So I’ve spent all weekend and half of today at Devoted & Disgruntled – life changing. If you’re an artist go, if you’re not an artist go, if you’re alive go. And it will inspire you and fill you with light and energy. Go go go.
Have come away feeling so uplifted and full of love for theatre and for people. And full of hooray! And made so many new friends and connections. Exciting times – now back to the grindstone before I go into the black tunnel of Gotcha rehearsals next week.
Wading through the deluge of emails – sometimes it feels like drowning. Then off to the Young Vic to continue our investigations into the Tempest, Winters Tale and Pericles (hmm more navigating the seas to deal with).
Can’t wait to go to Devoted & Disgruntled over the weekend – it’s the first time I’ve been free to go and it looks brilliant. Hopefully a weekend of inspirations.
Today I met some wonderful producers for the Hampstead show. And also a very interesting actor for ‘Sexing the Cherry’. Then did some more redrafting. It’s hard to hold on to my faith in my own work on it sometimes. But everyone must doubt themselves sometimes, isn’t that called being human?
Started with a meeting with my Sexing the Cherry producer, followed by a meeting with Kate (my STC costume designer), followed by a meeting with Layla (my STC aerial choregrapher) followed by a flying session with Loren (my STC performer, or one of).
Now home for more redrafts of…you guessed right STC.
This has been an easy day, just pottering around the flat catching up on admin. And writing all my invite letters for Gotcha. Several of which I’ve somewhat unintentionally written in iambic pentameter…I wonder if the recipients will notice?
And now I’m off to meet a producer for lunch. Always good to be meeting producers!
Sat in the Clare studio at the Young Vic running another director/designer workshop – all day this time (looking at reversing the roles of director and designer). It’s great because once we start them off on a task – the directors and designers are currently doing white card models – we can just sit back and let them get on with it. And write our blogs, check our emails etc.
So yesterday was a rather full on day of more aerial training for loren, which I spent mostly Babysitting layla’s gorgeous little boy Omar. Then back to loren’s for some Shakespeare coaching for an audition she has on Monday.
Then in the evening off to the young vic again – I seem to spend my life there at the moment – to work with jacqui and tom on this ‘young and late’ (three late Shakespeares, three young directors) project we want to do. Became a bit of a heart to heart which was nice, but meant it went on til half eleven!
Spent all day doing a workshop with the RSC on movement and voice. It was brilliant and they gave us a free lunch, which was also amazing.
A morning of admin, and redrafts after last night’s revelations. Then off to the Hangar to continue teaching Loren to fly…or possibly more specifically to float because we’re using mostly static trapeze, at the moment at least…
Then a quick dinner and a catch up with Loren at the Young Vic before I had a workshop there meeting up with another 20 or so directors who formed a sort of peer-to-peer mini-network/mentoring scheme last July. Lovely to see everyone again and now we’re all fired up again with good intentions of helping each other out and offering support & guidance to younger directors and to each other. It may not last, but it’s a nice feeling.
I’m very tired. Turns out there’s quite a lot going on in my little adaptation of Jeanette Winterson’s classic. So spent all day in the flat working through the text around our table – our poor Lecoq trained actors were visibly champing at the bit to get up and do something physical. Lots of discoveries but also as many questions.
Then over to the Young Vic in the evening for the reading, which ended up a lot more staged than I’d anticipated (probably all the Lecoq lot suddenly being in a proper space and going mad jumping up onto stage blocks and things). But I had the epiphany coming home that I’ve never had such a public reading for my work as a writer/adaptor – the plays I’ve adapted have just gone on and then the feedback is for the performance. But a reading in this instance is a much more exposing thing for a writer – because it’s really all about the words (though of course most of them come from Jeanette originall). Still…scary. But brilliant, and the rest of the creative team were all scribbling away in their notebooks so hopefully provocative.
poppyburtonmorgan 