Week 2 –(Days 6 – 11)

We’ve made lots of progress with the play this week and it’s taking a great shape. On Monday we started working from the beginning of Act 2, but skipped over the blocking of Natasha’s transformation sequence until Wednesday, although we did chat through it with the cast. We worked a bit of comedy into Carnalachie and Dorbie fumbling around in the dark before their entrance in order to provide a bit of light relief from the heaviness of Act 1 but we’ll have to keep looking at this as rehearsals go on because we don’t want it to be too slapstick. A reference to a ‘onesie’, which was cut last week, has been put back into the script so that this piece of dialogue has a stronger reference to ‘future’.

On Tuesday we went back over some the blocking that we worked with yesterday to consolidate it and play with a few other options. Then we continued working on with Act 2. We started to become conscious that we haven’t been using the stairs all that much in the blocking up to now and, as using them will provide some interesting levels on stage, we started to factor them into the scenes a bit more. The movements in the second half of this Act are quite complicated in terms of making sense of the text making the various different conversations within the group work. This meant that we had to work through each page of the script quite slowly but we ended the day with a basic shape that makes sense for us to come back to on Wednesday. As a company we tried to get to grips with what the stylised look of the play would be exactly and now all have a good idea of this to take forward into next week when we start looking at the play again from the top in more detail.

Wednesday saw us consolidating and tidying up the blocking for Act 2 before we loosely choreographed Natasha’s transformation sequence at the end of Act 1. This allowed us to then run Act 1 & 2 together in full without stopping so we could get an idea what the running time would roughly be and, more importantly at this point, see what it looked like altogether and if there were any parts of the basic blocking that needed to be reworked. Everyone felt the run went really well for the first time we had done it and that it was looking good. We spent the rest of the afternoon working the scene where Doctor MacGillivery gets a bit of a party going. As Sylvester can play the spoons we had been looking for a place to work this into the play and, having found the perfect moment, we went back to choreograph and block this scene properly to some rehearsal music.

On Thursday we started working with the blocking of Act 3, which was slightly less complicated than the previous Acts as there are less instances with all the cast on stage at the same time. Saying this however, there’s more coming and going on stage and, as we aren’t changing the set to a bedroom for this Act as is scripted, it meant that some of the stage directions were no longer practical, meaning we either had to change them slightly or cut some of them. John joined us for rehearsals too and made a few more minor cuts and tweaks to Act 3 as he was watching it and we were working on it.

After playing with a few more blocking options for parts of Act 3 on Friday, we were able to run the whole Act straight through to get a sense on it as a whole. As we need to establish that Act 3 is set in the early hours of the morning we decided that Olive and Renee should be wearing their night things, covered by a shawl type item, in order to help visually establish this for the audience. Not only this, but it would make more sense for these two characters not to be dressed at this time in their own home.

For the last few hours on Friday we were able to start blocking Act 4 and managed to get quite a way through it. So that we could finish the week having blocked the entire play we had a rehearsal on Saturday afternoon this week where we blocked the remainder of Act 4 and looked at the movements for the set change into this Act. Again, as we did with Natasha’s transformation sequence earlier in the week, we loosely marked it and worked out who could move which items of the set from a practical point of view (which cast members are available and don’t have a costume change, who can physically life things etc.). We will be able to look at this in more detail later on but for now it allows us to run Acts 3 and 4 together to look at the fluidity of it.

All in all we are in good shape for the middle of the rehearsal period and, now that we’ve blocked the entire play, we can really see the character and relationship arcs growing throughout the play. Getting to the end of the play this week has allowed us to see clear time passing between each Act and be able to compare the character dynamics in the very beginning of the play to how they are left at the very end.

Day 3

– We started the day with a discussion about how much time passes between each Act, as this will have an impact on the development of characters and their relationships with each other – in particular with Maddy and McShane’s relationship.
– There was some debate over the use of the word ‘Ballroom’ in Act 3. The original Chekhov play references there being a ballroom in the house, however the house in John Byrne’s version is less grand than in the original. The very word ‘ballroom’ comes with grand connotations so we thought about changing it to something else. We couldn’t settle on anything so we decided to stick with it for now and see how we could play it.
– We then went on to table read Acts 3 & 4 before John, Andy and Beth made some very minor cuts to feedback to the cast.
– After lunch we re-read Acts 3 and 4 but this time with some improvised movement, as we had done yesterday with Acts 1 and 2. This proved to be incredibly useful as we could begin to see the impact of the ending of the play already.
– Andy and Charlotte then pinned down the set, entrances and exits and what furniture we would need, along with where it should be placed on the set.
– Everything is now in place for us to start blocking the play tomorrow!

Day 4

– We talked the cast through the mark up and all the entrances and exits – where they lead in the world of the play.
– We then started to block the play from the very beginning of the text. (There will be some stylised atmospheric movement set to music to open the show but we will come back to this in later rehearsals.)
– The configuration of blocking of the 3 sisters was played with quite a lot when we began so that we could settle on the most appropriate and interesting opening ‘picture’ for the play. We’ll continue to play around with this as rehearsals go on.
– We added a line for Maloney to say on his first entrance. It was simply written that he enters the room but this looked strange. We went back to have a look how this was written in the original Chekhov version and adapted Soleni’s line there to fit our Maloney character.
– We played around with Carnalachie’s entrance with the Birthday cake in order to explore how it could make the biggest impact and interruption to the bubbling argument between the 3 sisters.
– It was decided that the record player won’t actually play anything, as is written in the script. Ross and Andy are keen not to have to place the time so explicitly and the Beatles song would pin the time down even to a year.
– We blocked up to page 8 today.

Day 5

– We picked up where we left off today and worked from page 8 in blocking the play. We also started to explore the moments where we could establish the stylised movements. As the play is written in quite a naturalistic way but we are wanting to stylise it, we have to find these moments and work on them in such a way to make everything work together and ‘look’ a particular way in order to create the atmosphere we want to achieve.
– There are moments in Act 1 where we are holding a moment (many times an awkward moment) in silence and stillness before then using the next line to break this and jolt the scene back into action again. This seems to be working really nicely in stylising the piece.
– We moved the chaise lounge more into the stage space and facing out to the audience, as opposed to laying across the stage left wall. The horseshoe formation of the furniture we had originally was looking quite contrived and forcing the actors to retreat to the edges of the set. By moving the chaise lounge more into the space we allow for more interesting blocking. This meant that we had to play with the configuration of the picture of the 3 sisters at the very top of the play some more with the new formation of furniture.
– The Beatles song playing on the record player that we cut yesterday remains cut but we are now thinking that it might be nice to have it play a nursery rhyme or something to show the Doctor still thinks of Renee as a little girl.
– We blocked to the end of Act 1.

It has been a very busy week in the rehearsal room this week but things are already looking great now that we have the play on its feet. Next week we’ll be continuing to block the rest of the play in this way and I’ll check in towards the end of the week to let you know how we’re getting on………..