A multi-disciplinary treat of a week

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There’s been a multi disciplinary feel to my rehearsals this week – in amongst the general realization of script, character development and staging of scenes a lot of the plays I am directing at the moment have elements when voices and movement are used in a less than naturalistic way.  This week in some sort of a magical creative coincidence we seemed to get to the bits in lots of the play where this was needed – the result was a week full of lots of brilliant entertainment.

Monday saw me creating a rat rap with Sapphire Company – that was a joy…who knew for example how adept Sam, Marianne and Isla were at rapping!  Add that to the exceptional energy generated whenever Sapphire join forces to achieve something and the result was an auditory treat that everyone who’ll be at the Christmas shows can look forward to.  It’s a little rough around the edges at the moment but by December it’ll be ridiculously remarkable.

On Wednesday I worked with a group of YTYTers on our piece for the Miners Memorial Service next weekend.  The plays we put together for this important event have a very distinct style as we use our voices and physicality to tell stories from the rich history of mining in Yorkshire.  It was interesting rehearsing with actors who have never worked in this style before and I was pleased with how quickly they became proficient in using their skills to present history in a meaningful way.

Then Thursday arrived which of course means an assemblage of this terms Black Company who needed as part of their rehearsals of A Vampire story to create the atmosphere of a club…not an easy thing to do in a fluorescently lit hall early Thursday evening…still they managed it relatively efficiently and the groundwork is definitely their to build upon.  The Vampire Story company are refreshingly open to simply trying things and their openness makes staging even the more difficult scenes an enjoyable process.

Friday I was making Alice in Wonderland fall down a rabbit hole with the talented dancers of West Yorkshire Theatre Dance Centre, which then lead neatly through to Saturday morning and Gold Company.  This company are working on the 12 Dancing Princesses and so we need to create a ball where the Princesses dance until their shoes are ruined…as we are a youth theatre rather than a dance company the piece we are creating is all about movement rather than dance.  It’s fascinating exploring the physical possibilities with young people who aren’t necessarily dancers but who are brave with their physicality and trusting enough to try things… by the end of the rehearsal we had made really good progress and the final piece I think is going to be spectacular…

All in all it’s been a good week – how many people get the delight of watching young actors explore the eloquence of their voice and their bodies in such a creative way for so much of their week…another of the many reasons why I adore my job!




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