No photo tonight.

Twas a dark and stormy night ... actually no, it was mild and clear ... I was just struggling to come up with sentence one.

The early part of tonight was dedicated to making sure my acting safety net officers knew where the problems they might encounter will arise. Also, to talk through some conceptual problems that had been obvious to me with regard to how people were relating to each other as actors ... Hmmm, I'm being a bit obtuse ... basically I was talking acting stuff with some of the Workshop actors who might have to deal with problems, should they arise (and I'm hoping to Big Iguana they wont), so that we give the Altogether actors a safety net so that their hard work wont unravel in a moment of panic over a forgotten line or two. The conceptual issue surrounded that inevitable divide between actors of differing abilities who have to act love, lust, desire in a circumstance where 'method' has no place. In cases such as these its an act of approximation; I may bore those who have already heard the story but it may be useful to others ...

Augusto Boal, formulator of the theories and skills of Forum Theatre, relates a story of his where he is directing a production of Hamlet and he was trying to get a deep sexual tension between Hamlet and Ophelia. Unfortunately the woman who was acting the role of Ophelia just wasn't getting it. Boal questioned his actress further and discovered that she was a virgin and was having difficulty getting much further with the sexual tension thing. Boal didn't stop there; he accepted the difficulty that she was having and set to work finding an emotion memory that she could use to approximate the feelings that Boal wanted to see acted between Hamlet and Ophelia. The feeling that ended up working best came from her passion for ice-cream! He worked with her to marry those two disparate things together - her sensual joy at anticipating and eating an ice-cream on a hot day and the sexual tension building between Hamlet and Ophelia. And, to his satisfaction, the scene finally came to life.

It's understandable the difficulties that have been encountered with this stuff so far and I hope you will excuse any continuing obtuseness in sensitivity toward the people involved.

The next part of rehearsal was dedicated to building up our list of costumes needed for the production. This also includes figuring out who can supply what, where we can buy stuff, what we can make, borrow or nick - errr, borrow - yes. That sounds better.  There are unfortunately no fishnets for this production and I know there was some disappointment expressed about this but the costumes are going to be great none-the-less. The fairies, in particular, are going to be quite iconically reflective of the Australian bush with flower themes set aside for many of them and the colours!! Fantastic!!

I'm feeling a lot more settled now and although I know there will be some major challenges ahead ... that's okay. It's scripts down this weekend - always an interesting time in the rehearsal process ... stay tuned.