During a technical break at The Lowry, Chris Honer takes time out to reflect on some memorable moments from rehearsals for The Seagull.
Technical rehearsals, which is when all the elements of the production – actors, lights, costume, props, sound, etc all come together for the first time – can be heaven or hell. Hell is when things aren’t quite ready, problems take ages to fix, and the hour of the first preview is racing towards you and you’ve only got through a third of the play. Heaven is when everything’s there and you, the actors, the designer, the lighting and sound designers, etc have to time to play, try different things out, and see what works best.
Fortunately The Seagull has been in the paradise category but, even so, there’ve been moments waiting while something gets sorted out. At the moment Danny Stewart is fixing some cabling behind Konstantin’s stage to enable a faster scene change between Acts One and Two and I’ve got time to reflect on some things I’ll remember from The Seagull rehearsals.
The first time Sophie & Ben performed Konstantin’s play to its audience
Like Hamlet, The Seagull has a play within a play. Arkadina’s ambitious son, who plans to revolutionize theatre, has written a play to amaze and impress his actress mother. Sophie (Nina) and Ben (Konstantin), with composer Jon Nicholls, and guided by Assistant Director Elisa Amesbury, rehearsed the play elsewhere and so the other actors, just like the audience in the story, hadn’t seen the piece developing in rehearsal but experienced it fresh. Since one of the secrets of good theatre is getting an audience to feel that what they’re watching is happening for the first time, this was an incredibly useful experience for all the actors involved. They were surprised, just as their characters would have been surprised.
Elisa’s character work
The Stanislavski-inspired lists (which I wrote about in Getting Rid of the Cobwebs) were great in suggesting how each of Chekhov’s characters view the world and what their ultimate goals are in life. You could see in particular how this work fed into the actors developing their characters’ physical characteristics and how they move.
Having adapter Anya Reiss in rehearsal
We only had her for two days but she was wonderfully suggestive and in particular her thoughts about how we might interpret the last couple of pages of the play were very helpful. I’m referring to how the other characters might respond to Dorn’s announcement about what’s just happened in another room. (I won’t give too much away for the benefit of those of you coming to see it who don’t know the story).
The second run through of the play in the rehearsal room
As often happens with plays that contain dramatic scenes, our first run-through had displayed quite a lot of ‘acting’. By which I mean that quality of generalized emotion which, I have to say, sometimes impresses some critics and even audiences. We talked about this and how we might achieve that sense for an audience of almost eavesdropping on conversations in gardens and rooms. The second run-through was a revelation and we’re aiming to sustain that quality when we get into the theatre.
Prosecco
At the end of our last session in the rehearsal room at Z-arts the actors suddenly produced a generous amount of prosecco. This lovely gesture, I’m pretty sure inspired by the ever-thoughtful Chris Wright, was to commemorate the final rehearsal under the Library Theatre Company name and to look forward to the smooth running of production week at The Lowry. Which I must now get back to.
The Seagull runs from Fri 21 Feb – Sat 8 Mar 2014. You can book tickets online here or from The Lowry Box Office on 0843 208 6010.