Directing Love's Labour's Lost: Week 2
This has been a difficult week for me in all respects. Although it was great to finally get into the rehearsal room, I've had a bit of a reality check in terms of how much time I need to dedicate to the show. I've learnt that it is absolutely essential to plan every rehearsal down to the wire, making sure that there is enough time to read though and then block and repeat each scene I have scheduled for the evening. There's nothing worse for an actor than coming to a rehearsal that feels unprepared and runs shorter or longer than expected.
On Wednesday my social life got in the way slightly and I found myself rushing through the last half hour of rehearsal to get to my friend's leaving party (which was also a gig for my composer Ruby's band) because I'd been at house viewings all day and hadn't chosen appropriate lengths of scenes to allow for an early finish. I felt quite guilty and apologised to the actors, resolving to properly plan the timings from then on. One of my initial promises to myself and to the production was to treat the actors like professionals; if actors are being paid for their time then everything has to be on a strict schedule and equally the creative team should expect equal respect in return, that is to say, no talking or messing around in rehearsals, no turning up late, etc. My aim for next week is to properly implement this.
Another issue I have encountered is how the dynamics of a scene can be hugely affected by one actor being missing. I completely understand when students have conflicting activities and have worked rehearsals around them as much as possible, but a lot of the comedy exchanges in particular don't work with anyone missing from the scene. I think it's a case of the more actors the better, and it will most likely come together perfectly at full cast rehearsals. A lot of the actors have also commented that it will be a lot easier to work on acting once they're familiar with the lines, so I'm trying to focus on the text in these initial rehearsals.
The positives of this week have been reassuring more than anything else; this is my first show as the only Director and there's always that nagging thought that I wouldn't be good enough. Luckily, my warmups have been really well received by the actors and I think they're working in exactly the way I intended. It's also great to see my cast bonding and starting to act like friends having fun rather than strangers reading lines in a room together. It's our first cast, crew and committee social this week so with any luck we'll all be really comfortable around each other by my next blog post!
