The Diary of the New Girl.

Pardon? Week 5? Are you having a laugh? 10 minutes ago it was day one, and now we’re in the final week of London rehearsals? Bile rises in my stomach at this thought as I cycle the treacherous roads in south London, a tube strike meaning road rage is at an all time high this week. This rehearsal process is reminding me a lot of marathon training – we are all in need of a lot of sleep, food, caffeine, we’re mentally and physically tired but also gaining strength, stamina and working our imagination, craft & voices like muscles. It’s hard but it’s worth it, we’re about to enter race season.

Monday sees us run the first half in the morning and the second half in the afternoon, we note down moments that need work and individually note things we need to remember to remember (where a prop is place, perhaps – or if a line was slightly in the wrong order, who’s hat is that? Etc). It’s looking in an alright shape and on Tuesday we work through all these gnarly bits, smoothing them out. By Wednesday we’re ready for our first showing to the associate directors, but Waggy helpfully reminds us all that this is a showing of where we are at, and not a final, polished version of the thing. I exhale slightly.

We did do the showing but, to be honest, I can’t really remember what happened as I was so full of adrenaline and cortisol my brain has mostly blocked it out. It happened – that much is certain. A lot of our feedback was positive, and the main note was that because we have done so much work on clarity and sense of the story, we now have the opportunity to release all of that, trust that the work is done, mess it all up a bit, make it weirder, wilder, let go of the reigns and enjoy it. We can do that. We head to the Brixton brewery and enjoy beers, crisps & pizza, desperate to switch off but totally unable to. We get told off by the people behind the bar for playing our ukulele’s and practising some songs. They obviously didn’t realise it was a group of THEATRICAL GENIUSES at work. 

Packing the suitcase and trying to get it under 23kgs was arguably harder than dissecting act 4. We’ve somehow managed it though and head home at the end of the week to pack our own suitcases, say goodbye to our family & friends & try to sleep a little. 

So, here I am, sitting on our American Airlines flight, about to take off, typing up the last few sentences of this weeks blog. We met at Heathrow Terminal 3 and hugged dramatically like true luvvies. Waggy, Anna & Michael kindly take some of my clothes from my suitcase as I am * gulp * 5kgs over the maximum weight. My shoddy packing skills revealing that this is, in fact, my first rodeo. We whisk through security, spray perfume all over ourselves in duty free and head straight for a fry up, coffees and an airport pint. I keep feeling embarrassed at how excited I am but the gang reassure me being “cool” is overrated, and what’s the point in life if you can’t feel joy, right? In next weeks blog I’ll let you know at what point in the 7 hours 30 minutes flight the excitement leaves my body and is replaced by boredom, but in reality, looking at the movie selection, that’s unlikely to happen. Fasten your seatbelts, we’re ready for take off. 

The Diary of the New Girl.

“Are you playing my aboriginal clackers?” – the quote of the week, from Michael (playing Alonso & Stephano), which sent us all into hysterics. Laughter has been a big theme this week in the rehearsal room, which is a useful tool as a company. Sometimes when a group of people care so highly for the work and the play, laughter can be the first thing that leaves the room – not for us. We laugh about Michael’s guilty pleasure T.V. Show (Take Me Out presented by Paddy McGuinness), we laugh at Waggy’s (playing Prospero & Antonio) love for his cats & halloumi sandwiches, they laugh at my self proclaimed incredible knowledge of Taylor Swift, we laugh at moments in the play that don’t make sense yet, we laugh when we feel silly trying something. In this room laughter equates to acceptance, and love, and safety. Note to self – carry this out of the rehearsal room into my life.

The opening quote of this weeks blog came from one of our two musical half days this week with the wonderful Tom Chapman, we added texture to scenes and transitions using bells and shakers, imagining an island full of snakes and magical creatures. We try on all our costume, create props lists & discuss important things to bring on tour. We rip pages out of books and make bottles that look like they’re made from the bark of a tree and buy metres and metres of fabric. Sam and I play with a jacket until it’s just right. We dissect the Ariel speech in Act 3 and as we gradually make our way through the beats & meaning, the sense of what Ariel is trying to achieve becomes clearer, and although there are moments when I feel vulnerable or (to be totally honest) rubbish, the other four kindly and intelligently communicate their thoughts in a way that makes the notes land on me, and I am (hopefully and slowly) beginning to access them.

We stagger the second half for Jenny Higham, who helpfully comes in to be on book, take some pictures & give notes. Miraculously, we make it through pretty unscathed and Jen seems really pleased with what we have so far, giving some really helpful thoughts and points for us to work on. We all found the stagger so helpful, each knowing what we need to work on individually and as a team now. Anna has tears in her eyes and says she’s moved by how proud she is of us all, and I am relieved I’m not the only one holding back happy tears.

By the time Friday rolls by we’re all exhausted, hopeful & happy (the dream triumvirate for a good week). Final week in the rehearsal room next week, first stagger of the whole play, and more laughter.

Special mention for this week goes to Michael for his genius idea to get Adrian off stage in act 5 – when you watch the show, keep a look out!

The Diary of the New Girl.

Monday was a bank holiday in the U.K.- so an enforced 3 day weekend, which, to be honest, we all needed. It’s hard enough to learn one part in a Shakespeare play, but we’re all playing 3-5 parts each, and although we are all pretty much off book, we’re too busy making the thing during the day and too busy doing life (washing, eating sleeping) in the evenings to have time to go back over anything, so the extra day meant we all came in on Tuesday having rested, gone over any decisions we’d made last week, and having revisited the text, raring to go again.

This week has been a lot of going over the scenes for a second, more detailed time. Making sure what we’re saying makes sense to us, and to anyone listening. Deciding relationships between characters, objectives and intentions. Carefully combing through our combined craft toolkit to discover the best blocking for story telling, whilst also keeping it feeling free and flexible. About 30 minutes is spent on how best to mime carrying a pile of logs. I love my job. 

The week passes in a blink of an eye and by Friday we have a minor panic about being at the end of week three, but we talk about it. Sharing that we all feel similarly enormously helps, and we reassure each other that we are in fact making good progress. We try on some costume pieces, wondering if that shirt looks too beachy, or those shoes are too heavy (I’ve never had more respect for costume designers) and talk about hat colours and styles until none of us quite frankly want to see a hat ever again. Terrifyingly, we know we need to revisit act one scene one, the dreaded storm, that we have all been putting off, knowing it will be a big challenge. “Why a challenge?” you might ask. The answer is multi fold – the storm opens the whole play, I can’t remember which of my cast mates poetically put it that ‘if we get them here, we’ve got them’; start with a bang and audiences can immediately be in the palm of your hand, the ball is in the air (the challenge is then to keep it there for the whole play). There are only 5 of us, no set and minimal props, so we have to rely on imagination and audience suspending their disbelief. It’s a famous scene, and the title of the play is ‘The Tempest’, the pressure seems almost too much.

We dive in, plunging into idea after idea, and gradually something begins to come together… we keep changing and trying and choreographing until we create a ship, sea, storm & shipwreck with nothing more than a rope and ourselves. We finesse and add detail and practise until we collapse, tired but very satisfied and that big scary thing is now not very big and not very scary. We are eating the elephant. And we are eating a lot of chocolate biscuits. 

Pub, pizza, sleep & back in for a Saturday rehearsal to work on a couple of moments we’ve not had time for yet this week. We are patient and kind to each other, knowing we’ll only have one day off before week 4, but still manage to wade through a lot of work, and keeping the work we do at a high standard. Next week will no doubt bring more fear, more success, more hats, more elephants, and more biscuits. 

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

The Diary of a New Girl.

Day one and I wake up 40 minutes before my alarm and lie there staring at the ceiling, Shakespeare’s gnarly act 2 scene 1 verse running through my head; I’ve slept terribly. Probably because I’m extremely nervous. Always one to have suffered from intense imposter syndrome, this is made worse by the fact I am the only one in the cast who’s never done a tour with this company before and I have no idea what to expect from the process. What if I ask a stupid question? What if they all hate me? What if I can’t do it? The kind of thoughts we all had before our first day of school. Being an actor is like having your first day of school every time you have a new job. I jump on the tube. 

Brixton is like a chaotic hug from a drunk girl in a bathroom at a club; smelly, hot, too much, a bit terrifying but also gorgeous and kind.

I arrive over an hour early (I know… I have a problem), grab an iced coffee (the London heat wave is not messing about), and wait (iambic pentameter ferreting around my brain). 

I’m a London girl born and bred, so I feel right at home where we’re rehearsing. The room however is like a sauna a couple of measly fans battling against climate change. The others, one by one, enter the space, and, not surprisingly, they’re all utterly charming, gorgeous & friendly (I am immediately more relaxed- maybe I’ll make friends!). Although, surprisingly, we had all dressed very similarly. We laugh about this and decide it is a good omen for our cast – same language different font. 

Day one already makes me feel calmer, but day two is when we really get the ball rolling with all five of us in the room something feels electric, and I start to get excited during our workshop with the incredible RC Annie discussing our shared language as a group and how we will begin to tackle this mammoth task.

We made all priorities clear as a group and write them on a whiteboard. These include honesty, kindness, direction, and beer.

Walking into work my third day from the station I start to contemplate how incredibly is it that I get sit in this room with four other passionate people discussing the meaning of this intricate story, and stretching our imaginations like a muscle. It really is a fantastic acting exercise I’ve never experienced before. We play with creating a storm using our voices, using our bodies, using movement. 5 very sweaty actors creating magic. 

We continue, fuelled by incredible Caribbean food provided by Francis & Arlene (our hosts at the rehearsal space),  to navigate our way through the play. It’s a bit like being in a tempest ourselves. Sometimes there’s calm waters, sometimes waves that we have to work together as a team to overcome, but by the end of the week we seem to have something resembling a functioning system which allows us to try ideas. As Sam (playing Sebastian & Ferdinand) so perfectly put it “we are holding each other to a high standard with kindness”. 

I get on the tube home on Friday, imposter syndrome has taken a back seat, this is one hell of a team and we all feel really excited about the next few weeks of discovering this island and the characters on it. Bring on week 2. 

Phoebe