Anticipation...

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It’s all about the anticipation at Yew Tree at the moment…New Year, new term…lots of planning and preparation and beginnings as we get 2012 up and running…

For that reason there was something very rewarding about Black Company on Thursday as we were actually able to get things started.  We’re working on “Spirits in the Landscape,” for the next 7 weeks and so the first session of the New Year was devoted to initial devising…developing a palette of ideas that will help us create our piece of theatre.

There’s always an air of uncertainty at this point in a production, especially something that isn’t scripted…a little insecurity mixed in with the novelty of starting something new.  It’s so difficult to imagine what the finished product will look like and for some people that’s an issue…but I like it.

The thing is I never know what something will emerge as at the end of the rehearsal process.  I have sort of half an idea…a sense of it with maybe a couple of factors in place but apart from that I just try things, experiment…build it as I go along and see what happens.  This, I feel is a much more interesting process than creating a perfect vision and then painting it by numbers and then ultimately being disappointed when it doesn’t match up to your impractical notions of what it should be…

So as we take Journey to X into the mid stage of rehearsals – pause for breath while everyone gets their head around the fact that all the scenes are now sketched out - and as we begin creating theatre out of a children’s story and as the 9 other companies of Yew Tree start their journey for this term I give you this thought…or challenge even…for the beginning of this year enjoy the discoveries, embrace the uncertainty and make the most of the adventure…

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