Happy Wednesday – we are now on day TWO of R&D week. Today’s main theme has been moving from page to stage. The words are starting to come alive and each of the actors in the company have been able to grow their characters and breathe their own spirit into our wonderful writer’s words.
The sun is still shining and as you can see, Jack is making the most of it with his 1-1 rehearsal sessions. Seeing the company members transition from working so well as an ensemble yesterday, to thriving with their individual monologues today Gavin (our fantastic movement director) has been working on movement sequences to bridge between the words and carry the narrative along.
He built up sequences from exercise and silliness yesterday and morphed them into beautiful, powerful moments that would have the audience in the palm of your hand.
The free-flowing collaborative dynamic between the creatives and the whole company is so fantastic. So many creative offers are coming forward and spiralling and we are being left with more fully realised material than we know what to do with. This is the best we could hope for in R&D week and we’re only on DAY TWO.
The creative team are curating and forming the sections that are really rich and want to be focused on. It is so hard choosing whether to keep or cut certain sequences as we go through and reprioritise our schedule. We would love to have had a full 10 days of R&D to keep developing and collaborating within this incredibly talented company, but we have to squeeze all the buzz and energy into 4 days instead.
AUTUMN’S HIGHLIGHTS
One of the greatest parts of today (apart from the ever-growing Eurovision soundtrack) was being able to use the black box theatre space. Being in that environment brings an entirely different energy to the pieces. It was so glorious to experience being back in a theatre space and watching such beautiful art on the stage. This feeling has definitely been missed and the company fed off that energy. I look forward to seeing how the rest of the week progresses, bringing everything together and sharing in such a revitalising experience for our theatre souls.
Written for StrikeUp by Autumn Beddoe.