Big shifts

Moving into show week, the piece has benefited from a choice harvest of the past three weeks' work.
We ended week three with a whopping 38min showing that told two thirds of the story of The Pigeon's Bride. Not 38min of gold, but 38min of ideas that each need space and focus to be developed and refined.
With the parameter of a 15 to 20min timeframe, we had to make a big shift. A downsizing. With a huge array of possibilities thrown onto the table, Bridget and I realised we had a climax half way through that we hadn't quite topped. Weaving material from later in the play into the early sections, and adding in a little bridging scene, we've trimmed it down to 20 minutes on the dot.

We've also had the set back of two actors injuring themselves outside this work. As one found his feet again after a severely bruised heel and a fractured wrist, the other woke up this morning to a neck spasm that could continue for a few days. This has meant I've been jumping in and out of the work, during this important formative stage of the piece as production elements and big cuts and changes happen thick and fast.

What's been useful?
- Separation of roles: when am I performer and when am I an initiating artist? What roles do I need to give over, and how do we make that clear before we start work? There must be a time for directing and a time for performing.
- Trust. Taking notes from a colleague and not trying to direct from the inside is an exercise in trust that performers undergo every day.
- Having stepped in and out of performing during the rehearsals, the leap hasn't been too big for me or the group. Some of the information is already in my body, but I've had to 'find' alot through doing. There is so much that a performer does that a director doesn't see, though we certainly notice when its gone.
- Having the injured performers watching the work (where possible), helping me find the performance without taking all the director's focus as we try and move the work forward.
- Being a potentially birdish looking boy.

I'm fascinated by the pattern of characters looking/dressing like their directors. Now I understand why...

But with all that, keeping the ensemble alive has been a challenge. Production week, as always, brings actors into the mechanics of performance - cues, setting props, volume, light, safety - so tomorrow, as we open our exploration up to a live audience, we will bring the work back to story. Discovery, revelation, the interplay of conflicting energies that is the stuff of storytelling. For an hour we will step away from 'doing the play' and bring our focus to 'discovering the play'.