Arabian Nights Director Amy Leach bursts the bubble of the rehearsal room as opening night beckons…
This week started with an act of directorial cruelty. After a lovely weekend off, and having not looked at Act 1 for over a week, I kicked off Week 4 of rehearsals for Arabian Nights with a run of the whole show. And not only a stagger through for ourselves, but with an audience. A tiny one admittedly, featuring the smiley, supportive faces of our stage management team, designer, wardrobe ladies and sound designer, but still an audience nonetheless. The rehearsal room is such a safe bubble, where actors are free to try things out and to make useful mistakes, without feeling any pressure. So getting them to run the whole show at such an unpolished stage, in front of people from outside of our little bubble, was a big ask and one that could have made our actors feel hugely vulnerable.
As we started the prologue, all the actors looked a little like rabbits in headlights, suddenly finding themselves in the starting positions that we hadn’t touched on for a week and a half. But as they worked their way through the show, the shock quickly wore away and they were off. For a first run, and with still almost a fortnight until opening night, it was great. As one would expect, I took lots of notes and the run was far from perfect. But I and my fellow audience had so much fun watching all the different stories and I was delighted by the way the cast bonded together as a true ensemble – supporting and encouraging each other throughout. It was encouraging to see that all of the material we’ve worked so hard on for three weeks is going to work, and that the show, once tightened and polished, should be hugely funny, magical, scary and moving.
The great thing about doing a full run so early on was that it highlighted for everyone involved where we need to focus the attention during our final week in the rehearsal room. Some sections were almost performance ready and yet others were messy and unclear. From the run, I created a long ‘to-do’ list of the key things we need to spend time on and we’ve used the middle part of this week to slowly work through this list.
Before the week is out, we’ll run the whole play at least three more times, with more refining and polishing in between. And then we’ll leave our little bubble for good, saying goodbye to our room in Z-arts and heading to The Lowry to meet our theatre, our set, our costumes and ultimately, our audience.
Arabian Nights runs at The Lowry Fri 30 Nov 2012 – Sat 12 Jan 2013. Family deals and children’s tickets are available for only £10 at all performances. You can book tickets online here or from The Lowry Box Office on 0843 208 6010.