The Diary of the New Girl.

We started this week with a photoshoot around London with the 5 of us and the amazing Robin Savage. The photos range from “laughing – you love each other – front picture of a sitcom dvd” to “grungy moody brooding debut album art”. We make our way back to the rehearsal room for an afternoon of music, with the incredible Tom Chapman. Tom did music on a previous AFTLS show, and has also worked (as an actor) separately with Anna (Caliban, Gonzalo) and I, so the vibe is immediately chummy & relaxed – the perfect combination for vocal folds. We jump straight into three part harmony.

Let me tell you that I can SING like Mariah Carey… in the shower – in front of other people, those weird things called ‘nerves’ creep in and I seem to lose any hope of picking up a melody. The others support me, however, and we all work really hard. Tom is patiently plucking on his guitar (these harmonies are not messing about) and by the end of the day we could take our little band to X factor and have a good stab at being the next big thing.

By the time Wednesday comes round we’re pretty exhausted, having spent lots of the day trying to figure out how we create ‘strange shapes’ and a ‘magical banquet’. Lots of fantastic ideas are batted around and we try every one of them. Some don’t quite hit, or, they’re fantastic, but we don’t have time or bodies to pull them off as exquisitely as they deserve. In a moment of madness we try playing with ‘Laban Efforts’ under some sheets. Jokes are made about this being what we study at Conservatoires, and we try to decide if it’s slightly too silly or maybe quite genius. We zoom the American team, who are wonderful – answering all our questions, and head to the pub with giddy anticipation of the tour in our step. The other cast members relaying stories of previous tours, and I feel tipsy from excitement before the beers even touched my lips.

By Friday we’ve touched every scene of the play – we don’t yet have a proper shape to this thing, we don’t have costumes, we don’t have the answers to a lot of problems, but we have hard work, we have the text & we have each others backs.

Reflecting on this week, I am thankful for a lot of things; the patience of my other cast members, coffee, hats and string instruments, but mostly I am thankful for the people in this world who are silly enough to make shapes under a sheet with such unabashed commitment that an audience maybe just maybe will see magical creatures, and will be able to sit in a theatre with other people and disappear, all together, into our story for a little while.

Phoebe