{"id":1474,"date":"2019-08-26T09:24:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-26T13:24:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/?p=1474"},"modified":"2019-09-03T10:36:21","modified_gmt":"2019-09-03T14:36:21","slug":"twelfth-night-fall-2019-tour-entry-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/twelfth-night-fall-2019-tour-entry-4\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTwelfth Night\u201d Fall 2019 Tour: Entry #4"},"content":{"rendered":"

Week Four: 19th to 24th of August<\/strong>
\nBy Kaffe Keating<\/p>\n

\u201cOptimism is more practical.\u201d<\/em>
\nPoster in the street, Brixton<\/p>\n

\u2018This isn\u2019t going to work,\u2019 I whinge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t worry about it, just keep going,\u2019 come the supportive cries from the row of chairs behind me where the rest of the company looks on, helpless. Katherine, who plays Viola and Sebastian, is trying to get my attention but I wave her off. I need to solve this.<\/p>\n

My coat is refusing to do what I want it to do. A far cry from what I imagined when I was whipping it around my head like a trainee magician in the TK Maxx down the road.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re running the whole show today and we\u2019re almost at the end. It\u2019s Saturday afternoon, the weather is beautiful outside (finally, it\u2019s been raining non-stop for the last week and a half) and I\u2019m in a sweltering rehearsal room trying to play three different characters all at the same time. Who are all having a conversation with each other. With nothing to differentiate them but a raincoat and some silly voices.<\/p>\n

This is how Act V of the play opens, with a conversation featuring Fabian, Feste and Orisno; my three characters. It\u2019s now being fondly referred to by the other company members as \u2018The Kaffe Show.\u2019 Currently, \u2018The Kaffe Show\u2019 is looking like it\u2019s going to open to some luke-cold reviews and close soon after press night.<\/p>\n

The first problem is that I just can\u2019t get the changes quick enough. Feste wears the coat like a coat; arms through the sleeves. He\u2019s currently having a conversation with Orsino, who wears the coat inside out over his left shoulder, like a Venetian cape. The lining on the inside is this really cool paisley – it looks good and it suits his character. Fabian, however, wears the coat like an apron (I\u2019ve decided he\u2019s a workman, the text gives you absolutely no clues about his character so you\u2019ve got free rein there really) with the sleeves tied together behind my back.<\/p>\n

As you might be able to imagine, switching from one of these to another, swiftly enough to avoid completely killing the pace of the scene, has its challenges.<\/p>\n

\u2018Keep it simple,\u2019 we were told, \u2018Don\u2019t overcomplicate things\u2019. It was good advice, and I thought I\u2019d followed it. I made the discovery early on that I needed to have the things that denoted all of my characters permanently on my person; otherwise I ran the risk of leaving bits of myself strewn across the stage. My characters talk to each other a lot, especially in the mad final act where all the loose ends are tied up.<\/p>\n

The second problem is that my brain is now running on fumes. This week, everything has stepped up and the Designer\/Stage Manager\/Costume Supervisor roles have risen to join the already slightly taxing Actor\/Director ones.<\/p>\n

We still need to buy quite a few things, and also we need to sort a load of the music, and the fancy dress shop I was planning on going to won\u2019t be open tomorrow, and I\u2019m too hot, and I\u2019m flopping around in a straightjacket of my own creation while trying to bleat out Shakespeare in an Irish accent.<\/p>\n

I get through it. We get to the end of the run. And we\u2019ve shaved about twenty minutes in total from our last attempt, a running time which will inevitably continue to diminish as the show gets tighter, and when we don\u2019t have to spend ages watching me fighting with a coat.<\/p>\n

I feel like I\u2019m now in the part of the process which an old teacher of mine used to call \u2018The Sainsbury\u2019s Dip\u2019. For any non-British readers, Sainsbury\u2019s is a supermarket \u2013 so the \u2018Walmart Dip\u2019, if you will. It\u2019s the phenomenon that occurs when you\u2019re equidistant from the excitement and freshness of the first day of rehearsals and the nerves and adrenalin of the first performance. When you\u2019re knackered and thinking: \u2018maybe I should pack this all in and go and work in Sainsbury\u2019s\u2019. Now this is not to say that there\u2019s anything wrong with working in Sainsbury\u2019s of course, just that it would certainly be somewhere where you\u2019d be able to go to work safe in the knowledge that you\u2019re not going to throttle yourself with your own jacket.<\/p>\n

But the point is that it\u2019s a dip. It\u2019s a low point, but from here things can only go up.<\/p>\n

\u2018Week four is the hardest,\u2019 I was told. Well we\u2019ve done week four and we\u2019ve basically got a show! There\u2019s some stuff we need to buy, some mechanics we need to oil, some songs we need to figure out \u2013 but the shape is there.<\/p>\n

Just as we were packing up for the weekend, Katherine came up to me with her own jacket in her hands. I don\u2019t why she\u2019s brought it with her today, it\u2019s boiling outside. Then again, you can never be too careful with British weather.<\/p>\n

\u2018Look.\u2019 She has her arm in one of the sleeves, the side facing me, and her other arm is free. She then spins around to face the other direction, cleverly turning the coat inside-out as she does so, but keeping her arm in the sleeve. It\u2019s Feste to Orsino, but the quick version. I hadn\u2019t even thought of that as a possibility until now. This is what she was trying to show me earlier when I was too busy to listen.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s really easy to think that you\u2019re completely responsible for your own problems; that just because they\u2019re your problems, you need to be the one who solves them. \u2018I got myself into this coat, and I need to get myself out of it.\u2019 But actually, if you allow other people to help, people who can see the problem from the outside, you\u2019re far more likely to find a solution.<\/p>\n

I spotted this while we were walking to the pub for a well-earned pint in the sun after Saturday\u2019s rehearsal. It\u2019s a good thing to be reminded of every so often.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Week Four: 19th to 24th of August By Kaffe Keating \u201cOptimism is more practical.\u201d Poster in the street, Brixton \u2018This isn\u2019t going to work,\u2019 I whinge. \u2018Don\u2019t worry about it, just keep going,\u2019 come the supportive cries from the row … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2812,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47489,361299],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-actors-from-the-london-stage","category-twelfth-night-fall-2019"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2812"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1476,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions\/1476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/shakespeare\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}