was a tough call the first week back but the results were fascinating…there were a number of memorable performances but the one that really stood out was Ash…his simplicity, stillness and poise arrested the audience utterly…another memorable one was Joanna who seems to be able to say so much by doing hardly anything…I think everyone watching had a valuable lesson in the whole cliché that less, when aligned with deep and detailed preparation, can be so definitely more…

And the second…we finished a successful Sparkleshark rehearsal with our customary check in/discussion…we were discussing Polly’s silence in the last few pages we’d looked at when the significance of a moment that happens later in the play hit me. This was significant because it made me reassess how multi layered the play is and with that realization I knew I would need to look at the whole play again to see what else the writer had planted in there…I always though Phillip Ridley was a genius but that was reaffirmed today…

So all in all a good, good day…to finish a good, good week and that has launched what promises to be a good, good term…year…decade…

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