The diary of the new girl.
So much has happened since I last put pen to paper that I don’t really know where to begin. So, I’ll keep this blog like the perfect skirt, short enough to be fun and long enough to cover all the important bits.
Monday was full of admin and paperwork. We were all pretty jet lagged and only just managed to make it through an afternoon of rehearsals. We were taken out to a trivia night by some of the team, and although I felt like my eyes wouldn’t stay open at first, the energy in the group & the variety of questions kept us all on our toes. We knew all of the Irish music questions, and I slightly embarrassed myself by my confidence answering a question about Snow White. A lot of fun & beer was had.
The rest of the week was a whirlwind of being wide awake at 5am from jet lag and meeting the others in the hotel gym for a pre rehearsal sweat, figuring out how we make our storm more chaotic & enjoying the South Bend food scene (I had the best Mexican bowl & spicy margarita of my life). I took a trip to Trader Joe’s and immediately fell in love – can they come to the uk please?!
The theatre at Notre Dame is truly spectacular, great acoustics & a gorgeous playing space. By Thursday we’re having lots of fun & do another run through of the show, where we find new things, we play.
Peter & Scott watched our showing on Wednesday and their confidence in what we’ve come up with filled us all with joy. A few notes to work through on Thursday, we head out to the brewery and I experience my first (and definitely not last) beer flight.
Even starting to write about Friday leaves me feeling a little emotional. We did our first preview at Westville correctional facility, the floor was dusty & the stage is anti-raked, the acoustics were terrible – every word echoed, we knew we had to be on the top of our games. And we were, slowing down the language, articulating & making sure every thought was clear, it was a necessarily muscular show, in a 30° room with no air con, and it was two of the best hours of my life. We got a standing ovation, and the q&a with the prisoners afterwards showed how much they had understood, and taken away from the performance, their questions were intelligent and kind. The themes of freedom, power, love, revenge, forgiveness stayed in the air well past the final line.
I’ve always loved theatre, its magic & ability to transport the audience to another place, seeing a story that might resonate on a deep level, might make you feel something, change your way of thinking. When you become an actor, leave drama school & start working, there’s a trap you can easily fall into, where you forget about what theatre is truly about, and silly things become important (the ‘name’ attached the show, the theatre you’re playing, who’s at the press night blah blah blah) and this prison showing (in Sam’s brilliant words) was like when you recalibrate yourself on google maps. It brought us all back to the power of good story telling, keeping it simple & clear, the connection between the audience & the players. The words. The play. Each other.
We drove into Chicago, which made me nearly cry again, Scott took us for a delicious meal, which made me actually cry, and then we went to the house of blues for some live music. Sam managed to persuade Anna and I to finish the night with a pickle back – honestly disgusting, but also a highlight of my weekend. The other highlights included: the art institute, a Pilates class, vegan ramen, accidentally joining a half marathon that was taking place along Lake Michigan, the DuSable museum, Anna stamping on a wasp while we ate lunch on the river, swimming in Michigan lake, the architecture boat tour. Chicago has a piece of my heart. Now back to South Bend to continue the Tempest.
