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LOVE - Director's Diary - Lauren Taylor
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WEEK 1
We had a funny week, our first week, it was kind of split up a bit.
In our cast there were two people who were in the same movie, and it was shooting on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week.
And I really wanted them in the show.
So they shot their movie and we decided to work two extra Saturdays instead.
So we worked on Monday in Melbourne at the Malthouse.
Then on Wednesday we all came up to Albury Wodonga from Melbourne, to start rehearsals at Hothouse on Thursday.
So we all came up the day it poured rain. That rainy Wednesday. I came up in a car. Sheets of rain were driving at the windscreen. I couldn’t see in front of me more than a car space.
Our first week really was Thursday, Friday, Saturday.
Patricia, the playwright was in the room with us those first three days, and was a big help. We used those first few days to go over the script, read it and ask questions. Patricia re-wrote a few scenes overnight in response to those first few days. I found this really exciting. It also meant I had to re-think some of the things I previously thought. When a scene changes, sometimes so does the play.
We spent a lot of time talking about the world of the play. Betrayals, who betrays who, and why it mattered.
We talked about the idea of love, our expectations of romantic love, and where the idea for the play came from.
We talked about gender and sexuality, and work and money, and how much money it took to sustain three heroin habits each day. I think it’s between $1000 and $1500. Then someone told us what percentage of prisoners are in jail for drug related crimes, and how empty the jails would be if heroin were legalised and administered through our hospitals or doctors.
One girl working on the streets would have to see at least on average twenty clients a day to support three people’s habits.
It’s exhausting, when you think about it like that.
Charles Parkinson, at Hothouse made us a fabulous barbecue dinner on Friday night. We couldn’t imagine any other company providing us with a welcome dinner in the first week, cooked by the Artistic Manager. That’s impressive. It also made us feel really welcome.
More welcome than the stroppy tenant in my apartment building who shoved a note under my door telling me I was parked in the wrong spot, even though someone else was in my spot. I thought country people were supposed to be laid back.
So we all drank wine and were let into young Billie Parkinson’s secret club, which involved eating cheese sticks in her room and speaking Spanish. Then I jumped on the trampoline. Then Peta Brady drank too much Kahlua with Patricia and both had to be carried home. Actually that’s not true. But Peta Brady does drink Kahlua.
WEEK 2.
Because we spent the first week on the script, this really felt like the first week.
Bec, our stage manager said, she had never worked on a show where the script changed during rehearsals.
In my mind, it’s ok to change in the first week, and then hopefully only small cuts after then. For the actor’s sake.
But I have heard of new plays where entire scenes were cut, after previews.
I love this about new plays. Things aren’t fixed, rather, discoveries are always being made.
Most of the time you don’t know what the play is until it’s had an audience. And even then, maybe two or three productions. Or more.
I keep thinking of Beckett’s Waiting For Godot.
Imagine being in the first audience for that – 1954, I think. My grandma was 31 then. My age.
You’d think it was mad – pointless?
You wouldn’t know how to assess it, how to receive it maybe. Maybe?
What the hell is this crazy play?
And maybe a few of you might think, I don’t get it but I like it. Something about it.
And then some of you might recognise that here is a vital work. Of language and nuance and action and inaction, born out of the paradoxes of the 20th century, following two world wars and the devastation of two nuclear bombs. What questions are left? And where do we begin?
I wonder, every time I do or see a new play, am I watching the next Godot? Hamlet? Streetcar? Doll?
Am I open to that possibility?
We spend the week trying to get the text stuck in the actors bodies. These first attempts at getting the scenes blocked are all about finding stuff. Sometimes, a lot of the time, it feels like you are fumbling around in the dark. We spend a lot of time playing with the set, and seeing how the actors can move it, and work with it. We make a lot of discoveries, and also encounter a lot of frustrations. There are so many things you don’t yet know. So many different choices to make.
The actors have impeccable instincts with this play. They know its language, tone, mood, and physical structure. They are working really hard.
The play has slippery rhythms and repetitions. The language is crisp and clipped at times, and other times moany and whiney. Sometimes it’s all about elongating a word, sometimes not letting a second be wasted. Sometimes it’s about what isn’t said. Attention to detail.
Our stage manager Bec is good at giving us breaks.
Simon and Lisa go jogging in the morning, but not together.
Simon, Lisa, Peta and Andrew the designer are all staying at the farmhouse.
It sounds like the Big Brother household, but nicer and with less sex. Well, no sex really. They play the Sale Of the Century board game, and fall asleep in front of the telly.
The shower has been playing up. A man came out to fix it at 7.30 one morning. Simon was in the shower at the time, when suddenly the water was switched off as the man replaced the pump. Simon, covered in soap, bubbles, and towel walked outside to confront the repair man, "I didn’t think anyone was home". Simon’s reply "The Hothouse van and car out the front didn’t give it away?"
Andrew welds something on the set round the wrong way and has to go back to Perth, leaving it to Rob Scott to re-weld.
Rob Scott and all at Hothouse love Andrew, because he is a no bullshit, hands on designer, who builds, bangs, screws and rivets, and always has a smile on his face.
Rob Scott hates welding though.
So we don’t talk about it.
The weather continues to impress us.
On Friday we all get thoroughly sick of each other and the play and finish early, after the now infamous ‘Crack The Shits Thursday’.
This refers to the Thursday where we all cracked the shits.
So if that was Thursday, you don’t want to know what we named Friday.
It wasn’t pretty, is all I’ll say.
Week 3 looms. We will all be better after a rest.
WEEK 3.
Now we have the basic shape of the show.
This week became about putting a lot of stuff together, finalising the blocking and the set movements, and then by Thursday, running what we had.
Friday and Saturday became about the girls working on their scenes, with more detail, energy, and pace.
It’s grown a lot even in two days.
Aidan and I have a great breakfast meeting at D’Deli.
D’Deli is great.
The beef risotto balls are really good.
It’s next door to the Meat Haus, where you can get five lamb shanks for ten bucks.
One lunchtime Lisa, Peta and I buy a heap of meat from there, because it’s so cheap, and because you can.
Lisa bought a chook and a pork chop. I bought sausage mince. I’ve never had sausage mince before. Peta buys chicken Kiev.
Peta checks her email one day in rehearsal and finds out her dad has been reading the directors diary. He knows all about the Kahlua thing.
Today I went out to the farmhouse to talk with Andrew, the set and lighting designer, about lighting.
Andrew and the others are all staying out there. It’s nice.
They have cows in the back paddock, and wetlands across the road.
There is a goat that lives nearby, and a sheep called Lisa I think.
Andrew says it’s the fattest sheep he’s ever seen.
We spend a few hours going over rehearsal footage on his computer, and discussing cues and transitions.
Next week he has to hang the lights, and although I’m secretly not thinking about it, we have to plot/tech eventually.
That’s a really long process where you sit in a dark theatre for what feels like a long time and eat too many lollies, because someone always brings lots of lollies, because someone always thinks because it’s gonna be a long day you need to keep your strength and spirits up, so you eat lollies.
And you look at the lighting states, in slow mo.
Then you find out where all the costume changes take ages.
Then you find out how it all fits together, and you go home and don’t sleep because it’s a bloody mess and they should never have hired you for the job seeing as though you are the most talentless director on earth.
Then the actors suddenly do something marvellous, brought on by god knows what, and all the cues seem to work and the show runs at speed with light and sound and you become the most talented director in the world again. Your genius goes unsurpassed. Until opening night. When you cower in the rest rooms. Swallowing Xanax.
The farmhouse has no water.
Today it was Lisa who got caught in the shower.
She got the soap off her, but couldn’t wash her face.
Andrew tries to pump some out the back.
I stand at the sink trying to fill the kettle.
A bit of rusty smelling water comes out of the tap.
Then it’s over.
They can’t get it repaired til tomorrow, so no showers.
Bec, our stage manager is really sick.
She has the dreaded lurgy that is going around.
Our production manager Narelle has it too.
She’s had it for ages. I thought she normally had one of those Sharon Stone seductive voices, but no, it’s the cold.
On Saturday I wanted to put poor Bec to bed.
She troopered on, only stopping to lie down on the crash mats at 5.40.
Peta says to get some Olive Leaf extract, for the immune system.
It tastes icky.
I force Simon, Lisa and Peta to down some today.
Tomorrow we are spending the morning with fight choreographer Felicity Steel.
Good name, for a fight choreographer.
I’m picturing episodes of "Monkey", and the WWF.
I can’t wait.
Billie Parkinson looses a tooth eating a Crunchie bar at dinner on Friday night.
The tooth fairy had to re-schedule her Friday night to include a visit to Albury.
We are all deeply divided over who should be next booted off Idol.
WEEK 4
Hmmm...this is a tricky entry for me to write, as lots happened this week, and I'm not quite sure which or what makes for interesting reading.
We got the show ready for opening night, which was a great success. Even the writer was happy!!
We had lots of good folk applaud us, and afterwards we went to Rob Scott's house, which was very nice indeed. He and his lovely wife Mara put on a good spread, and I think they have the best house in Albury. They also have a piano, and Simon and Lisa played it very well and sang and put us all to shame with the staggering amount of talent they possess between them. If only I could have worked a song and dance number into the show! Oh well, there's always next time.
Dr Bill had some interesting things to say about the show, and was a real trooper, staying at the party well into the witching hour.
I wish I had a doctor like Dr Bill.
Imagine going in for a check up, and also being able to say 'Well, you see it's interesting because if I put this actor in that costume and this sound cue here, do you think that would convey a sense of deep despair and yet hope for the future in the play?' and Dr Bill while monitoring my blood pressure or checking my heart rate would be able to say 'Well I really think that if you do that, then the profound ennui of all human existence will be channelled into the Butter Factory Theatre'.
Imagine that! An Artistic Advisory Medical!! I think he should go into business.
That's a niche if I've ever heard one. Especially in Albury.
The other scary thing that happened was my washing machine broke down in the unit I was staying in. That wasn't scary, the scary bit was when the maintenance man rang up and said he was coming to see the show on Thursday night! I wasn't sure if he'd still fix my washing machine after seeing the show. There's a lot of f this and whatnot flying around.
An excellent thing was being able to go on Goulburn Murray Mornings, with the new, excellent, debonair and rather fetching host. Talk about being wasted on radio alone! He does a great job. He even came to see the show, and stuck around for a drink. We like him. Lock up your daughters I say.
But as with horse racing and life, all good things must come to an end. Off we go to the badlands of Melbourne.
Thank you for the blessed opportunity, and the good times in the fair city of Albury.
May it's sun continue to shine on.
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