Cinderella Goes Live: A little bit of Alchemy,the Passing Over Ceremony and the candour of children:Director's Blog 26

So its early Friday morning, and once again coffee and a piece of toast accompanies my Panto blog writing time. I have been reliably informed by a couple of my early morning companions that they expect my Director's Blog to be online by 7am every morning. So no pressure there then! Some of my friends in Team Cinderella seem to think that writing a blog before dawn is either a confirmation of my vampiric tendencies, or at the very least a sign of mental torpor. I am not convinced by either of these suggestions! And I would point out to my loyal readers that writing in the early hours is par for the course for most journalists! Getting copy in before print deadlines is business as usual for them!

Simply because I am a theatre director who stays up late to drink in the intoxicating after show spirit (and the occasional glass of red wine it has been known) really does not preclude me from being an early morning hack! So I have every intention of continuing this discipline at least until January 3rd when our little baby goes to sleep for the final time! 

I have been pondering though how best to continue the pithy story of ordinary panto folk when I have moved on. I am minded to flatter my lovely MD Mr Phil to pick up some of this most enjoyable of activities. I have a way to go I think before he will be persuaded. But watch this space!

Most mornings I accompany my writing with an eclectic mix of music. For the past few days its been a favourite -  Faure's Requiem. Today, having likened Mr Phil to Mozart, I felt it only right that I spend some time with Amadeus. So am listening to Mozart 111 Andante - majestic and reflective. In the darkness that precedes dawn I am drawn to this gentle meditation.

Anyway - keyboard in hand, here goes a short tour of yesterday, the Passing Over Ceremony and then our first 2 schools performance of Cinderella. 

Some of you may not be familiar with what I mean by a Passing Over Ceremony? Its something I have always done to mark the moment when the show no longer belongs to the Creative Team, but is passed into the safe keeping of the Acting Company and the Production Team. As I have hinted at several times over the past couple of days  - I do find this painful, but know that it is a critical part of the making of any theatre piece. If you don't let it go, like an adult child you might still find it living in the spare room at 40!  

My Passing Over ritual has been the same for the past twenty five years, and was given to me as a gift when I was an actor at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. This is not a widely known thing, but the famous American acting dynasty the Barrymore family created their own special style of passing over, although I am not sure they called it that. 

You might just like to think of it as a first night present. But for me it is more profound than that. Without disclosing the entire ritual, suffice it to say it involves taking the whole team into a private room and the giving of large Ariane red apples to each member of the creative and Acting Company. This accompanied by special messages in a card to each actor, also involves a secret ritual in which the actors are passed the show and the Creative Team steps back. 

In our case only one of the Creative Team remains with the show for the whole run of the show. This is our Composer and Musical Director Phil, who elegantly moves over to becoming one of the two man band along with our lovely  Mr. Phil Hardisty on drums! 

And so it was yesterday that Cinderella was passed over. I promised that I would stay in the back seats of the auditorium, painting my finger nails until the day after press night, after which I will visit regularly and plan then to don the uniform of a volunteer usher, just so I can stay in touch with the company, and most importantly get a feel for the audience reactions, which is more tricky to get from the Director's seat.

The first show yesterday morning saw 340 children fill the auditorium with their teachers and you could feel the anticipation thick in the air! The magic of coming into the theatre will have been for some of them an entirely new experience. 

Watching them settle in their seats, I was exquisitely reminded of my first live performance experience, watching my Mum (Anne) and Dad (Edgar) in an amateur production. For the moment I can't remember its name but will ask them when they come to the shows on Saturday. But I know that I was three years old and sat in the front row of the church hall whilst they did their stuff on the stage in front of me. 

I remember that in the play my Dad's character ended up killing my mum's.  She was wearing a red satin dress which made her not look like my mummy! At the critical point in the penultimate scene, she was murdered rather horribly (I suppose that is perhaps the only way to get murdered!) and according to family storytelling, I apparently jumped up and stood on my seat announcing to the gathered audience that in fact my mummy was not really dead but was behind the stage with my Daddy. I think I may have ruined the most dramatic moment of the play, but it obviously needed to be done!

This memory was clearly prompted by watching these many small children experiencing theatre yesterday possibly for the first time. I certainly haven't connected my own first experience before. 

As they sat there with all their anticipation and imagination I suddenly remembered what a huge responsibility it is to give small human beings perhaps their first taste of this new world of living, breathing, singing, dancing storytelling. And to boot to retell a story that most of them will know intuitively even if they don't realise it. A story that has been passed down lovingly from one generation to another and is found one way or another in its infinite variety in most cultures.

I found that private moment yesterday a powerful reminder of why we do what we do and what an enormous privilege and responsibility it is. You really have a duty to be the best you can be as you know yourself that these early memories will contribute to these children's bank of experiences as they grow up. That feels pretty profound! 

The first show went reasonably well although the transformation scene when Cinderella and the audience see the carriage for the first time and her dress is supposed to be  magically transformed was a bit of a dog's dinner and I had to hide my eyes when the magic didn't work as well as I know it can and should! 

The transformation is probably the most challenging in any production of Cinderella. And you know if it works if the audience gasps in delight. Well there were many other moments when they did gasp in delight or fear but this wasn't one of them this time. 

I was pretty frustrated and a little desolate about it, having to remind myself that it was the first show and its actually a very complicated bit of business where a number of key elements must come together at exactly the right moment to synthesise the necessary magic! 

Suffice it to say I am known for my eagle eye and not much gets past me. And I have to say the show was still magical in lots of places, easy to see by the enthralled collective reaction of the children. However this was not good enough for me! 

So the first thing I wanted to do after the show finished was to go and talk to the kids in the audience. Fortunately there was a smallish group from one of the schools camped in the foyer eating their crisps and sandwiches and I was able to sit down with them on the floor and find out what they liked and didn't like. They are our precious audience without whom there is no show. 

I had the best time as the sun streamed through the big foyer windows. Given the right opportunity children will always give you a candid response! Sometimes you might not want to hear it, blaming any negative feedback on a whole host of spurious reasons such as the fact that they are not clever enough or they are too young. These supposedly comforting excuses are no substitute for the real reasons! 

Anyway I was mostly relieved to listen to them and to feel just how much they had loved the show. I asked about their favourite characters, and of course as you would expect most loved Cinderella best. However one freckled 7 year old with no front teeth called Maisie, did disagree courageously with her classmates to tell me that her favourite character was Rubella the Evil Stepmother! She made no bones about it and when I asked her if she wasn't just a little bit scared of her, she looked with a certain disdain that told me that I obviously didn't understand! 

Leroy, a small boy of six asked me if he could send letters to all the people in the show. I thought his teachers would like that - an opportunity for Leroy to use his imagination at the same time as improving his writing  - bit of a win-win I suggest! 

Leroy,Ossie, Maise and Candice then went onto tell me all the words they could spell! Well some were a wild approximation but the desire to spell for me overtook any uncertainty about the spelling. At first I couldn't work out for the life of me why six or seven of them started spelling words to me  arbitrarily.... and then I sussed it. Of course the character of the Fairy Godmother talks about spelling in her Fairy Song: It’s hard to be a fairy when your wand is slightly bent. It’s difficult to be a perfect speller.

And then I got it! They were spelling for me because at some unconscious level they had picked that up from Marsha! Wow!

And that brings me finally today to the greatest gift and secret of theatre making. And that is Alchemy. You may wonder what I am going on about now and you may also think perhaps that Alchemy is simply when a base metal is transformed into gold. And of course that is part of it.

But when applied metaphorically (get that Phil - A METAPHOR! I refer you to yesterday's silly Creatives video) it means the process of turning a whole lot of stuff into something entirely different! Indeed a transformation. And lets face it that's what Grimm's original story is about. A young orphaned girl is down trodden by her horrible step mother and ugly sisters and then by the strength and will of intention she creates the possibility of change and the certainty of transformation!

So there you have it, in my book that is the working of alchemy! 

Please discuss.

So that's it with my ramblings for today. If you have managed to stay with me - thank you and I would appreciate any thoughts or questions in the comments boxes below! 

Off in an hour or so to today's schools shows. I know that although I leave next week, I might be tempted just to stick around on my laptop in the foyer for a little bit longer. I am rather in love.