List of wounded at 8 am did not bode well. Paul, leg injury and on his way to hospital; Joyce, string of boils down her left side, Yvette, coming if her tummy settles down; another actress not really with us following a huge row with her Mum before coming to work, involving the wielding of bush knives I’m told. But by 10 am everyone is assembled. The best day on the second half of the play so far!
Am reading a book called Fat Chance by Simon Gray the British playwright and director who passed away last year. It’s an account of a famous London production he directed of his play Cell Mates; famous because the lead actor Stephen Fry left without warning. He went into hiding after the second night leaving a phone message (I’m sorry; so very sorry). The play, which seemed destined to be a big hit, closed 2 weeks later. It has the same effect on me as the documentary of Terry Gilliam’s disastrous attempt to film Don Quixote, Lost in La Mancha. Although we’re millions of dollars apart the same things go wrong! The costumes left at the dry cleaners and not picked up before the show; the film set that changes drastically in an overnight storm thus destroying continuity.
Day starts well with the scene where the politician asks forgiveness in church for his sins. Is he really born again or is it something to do with the upcoming election?
Then Albert, one of our Matthews, is called out. He comes back looking nervous. 6 or so Mobile Force members have come to take him for questioning regarding the harbouring of escaped prisoners. This is so close to what happens to his character in the play that it is scary…but not as scary as things looked at that minute for Albert. The prisoners who escaped a couple of weeks ago are slowly being found and predictably being made ‘to swim in their own blood’. This morning two have been picked up and there is a drive to find harbourers too.
Noone really wants to rehearse. If Albert is taken in and Betio remains undecided whether he wants to do Mathew, we may not have a production. So some half hearted practice of songs continues but soon the talk is all of the prisoners and ways of dealing with them. Someone has heard that the mobile force are determined to make sure the regular escapees never escape again, presumably by crippling them.
Albert returns just before lunch, unharmed and we were much relieved. But he is shaken. They took him up to the camp where there were several other suspected harbourers. As he got out of the truck a soldier standing nearby in the camp shouted ‘killim!’ Five of them took him into a bare concrete floored room on which there lay a bloodstained piece of wood; the floor was covered in blood and spittle. Things didn’t look good for him; one of the prisoners had said he had stayed with Albert. Albert denied it. ’Look,’ he said, ‘I have a great job, my wife is pregnant why would I do that? If anyone says that bring them in and let him say it to my face.’ Whether this convinced them, whether the fact that he is well known helped, I don’t know but he was delivered for the time being back to WSB. Here ends the latest update on Vanuatu’s wild west justice system. Two hours on the song 'whisky' where i found a use for my shields from gladiator. Looked alright to me but was paranoid everyone else would think it's like a roman battle scene. Jo arrived and we did the song for her. no jokes about centurions so i guess it works.
Walked to work. In the 50 minutes it took I counted only 20 people over the age of 30 and several hundred under the age of 30. No wonder services like education are struggling! So, onto the second half. Danny had learnt all the lines for the first scene already, the prison scene and it’s a lovely piece of writing. At least, when you know what the writer feels about justice issues, it is exciting to see the other viewpoint given an equal if not stronger argument! The bust up from Friday had to be dealt with after lunch and as usual in these situations a lot of painful things were said by all parties. But so they have been countless times over 20 years and we’re still together; perhaps because we lance our boils. A word of thanks here to Michael Taurakoto , our governance manager , who always gets dragged in to chair meetings. I remember your early days, Mike (2000?), when you professed to being totally terrified by these strong meetings that WSB seems to hold but you have become such a marvelous mediator! Sorry I behaved so badly in today’s. We had an hour left and ripped into the title song 40 days. A barnstorming song , which we enact with a female Jesus and Satan climbing on benches three tiers high for the tempting! A young white couple befriended a part timer who has joined the play. The woman claimed she was from everywhere and as a follower of God had no possessions. Our part timer was prevailed upon to take them home for the weekend. Said parttimer and husband took the white couple swimming. The woman much to parttimers husband's amazement took all her clothes off and dived in. Parttimer made husband avert his eyes.
I open the gates to go to work just as the minister for Home Affairs from 1992 is walking past. As with many politicians here he is a man of the people. This is not a comment on his politics but a reflection that some retired politicians here slip back into village life rather than having another career to go to. I have not seen him for a long time and as he is going down to Tagabe I give him a lift.
We reminisce about that night on Tongoa in 1992.WSB had spent a week in the village of Kurimambe making a play with the village about the only colony of mutton birds in Vanuatu which nested on an uninhabited island off the main island. They were easy targets as they flopped in to lay eggs on the ground. We were trying to look at sustainable harvesting. The whole village took part and it was a great week.
On the last night the village wanted to take the play to a neighbouring village who disputed the ownership of the island where the birds nested. We were a bit nervous about it but they saw the play as very reconciliatory. Sadly the other village didn’t and as soon as the play finished one angry man went round smashing the hurricane lamps whose light we had performed by. The minister was staying in the village that night and was sent for and he expertly calmed the situation down. When we got back to our village he sent two bottles of wine and food !
Totally unprompted he applauds WSB’s decision to focus its efforts on the communities around the theatre rather than trying to start projects everywhere. He had never been to WSB before so I show him round and he is very polite and graceful to all the young people whizzing around the place.
Then the warm up and a joke I had planned. We tend to count ourselves through one particularly painful stretch and of course people speed up, add in halves. so I said I would be chief counter for the first one today(you do the stretch six times) and they could join in with me. I proceeded to count in German. This provoked a mixture of groans and laughs. I then appointed a counter for the repeat stretch who counted in her island language ( each island would have at least one language in Vanuatu). By the time the exercise had finished, about 5 languages had been used.
FIRST MAJOR BUST UP! About line learning. Growing annoyance at someone’s slackness at learning lines finally bubbled over. I go back to the office. A few minutes later the actor appears in the doorway and hurls the script across the room at me and storms out. Cast all behind me according to Jo who as is normal in these situations , retires to the kava bar with the actors on a diplomatic mission. Well, she’d go there anyway but it gives her an excuse.She hears a lovely story or stories about the response to the second showing on TV in a week of our new film, Las Kad. Titus Joseph, one of our indisputably world class actors was in the bank when someone approached him with a tin of Sprite and a packet of nuts. ‘For you,’ he says, ‘it’s my lunch but I want you to have it’. Titus says he couldn’t possibly deprive the man but the man says that Titus’ performance in Las Kad was so amazing he has to take it!
Most mornings when I drive down the final hill to Wan Smolbag I pass a teenage albino girl leading a blind man, Willie, to the youth centre where I think he does a French class. We came across Willie during a review of our radio soap that ran for 8 years. He listened to every episode. He said he could tell when we changed an actor for a part, even quite minor parts, and he seemed to know every story line including several I’d forgotten.
Warm ups going so well and everyone says they appreciate them. The theatre is even cool when we come in at 8 am. We leave the working lights off for the warm up, stretching by the light coming through the side door. This week, we’ve been using the Running and Stamping Book by Neil Cameron. Jogging as a company in silence on the wooden floor of the theatre. We were running in pairs, one with eyes shut, the other shepherding the blind one round the space, when a mobile phone, unfortunately left on, screeched to life with some hideous ring tone. The group were visibly affronted and disturbed such was their concentration.However the theory that a good warm up will always lead to a good rehearsal was rapidly disproved!
The 2 cast solution is being severely tested. Bob, the second pastor, has returned from 5 days off due to a gum abscess but has missed so much and does not know the lines. Betio, whilst being more game now to have a go cannot shake off a sore throat, or more likely vulnerable vocal chords. It seems to be a recurring problem He too struggles a bit with lines. This means that others in that cast feel they are not getting a fair go.
We must go on to the second half on Monday.We discussed a line ‘Jesus I tellem se ol pastor oli ol dabol fes.’ Jesus said pastors were two faced. We decided that the character should quote the chapter and verse (in Matthew’s gospel somewhere) to take the heat off us. Yes the character is drunk, yes he’s a character in a play, but that wont necessarily impress some pastors here!
This was the kind of day you recall years later. What makes it all worthwhile. Run throughs of recent scenes not quite there in the morning; not bad but just missing. More detailed rehearsal. Break for lunch and then start another run and one particular scene of the boys drunk and one of them threatening to commit suicide from a bridge was perfect…almost out of nowhere. I looked round at everyone and they were transfixed. This play could, only could at this stage, be thrilling. Betio seems to be finding a way of not compromising his faith and still acting.
A bit of a disappointment after yesterday’s breakthrough but the final scenes of the first half could be very strong. All these ‘could be’s’ bringing on the usual bout of insomnia. Waking up at 2.30 thinking it’s morning for a few minutes and then the sad truth sinks in; its 2.30 am and that’s it, sleep has gone. People tell me I should say good night to every part of my body starting with my toes but basically I get to my ankles and they seem to reply, who the f*** are you kidding? It’s 3.00 in the morning?
Until lunch I was scared. X wasn’t here just like Friday. Is he playing fool with us? Y’s girlfriend had felt some pains in the night, she’s pregnant, and he didn’t turn up till lunchtime.. Z’s voice has been sore for a week and a bit now and it’s really pulling the piece down as his voice has no volume or energy.. One of the newcomers whom we’ve given quite a big part to is not really going to get there in the time available. Everyone else seemed affected by all of this and the run through of the first 17 pages was just awful. Never has one of these bigger plays had a worse start. Jo went to see X.
He has an abscess and really is in pain . At least that eases the resentment some of us were feeling. So over lunch in the nutrition centre, (anyone in Port Vila reading this, we have excellent cheap nutritious lunches in our nutrition centre. 250vt for two salads and a bowl of soup!) I said to some actors I thought we should give it a week and if it doesn’t work, we should ditch it and revive Las Kad. Everyone returned from lunch fairly depressed. Over lunch the musicians had rigged up a basic PA and a couple of cordless mikes which gave such a boost to the songs and the preaching scenes that it was like a new beginning. The play was born again! Danny was electric as the drunken Ben , enraged by his reformed friend’s attempts to convert him. Still problems, but you could see that it might work. Some of us talked to the newcomer after rehearsals who took his switch to the chorus in very good spirit.
And back in the office Lauren a WSB project officer is photocopying the comments of his preacher on Sunday who in his sermon praised our recent film Las Kad, which was on TV last week, saying it showed the reality of Vanuatu today. As the preacher talked, Lauren said, he, Lauren, sat there looking around, basking in the preacher’s praise for the film. Vanity, Lauren! Lukaot!
Two stories which we heard yesterday and have relevance to the play. Apparently in one of the prison escapes that have been the source of much debate over the last year (I don’t know which one), some teachers caught a escaped prisoner and beat him up. They invited some of their students to do the same. They then put him on a bus and someone must have called some other students further down the road to say that the prisoner was on the bus because they stopped the bus, dragged him out and continued the beating much to the consternation of three passengers on the bus. He was finally taken unconscious to the police station. It is easy to forget when criticising the recent violence by police on prisoners that many people want to do exactly the same. Violence seems to be the acceptable way to deal with many situations. With the prisoners it must be partly resentment at the fear they have caused in people’s minds when they are known to be on the run. But the growing use of mob violence is very disturbing and fuelled sometimes by people who should know better.
The second story; about 10 years ago on an island a church decided that all sin must be rooted out of the village and so adulterers and alike were beaten. One old lady was accused of witchcraft, beaten and subsequently died which at least had the effect of bringing the campaign to a close.
A big chorus scene today. The young convert, Matthew and the religious lady, Rebecca, are out fundraising for a new PA system for the church and set out for the settlement which she sees as a den of vice; children who clearly aren’t seeing enough of the ‘rod’, running raucously around and there in the corner is the group of dope smoking boys. Was planning to do it with pieces of corrugated iron, which the actors would hold and move with, changing shape from narrow lanes to tin shacks. But in the end all I could see in my mind looked like a scene from the film Gladiator with all these actors holding corrugated iron shields! So I abandoned this and instead covered the stage with clothes lines which the actors walk through. Took 3 hours to work through it but actors seemed to be able to run with it.
One of the actors playing Matthew, Betio, seems rather confused and lost at the moment and I talk to him about it at the end of rehearsals. He admits he is still a little nervous about the story. I thought this might happen. It does bear similarities to his own journey from a lad with a big drink problem 18 months ago to a teetotal very active Pentecostal Christian. The play suggests that neither lifestyle will necessarily solve all his problems. I hope he can reconcile these forces because he is a very good actor.
A real life drama was unfolding towards the end of the day outside WSB. A stolen bicycle originally belonging to someone at wan smolbag is identified, clumsily painted over and the rider is stopped.He didn’t steal it, his mates just lent it to him. The police are called, he tries to make a run for it leaving the bike behind, but is ‘held’and a few punches thrown The police arrive and cyclist and WSB staff member, bike owner, go off to the police station. It is in this kind of situation that I feel most confused. Of course the law should take its course and if the gang, who have broken in several times, can be captured, that is good but I also fear the police will kick the shit out of the lad to get the information and there will be one more embittered youth who believes more and more the language of violence is the one that gets results.
Chiefs day; public holiday. Vanuatu has many public holidays. Go for a walk with Jo and you can tell we've both got our heads in different projects. She says something about writing Love Patrol series 3 (WSB' TV drama series) and then when that's run its course, I'll say something about some blocking problem in 40 days and so it goes on for two hours through bush and rivers! What the hell. It is so nice to have a partner who is quite happy to talk about work and we neither of us have to apologize for it.
One of the newcomers is wearing dark glasses and sure enough she has run into her boyfriend's fist. Some senior members of WSB talk to her and will let the boyfriend know that if he tries it again they will help her get a restraining order. In the same week another office staff of WSB has had a very nasty encounter with a boyfriend too.
A long scene with the three lads today. Well, six lads as we're rehearsing two casts; partly so we have understudies; also so that all core group members have a chance at a good stage role. But it doubles the rehearsal time. Or rather halves the time you'd like to spend with one group. It's interesting seeing the different interpretations emerge. Same as yesterday; great blocking it out, completely collapses when we try to run it.
All the girls have brought shorts today so that we can start the day with exercises. A short set of physical exercises (from a book called the Back Sufferers bible) to improve posture and some breathing exercises for freeing up the voice. We've done this from time to time over WSB's history but enthusiasm dies away pretty quickly and I end up embarrassed about enforcing a western drama school style regime on the cast if they don't want it. On the other hand its only day 2 and some voices are feeling the strain of filling quite a big space….and so far everyone likes the exercises. The afternoon gluing together of the opening scenes is a disaster. No one knows any lines, its 30 degrees inside the theatre and humid with it and it will be like that all through rehearsals. The theatre is a converted warehouse with thousands of coconut husks in the roof for accoustic purposes. No aircon, some small windows and fans. Performances of full length plays with lights most advisable during the 'winter' months, June to August!sadly plays have to be rehearsed first in the hot months!
I know in my heart that I don't want polished performances on day 2 but still I cannot help my inner self screaming 'this is going to be a disaster, oh my god I'm such a useless director etc.' The morning was great; two hours on another song, all working out a little dance for it but even that fell apart in the afternoon. At 4 pm I think the actors realise that they have a lot more lines to learn than in previous more chorus driven plays; I'm walking back to the office after rehearsals when I see that three actors are staying on to have another go at a scene, so I stay and the scene starts to take shape. Very pleased with the work ethic!
The first rehearsal. I always go expecting the worst, especially as the group has just come back from various tours around Vanuatu and the Solomons. We'd agreed several weeks ago to give up any leave in lieu of overtime until rehearsals were well underway. But 9 o'clock comes and we're still short. Yvette's relative's baby was still born and she's been comforting the family. But some, who I shall not name, who one wouldn't expect to see on time on the first day of rehearsals are there. No one's exactly thrilled to learn the second half has been re written since they went away and that's a whole lot of wasted paper. Even Yvette finally comes in. We have a good meeting and leap in to the first scene and the rest of the cast learn the first song. By the end of the day we're seven pages and 2 songs into the play. Great start. Good atmosphere.
Jo and I played the tape of the songs that Florence and Betio have composed for the play. They had actually found tunes a couple of weeks ago but while the others went on tour with the play about the family protection, they disappeared into the studio to add keyboard and stuff for a guide track. Personally I thought this was a bit unnecessary. All we needed was a guide track for singing; ah they just want to muck around with the keyboard for a while , I say in my suspicious 'boss' hat. But when Jo and I listened, admittedly after a little wine, we were thrilled and rung Florence, waking her up to tell her how great they were. Must have sounded like there was some church revival going on in our neighbourhood as we sung at the top of our very untuneful voices. But lots of ideas for staging.
The play is called 40 days and looks at the church in Vanuatu. It starts with 3 drunk boys, one of whom is left senseless on the road. The next morning a pastor, his daughter and a leading woman member of the church pass his body lying in the road. For the daughter Lei, this is a 'Good Samaritan' moment and she wants to look after him. The others go to church and she remains. He wakes up and she scolds him for his drunken behaviour. He hears the singing coming from the church and is led by this beautiful sound into the church where he begs to be given the chance to save his life. He becomes an impassioned preacher for the church much to his drunken friends amusement….but he has an abandoned wife and child. He married when very young. And of course he is in love with the Pastor's daughter……the play explores what it means to be a Christian in Vanuatu and takes place amidst topical events like the treatment of prisoners and corruption of some 'bigmen'. Does the church speak out enough? Is divorce such a sin when not divorcing means condemning you and those around you to a life of misery and violence?
Posts
