Beth Morton Assistant Director of Three Sisters will be blogging about the rehearsal process. Be sure to keep checking back for weekly updates
Three Sisters rehearsals are now underway and our cast and creative team have got off to very busy but great start……as assistant director I’ll be keeping you updated with what’s going on in our rehearsal room for the next few weeks so make sure you watch this space.
Day 1
-After an informal ‘meet & greet’ session for the whole cast, crew, and creative team to get to know each other over a coffee we immediately got to work with a first read through of the script. The stage management team, production manager, John Byrne (writer), Andy Arnold (director), Me (assistant director) and our 10 strong cast gathered around a rather large table to listen to the play for the very first time. Andy also talked about his overall vision for the piece and the stylised way that he is looking forward to exploring throughout the rehearsal process. We also talked briefly and initially about our ideas for the characters and accents but these are things that will grow and develop as the rehearsals go on.
– The design team then joined us and we looked at the set design with Charlotte Lane, who is designing the set with John Byrne, and she talked us through her model box, which is a scaled down model of the stage and set that we’ll be playing on. John Byrne then took us through his sketches for the costume designs and explained his thinking behind them.
– After timing the play during the read through we decided that it was a bit long and could benefit from some re-working. The cast were released early and the rest of the afternoon saw Andy and I sitting down with John to re-work and make cuts to Act 1 of the play. The three of us also spent some time making some tweaks to the set design with Charlotte.
Day 2
– Andy, John, Charlotte and myself looked at and discussed the new model box that now included the tweaks we had discussed yesterday before the cast arrived for rehearsals.
– The cast arrived and first of all Andy went through the changes that we had made to Act 1 with John yesterday. We reflected on these changes then as a group and the cast shared their thoughts on them too. This resulted in some of the lines that had been cut being put back into the script as the discussions with the cast pointed out that some lines were useful for developing a character or their relationship with another character. Other lines were added back in as they were important in setting the scene.
– Once we had agreed on the changes to Act 1 we had a second read through but this time, instead of the cast sitting round the table to do it, they got on their feet and started to put some improvised movement into it. This was a very useful exercise in getting the cast to think about how they feel about and behave towards the other characters. Do they want to be near them? Do they not? Do they need to be stood near a certain character to be included in a particular conversation? There is an awful lot going on in Act 1 of this play and to see the actors on their feet reading the play makes it easier to make sense of what is actually happening, for both the actors and director.
– We then sat around the table again to re-read Act 2. After hearing it for a second time John, Andy and I again went away to make some cuts and changes to this Act.
– These changes were then passed onto and discussed with the cast, as they were for Act 1 and afterwards we, once again, read the updated version with the cast improvising some movements. This brought us to the end of day 2 and will leave day 3 to take a similar shape of reading and re-working / cutting the script.
– After rehearsals Andy and I had a brief discussion with the Stage Management team about what furniture we’d like to use in rehearsals and what we think the furniture that will be used in the show will look like.
