Sans AH.

In the music room, creepy, dark, with a two-way mirror (kind of), strangely appropriate.

Going back over previous sections to help line learning. We start with Gandhi's chunk about the 113 and looked at:

Antithesis
Playing it between Damian and Paul as a dialogue, overlapping lines
Not pausing at punctuation Marks.
Trying it as a conversation from memory, changing speaker at every punctuation Mark.

Then the section it comes in, section 22, as Mark's and Tom's arrived.

We played it with each character set a different tempo, with each making a non verbal sound before each thought, overlapping each line and the 'good, yes, great' game where one of those words is placed, non ironically, before each thought.

Then Alan, as the only Tom, was set the task of playing the scene whilst commiting to random actions he had to pull out of his pocket on pieces of paper. Meanwhile the two Marks and two Gandhis were encouraged to buzz in (rather than buzzing each other out) when they had a strong new tactic to play.

We explored the idea of making Mark's long silence at the start of this section active, as something he is choosing and playing towards the other two, rather than internally, or dropping out of the scene.

Then section 29, which include's Tom's description of killing Muhammed Hasa.

Similar games here, overlapping, 'good, yes, great' and then putting it in your own words. Each actor had their double, or me in Alan's case, feeding them the next unit of action without the lines. They then played the scene using any of the real lines they could remember, or if not using their own.

I don't think we'll go over these sections again now before the showings so get learning!

Script Changes

Just two PG 47 Mark - About half way down cut 'You killed someone' and change 'that' to 'this' so the line reads 'What's this got to do with nobility.'
PG 49 Give Gandhi's 'Well...' at the top of the page to Mark. So Mark's line at the top of the page reads 'Did they say it to you? Well? did they?'

Next week we'll look at the other sections we've done in rehearsal so far, 1+2 (if we have any policemen due to Hamlet), 10-17, 22 and, if we have any policeman, section 35.

We may also make use of the room a little more as we have it, any ideas? Please post them below. There was a somewhat interesting debate, I thought, about the virtues of rehearsing in a room so oppresive, and yet therefore so perfectly appropriate. I thought it made us more internal, less active, and it made commiting to playing each moment much harder. Plus it was hard to read because the lights were so low. But it added a lot too; particularly, I thought, in our movement and the way we used the space to relate to each other.

xx