Week 2

Very busy week as I have added rehearsals for the kids play from 4 till 7pm.This play has 40 youth (or maybe 37); some youth old timers from previous years plus a lot of new faces, tempted by a love of drama or free food?! It's a play heavy on chorus to accommodate so many and the initial thought was to do it in the round as that is the shape of the stage we built in the youth centre last year.But in the round  is not easy with those numbers and and people who have never acted so, plan B, stick them all on a load of rostra at the back of the acting area, deliver some of the choruses from there and bring usually smaller numbers forward on to the acting area. It's a noisy group, several of whom make you reconsider your objections to the American practice of drugging hyper active teenagers!!!!Nah just kidding . Sure, the most used directorial phrase is 'quiet please' but they do love it and already in the week i have been there with them, the sea of youth is dividing into 37 individual characters who just like all of us can be lovely, funny and pretty vile all in the space of 5 minutes. The play is based on discussions Jo and Richard had with them about 'their dreams' which ranged from not being constantly hungry, driving a bus, being sports and music stars, being happily married and going overseas. Jo has added little tweaks in her script to highlight the difficulty of achieving these dreams and topped it off with a lot of chorus and songs which have been set splendidly to music by Albert and Tio.

With Klaem long Lada ia we had a stodgy post Easter start. Already 8 to 8.30am learn lines/ do exercises regime not being followed, people coming late and some friction over some members desire to get an advance to contribute to a Vila 'bus association' collective that some of us view as at best a loss making venture and at worst little more than a scam. So we talked that out before going further in rehearsals and 17 still want to go ahead with the sceme. But at least a talk about that and a talk about rules and priorities seemed to set us on our way and we had encouraging run throughs of the first half by the end of the week. The other thing that slowed us down was rehearsing the second cast. Instead of understudies we do the show with 2 casts; same actors but swapping parts.  This gives most of the core group a crack at something substantial as well as coping with sickness during the run. But with so much chorus and with the first cast bedding down so well, it did feel depressing to go back to the start and work it all out again, especially as most actors had focussed on their role in the first cast. It can get awkward too when someone is so clearly more at ease in one part than the other actor taking that part. It is also incredibly hot and humid in the theatre at present which doesn't make it easier. But still good moments. Joyanne comes up to me before the run through and asks, 'Does June find it easy to tell Terry she cant keep seeing him because she's going overseas on a scholarship or does she really like him and it's actually quite hard to tell him?' I said  'If that's how you want to play it go for it.' And she captured that awkwardness beautifully. I sometimes worry that we're a 'learn our lines bang it down on the stage' kind of group so I like it when actors bring these character questions to scrutinize.

What else? had a chat with a new manager who has transferred from the private sector. The youth centre over small pocket money to a few youth to pick up litter between Wan Smolbag and the Malapoa turn off. She was getting them to sign receipts and one couldn't sign because she couldn't read and another didn't know his family or last name and she helped him sign his other name, writing it in very big letters for him to copy. She talked too of her daughter studying in the Philippines who does work for her church at the weekend and sees a level of poverty she had never encountered in Vanuatu. They visited a mother and 9 children who lived under a tarpaulin and another baby had died two days before the daughters visit but was still lying there as the mother didn't have the money to bury it.  And we questioned how long it would be before , or if it ever would reach that stage.

Have spent the weekend blocking out the second half in my head. It has to move at breakneck speed and is full of chorus that will become boring if it is just chanted out. Hopefully bits can be said by actors stepping quickly in and out of character and by whizzing it around our multi tiered set.  I find it thrilling when you give yourself a chance to think it through often taking a fairly outlandish thought of where to start off a sequence and then just running with it. Really felt quite powerful...inside my head!  Next week the stage where doubtless some of it wont work but at least its a starting point.