Final Rehearsals

Work done in the later stages of rehearsal

• Runs/Transitions
• Story 
• Tension
• Intentions/objectives/actions/thoughts

RUNS/TRANSITIONS

In the two weeks before Christmas we have concentrated on adding layers of detail to every scene and running scenes together working on transitions between scenes.

Once we had run scenes together we worked on running the two acts of the play and then running the whole play.

Some of the runs would be 'work runs' where we would stop and work on particular moments as necessary.  Other runs have been noted and then the actors asked to work on these at the next rehearsal.

STORY

We have tried to concentrate on the story, each actor knowing their own characters story and how it serves and fits into the story of the whole play.

This has been done by re-telling the story of the play line by line as a company.

TENSION

We have worked at ensuring the story is punctuated by the characters point of highest tension.  In rehearsal actors have identified individual moments of high tension, (a moment of pressure/emotion). The actors have found these physically and then explored their journey to that moment and then past that moment.  Actors attempt to find and remember what that moment feels like physically; what muscles are engaged, where is there tension in the body, in the face.

INTENTIONS/OBJECTIVES/ACTIONS/THOUGHTS

In running individual scenes and several scenes together actors were encouraged to interrogate their own process - did they know their own characters intentions/objectives/actions/thoughts. These things are not interchangeable and different directors and practitioners use different terminology with different processes but it is important that actors find a terminology and an approach that works for them. We explored variations of these.

Actors were grouped into scenes and asked to find the point of highest tension in the scene. The actors then improvised these scenes using not their lines of text but their thoughts - speaking their thinking (or if they preferred their intention/action/objective for each line) aloud. They then ran the scenes again this time speaking the actual lines. The aim of this was to consolidate action and thought as well as simply the lines that are spoken.