Splosh Nosh and Cinders Meets her Fairy Godmother: Director's Blog 11

Yesterday began at the studios at 8.15 with a large cup of coffee and some sort of healthy fruit biscuit that I found hidden amongst the bourbons and cream custards, and then a bourbon and a custard cream!  A quick update with MJ, my trusty Stage Manager, AKA known as my self-appointed "carer". I am actually not sure if that is a reflection of his generosity or simply that I keep losing my keys and glasses! Not sure I know what I would do without his subtle covering up of my "senior" moments of which there are many unfortunately!

So today was to include rehearsing the 'Splosh' scene,  now my guess is that many people reading this blog won't know what a splosh scene is unless they are an officianado of pantomime?  But they will know that every panto has its messy scene usually performed by the dames. 

I now bandy the word around with a certain nonchalance that no one would probably guess that I had never heard the word splosh until my first meeting with Owen and Phil way back in June. I didn't want to reveal my ignorance of this well established panto convention, so smiled sweetly, nodding my head and agreeing that whatever else we needed at the end of Act One, a Splosh scene was an absolutely essential feature of  a panto.  

That evening I did a google search and found its definition "to scatter (liquid) vigorously about in blobs", so from then on I could refer to this Ugly Sister's scene with an air of expertise!  Talk about having to keep on my toes, how could I possibly admit to such a deficit in knowledge about a show that I was going to have to direct at some point, and very soon? This was potentially going to unmask me! 

It reminded me of a conversation I once had with a friend who was a junior doctor, who revealed to me how surgeons' learn to operate on patients. She explained to me with an air of new understanding about her profession " When it comes to operating, it works like this, watch one (an operation!), do one, teach one."  Armed with this simple philosophy I felt confident that all I had to do was read up the night before and then look like I knew what I was talking about!   I think it worked as neither Owen nor Phil have ever guessed that I didn't have a clue what they were talking about! Fortunately I do now, and Splosh is as common a word in my vocabulary as custard creams and bourbons thankfully!

I have mentioned before that Owen is my encyclopaedia of Panto having come out dancing when he was born I am informed, so he was my main man when it came to plotting the scene. Splosh was as new to our emerging Ugly Sisters as to me so we all learnt together!  

When I was training as an actor, we did some great training in Commedia Del Arte, which is an Italian form of theatre, a highly physical comedy style with lots of slap stick and prat falls. So I am able to call on that in approaching this scene. Once again I think it may come as a surprise that the detail and choreography of a sposh scene is as demanding of precise timing as any dance or song. How we use breath to get the timing right is an essential skill and much of the plotting of this scene required painful repetition to get it working. 

I am discovering that my obsession with making sure every moment in the show is as tight and sharp as it can be is exactly the same as what Owen and Phil demand in the songs and choreography, and that Owen and I have a similar approach to looking at and directing movement. This has been quite a revelation to us both, as on the surface we come from opposite poles of the theatre making spectrum, his the jazz hands, teeth and smiles end, and me the Marlon Brando "live the part" philosophy! (Only joking Owen, Jazz hands and teeth have their place!) 

So Splosh scene done and dusted we moved on to begin work on the Fairy Godmother/ Cinderella transformation scene. Once again I was pushing Amy to find the emotional heart of Cinderella in the spoken dialogue as well as she finds it in the songs, and indeed she did. Working closely with Sally, she found the feeling and delivery of a young orphaned girl meeting a mother figure who seemed to care about her and would look out for her happiness. That felt good.

Its funny, I think I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs, that when I am in rehearsal I feel like I have packed my bags and gone on a journey to another country where the daily grind of recessions and austerity disappear into the background, which I have to say is a relief when much of my job involves persuading people to pay us to make plays!  

However the real world does have a habit of crashing in sometimes much to my irritation. And today was one of those days. I found out that there may be a problem with our technical get in planned for the night of the 17th November. Technicians are a bit like hard core lorry drivers, ready and prepared to work through the night to get the job done, and this has been the plan for the night of the 17th. But due to some administrative problems that have just come up, there is a possibility that the theatre won't be open for my team that night.  I am pretty sure though that we can solve it today  with our co-producer at the theatre and we'll be back on track for Saturday night.

Apart from that glitch, the rest of the day went well. Chorus 1 arrived at 4.30, raring to go. We hadn't seen them since last Wednesday, and I wondered if they would be a bit rusty. But I needn't have done so, they were pretty much on the ball.  I had promised Chloe, our Lighting Designer that we would be ready to do a stumble through Act One so that she could get on with her designs for the lights. Not one to break a promise, but aware that I didn't want to under deliver, we went for a VERY rough run-through, putting the Principals and Chorus One together for the first time as we did so. Actually Owen, Phil and I were pleasantly surprised that it wasn't all that bad actually, so well done to the whole team!  What it did show up however was that  at 70 minutes we are running 15 too long on Act One. With tightening cues and timing we can probably lose 6 or 7 minutes, but it also means a bit of forensic cutting is now essential. So I looked forward to going back to Olly last night to talk through where I would liket to  nip and tuck.  That's today's job!

As I was falling asleep last night, I had left the TV on, and found myself watching a very interesting documentary presented by Alan Yentob about the Chinese concert pianist Lang lang. It was fascinating, and just as I dropped off to sleep I heard Alan Yentob in discussion with Yang quote from the composer Debussy " The world of the Imagination is the real world", I rather like that and for the moment the world of the imagination is where I choose to live.

So now for a quick shower and then into the studios to crack into Act Two. Can't wait!