The Beginning of Week Three...

Another Costume Fitting (Rina)

One can tell when a play is well written because it seems there is always more detail to be had, in other words, the writing has depth.

Following the first run-through, which ended our second week of rehearsals, we started this week by going back to the beginning of the play and working our way through with a fine tooth-comb, adding another layer of detail. Having felt as though we'd made a decent stab at performing the show first time (which indeed we did), when returning look at the detail of each moment, it seems we missed a hell of a lot.

Tim’s play is essentially a collection of interactions, sometimes just fragments of otherwise unheard conversations, between different combinations of children (and subsequently their parents). But each of these reveals a bit of detail that represents an important episode in a series of events that make up one of the countless story strands running through the show.

In the case of the children, many of these story strands have a hysterical pay-off during the nativity itself. So, Matthew is being very thorough about making sure that each tiny moments lands with the audience, so that the related story strand accumulates to its conclusion.

There is a moment, for example, when Ashley gets chosen by Mrs Horrocks to organise the class for toilet break. Having been picked to do this, the rest of us dutifully follow her orders to line up. Correct. But Matthew, with the keen eye of a director, drew our attention to the importance of the children's reaction to Ashley being chosen in the first place.

They should be taken aback this news, because clever Jenny Bennett normally gets chosen to do everything involving any responsibility. And it's an important the audience understand this, because it represents the beginning of a downturn in Jenny Bennett's fortunes, culminating in the catastrophe of the nativity in which she is meant to star (as Mary). Also, it represents another episode in Ashley's continuing efforts to elevate herself at Jenny's expense; her ego is inflated by this surprising promotion and this ends with her trying to usurp Jenny Bennett's role as Mary in the nativity stable! It's very important therefore that the audience clearly sees this moment. Hitherto, we'd missed it. This is what is meant be adding detail.

Because the writing has depth, there are many more such moments awaiting clarity. It seems the remainder of the rehearsal period will involve repeated cycles of running the show and adding yet more detail between.