lwf
Lady Windermere’s Fan
The Director’s Diary
Week 1
The auditions are over, I’ve cast the play, and now I can get down to some real work!
I hate auditions. You never know what you’re going to get. When I directed She Stoops to Conquer, I was three weeks into rehearsal before I could cast Tony Lumpkin – yet the auditions for Alice Through the Looking Glass yielded 15 potential Alices, all of whom could have done the job perfectly well.
I have a pet theory which, for the sake of this diary, we shall call the Immutable Rule of the One Short. Basically, it means that, no matter how successful your auditions, you’ll always be one short. Put on a 3-hander, and only two actors will turn up to audition. Or 25 women and one man will turn up – for a cast that incudes two men and one woman. Or you’ll have 150 auditionees for R&J, but nobody under the age of 50.
Lady Windermere’s Fan has been kind to me. Yes, I was one short: I didn’t see anyone I felt was suitable for the role of Parker, the butler. It’s not a large role, but it’s got bags of potential (remember the cliché: there are no small parts, only small actors...) But I’ve managed to tempt Bob Cambrey out of retirement – an actor I first worked with nearly 20 years ago when he was playing Falstaff, and one whom I know I can trust implicitly.
But the other reason I hate auditions is that you know you’re going to have to disappoint so many people – many of them A-list actors. Well over 50 auditioned for LWF, and I could have cast it two or three times over. However – and this, I’m sure, is a sign of the piece’s appeal - a number of actors who would normally be playing leads have agreed to take supporting roles.
It’s looking good. It’s looking exciting. And I’m looking forward to it.
Week 2
The first rehearsal is always messy. Introduce all the actors to each other (though many of them have worked together before); explain the ground rules – what I expect of them, what the Guild expects of them, and what they can expect in return; and a brief word on the way I like to work.
Then a quick warm-up (ease the muscles, get the blood circulating, push some oxygen through the brain), and then The Read-Through.
For years I didn’t have a read-through. My thinking was that the actors could read the play in their own time rather than taking up my precious rehearsal time. But then Reality tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me of my own years as an actor. Fact: actors are essentially idle (ask any parent: being on stage is much cushier than getting a real job). And, given half a chance, they’ll only ever read the scenes that they’re actually in. The read-through means that, with any luck, some of the actors will have a rough idea of the plot by the time we open...
I do my read-throughs on the hoof. The actors can enter and exit wherever they like, and I’m not looking for a peformance. But standing next to each other in a love scene is far more valuable than facing each other across a circle of chairs.
It’s at this first rehearsal that I introduce many of the actors to a culture shock. For me, Books Down is approximately halfway through the rehearsal period for principals, and earlier than that for the rest. The reason is simple: you can’t act with a book in your hand. Nor can you work adequately with rehearsal props when you’ve only got one hand free. To facilitate this, I virtually write off the week after Books Down. As I tell the cast – and I genuinely mean it – I don’t care how many prompts they take, even if it’s every line. But no books are allowed on stage. (One of the benefits is that it really concentrates the mind. I don’t mind if an actor takes a hundred prompts during this week – but the embarrassment factor is invaluable...)
Still, that’s several weeks away. In the meantime, there’s an empty stage that has to be filled with character, action and laughter.
I hate auditions – but I love directing!
Week 3
The usual problems for this time of year – though, to be fair, I knew all about most of them before we started. The Duchess of Berwick and Parker are on holiday somewhere warm; Mrs Erlynne is tied up at a conference all week; Lord Darlington is in panto; and Lady Windermere has flown across to Paris for a modelling job With limited opportunities for doing anything useful, I cancelled the rehearsal and spent the time working on some of the other things a director has to do: a list of props, sourcing the music for the ball scene, writing a progress report for Guild News.
But we’ve been getting some very good work done. I’ve directed Felicity (Lady W) before – in Alice – but Ross (Lord W) is new to both of us. So, from scratch, we have to create a believable marriage, a marriage that starts out idyllic, suffers a potentially fatal blow, very nearly falls apart, and then returns to stability, though with both parties wiser for the experience – all within a 24-hour time-frame. And this is all complicated by having to mould two young 21st Century actors into their 19th Century counterparts: a pair of ultra-conventional, Victorian, self-confessed Puritans. Body language is crucial, and my initial task is to pull everything back to a sort of repressed stillness, so that we can show the cracks without going over the top.
And here I’m lucky. Felicity’s posture is suberb (Clare – Mrs Erlynne – is frankly envious of it), and Ross is working very hard to produce exactly the right stance for his character. The difficulty for the actor, of course, is not only to stand and move correctly, but to look as if that’s the way they’ve been moving all their life.
LWF is a very funny play – but the laughter is built on the back of a Victorian social melodrama. At the moment, we’re working on the intense bits. But next week, with the entire cast available, we’ll be able to work on the ball-scene – a scene that crackles with good lines and comic situations.
Next week should be fun-time.
The Director’s Diary
Week 1
The auditions are over, I’ve cast the play, and now I can get down to some real work!
I hate auditions. You never know what you’re going to get. When I directed She Stoops to Conquer, I was three weeks into rehearsal before I could cast Tony Lumpkin – yet the auditions for Alice Through the Looking Glass yielded 15 potential Alices, all of whom could have done the job perfectly well.
I have a pet theory which, for the sake of this diary, we shall call the Immutable Rule of the One Short. Basically, it means that, no matter how successful your auditions, you’ll always be one short. Put on a 3-hander, and only two actors will turn up to audition. Or 25 women and one man will turn up – for a cast that incudes two men and one woman. Or you’ll have 150 auditionees for R&J, but nobody under the age of 50.
Lady Windermere’s Fan has been kind to me. Yes, I was one short: I didn’t see anyone I felt was suitable for the role of Parker, the butler. It’s not a large role, but it’s got bags of potential (remember the cliché: there are no small parts, only small actors...) But I’ve managed to tempt Bob Cambrey out of retirement – an actor I first worked with nearly 20 years ago when he was playing Falstaff, and one whom I know I can trust implicitly.
But the other reason I hate auditions is that you know you’re going to have to disappoint so many people – many of them A-list actors. Well over 50 auditioned for LWF, and I could have cast it two or three times over. However – and this, I’m sure, is a sign of the piece’s appeal - a number of actors who would normally be playing leads have agreed to take supporting roles.
It’s looking good. It’s looking exciting. And I’m looking forward to it.
Week 2
The first rehearsal is always messy. Introduce all the actors to each other (though many of them have worked together before); explain the ground rules – what I expect of them, what the Guild expects of them, and what they can expect in return; and a brief word on the way I like to work.
Then a quick warm-up (ease the muscles, get the blood circulating, push some oxygen through the brain), and then The Read-Through.
For years I didn’t have a read-through. My thinking was that the actors could read the play in their own time rather than taking up my precious rehearsal time. But then Reality tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me of my own years as an actor. Fact: actors are essentially idle (ask any parent: being on stage is much cushier than getting a real job). And, given half a chance, they’ll only ever read the scenes that they’re actually in. The read-through means that, with any luck, some of the actors will have a rough idea of the plot by the time we open...
I do my read-throughs on the hoof. The actors can enter and exit wherever they like, and I’m not looking for a peformance. But standing next to each other in a love scene is far more valuable than facing each other across a circle of chairs.
It’s at this first rehearsal that I introduce many of the actors to a culture shock. For me, Books Down is approximately halfway through the rehearsal period for principals, and earlier than that for the rest. The reason is simple: you can’t act with a book in your hand. Nor can you work adequately with rehearsal props when you’ve only got one hand free. To facilitate this, I virtually write off the week after Books Down. As I tell the cast – and I genuinely mean it – I don’t care how many prompts they take, even if it’s every line. But no books are allowed on stage. (One of the benefits is that it really concentrates the mind. I don’t mind if an actor takes a hundred prompts during this week – but the embarrassment factor is invaluable...)
Still, that’s several weeks away. In the meantime, there’s an empty stage that has to be filled with character, action and laughter.
I hate auditions – but I love directing!
Week 3
The usual problems for this time of year – though, to be fair, I knew all about most of them before we started. The Duchess of Berwick and Parker are on holiday somewhere warm; Mrs Erlynne is tied up at a conference all week; Lord Darlington is in panto; and Lady Windermere has flown across to Paris for a modelling job With limited opportunities for doing anything useful, I cancelled the rehearsal and spent the time working on some of the other things a director has to do: a list of props, sourcing the music for the ball scene, writing a progress report for Guild News.
But we’ve been getting some very good work done. I’ve directed Felicity (Lady W) before – in Alice – but Ross (Lord W) is new to both of us. So, from scratch, we have to create a believable marriage, a marriage that starts out idyllic, suffers a potentially fatal blow, very nearly falls apart, and then returns to stability, though with both parties wiser for the experience – all within a 24-hour time-frame. And this is all complicated by having to mould two young 21st Century actors into their 19th Century counterparts: a pair of ultra-conventional, Victorian, self-confessed Puritans. Body language is crucial, and my initial task is to pull everything back to a sort of repressed stillness, so that we can show the cracks without going over the top.
And here I’m lucky. Felicity’s posture is suberb (Clare – Mrs Erlynne – is frankly envious of it), and Ross is working very hard to produce exactly the right stance for his character. The difficulty for the actor, of course, is not only to stand and move correctly, but to look as if that’s the way they’ve been moving all their life.
LWF is a very funny play – but the laughter is built on the back of a Victorian social melodrama. At the moment, we’re working on the intense bits. But next week, with the entire cast available, we’ll be able to work on the ball-scene – a scene that crackles with good lines and comic situations.
Next week should be fun-time.
posted by oxford theatre guild at 6:05 AM
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