Skip to main content

Day 120 - Monday 13th July 2020

Location: London, UK

COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak


Lockdown

Love & Information - part 1

Dress Rehearsal Day!

Tonight was our final dress rehearsal for the one and only Zoom performance of Love & Information by Caryl Churchill.

Had we not had the Covid-19 outbreak, it would have been the dress rehearsal as well, but in a theatre and with a cast who had all met each other in real life and stood within a 2 meter distance of one another.

However, we didn't want to let a little thing like a global pandemic stop us, so we rehearsed weekly between 1-3 times, depending on the scenes and all learnt our lines as we would have done normally.

The beauty of this particular play (50 short scenes) is that it really lends itself to being broadcast.  If you don't know the play, it's a bit like eavesdropping in on conversations between people - like you've just dropped into their bathroom, joined them while they are out for a walk or at a dinner party or in the playground.  Most scenes have 2-3 characters (although the playwright doesn't specify anything) and they are all about the relationships.

Relationships and backstory always matter, but if you have a scene that is 5 lines long, you have to know who you are, why you're there and why you are saying those words with absolute clarity.  You don't have half a play to define who you are, you have to do it immediately.

The staging differences in this instance were working out how best to use the format we had, which was single camera and Zoom, to the best of it's capabilities.  We had to learn to look directly into the camera and not at ourselves on the screen (deceptively difficult), light ourselves, have microphones in the most advantageous spot and that iPads are a bit crap as a performance tool.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 150 - Wednesday 12th August 20200

  Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Certain people have always been a bit disgusting in the way in which they treat their surrounding. The number of surgical masks I see lying on the street every day is quite revolting.  Not only is it an act of pure sloth to just throw it on the floor without a care in the world for your environment, but surely in times when we are being asked repeatedly to wash our hands and use hand sanitiser it's an almost an act of aggression to disgard something potentially infectious in such a disdainful way? A plea therefore - please throw your salived filled masks in the bin, not on the floor.  Astonishing to have to ask really!
Post a Comment
Read more

1st November 2020

  Location: London, UK  COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak World Vegan Day 🌍🍃🐄🐔🐖 The 1st November is World Vegan Day. I have two thoughts on that - firstly, that every day seems to be National or World something day and secondly that for me, every day is VEGAN DAY 😁 As I have alluded to my veganism in this blog,  I thought   I'd let you know what lead me to this point. At the age of 8, I connected the dots that the meat on my plate and the animal in the field were very much connected and I couldn't bear the idea of an animal dying just so I could eat it.  Although I now have many more reasons which support my choices, animals dying was and still is my primary motivator for being vegetarian/vegan. I used to eat fish for a long time, but I could never eat a fish if it still looked like one and gradually I found I couldn't face the idea any longer. In 2014 I decided that for Lent that year it would be a good challenge to go vegan - I loved and ate dairy on a dai...
Post a Comment
Read more

Day 90 - Saturday 13th June 2020

Location: London, UK COVID-19 / Coronavirus Outbreak Lockdown On this date last year I was at Wembley Stadium seeing The Spice Girls. And it was genuinely one of the best nights of my life.  I didn't get to see them when I was younger as a five-some but seeing Baby, Scary, Ginger and Sporty live on stage was fantastic. It's hard to explain why exactly but essentially The Spice Girls were an integral soundtrack to my formative teenage years. I love a good bit of pop music and the queens of GIRL POWER had hit after hit after hit.  And the thing is, they are great songs! I promise you - request Wannabe at a wedding or somewhere where they play live music (I requested it at Piano Works Bar to actual cheers I tell you) and it will go down a storm. # V i v a F o r e v e r
Post a Comment
Read more