All the real work is done in the rehearsal period ~ Donald Pleasence
Last week saw rehearsals start for Marina and the Clone, my first project as solo producer. We began on Monday evening with a read through. I sat there and listened as the Actors worked their way through each scene and the Director read the stage directions. And the further and further we got through the script - my script - the more I cringed and the more I thought I'd made a massive mistake. The jokes were lazy, the characters were dreary, the whole thing felt tired.
All my friends are going to hear this I thought. My family will see this and judge me. My partner is going to wonder why the hell I gave up a perfectly good job to write and produce tripe like this. I smiled politely and told everyone I thought it was great. Blamed my lack of enthusiasm on a cold.
Then, after a few warm up exercises, the team started working on scene 1 and bit by bit it started to metamorphosise. My tired old script, which I'd read a thousand times, began to have life breathed into it. Under the expert guidance of the Director, Mike, the Actors took the lines, stretched them, gave them new emphasis, played with them until they started to shine again and the characters, long dead in my brain, were brought back to the land of the living.
By the end of the first evening Marina, the Clone, Dr Barnabus and the Reporter were big, bold, real people and they were hilarious. The second night brought more of the same and by the time I saw the team on Thursday for their second full day of rehearsals the whole thing was better than I imagined it could be.
So what have I learned? 1) Have faith in your script - you may have read it so often that it's as flat as a pancake but there's a reason you've been over it so many times and that's to make it the best it can be; 2) have faith in your team - good Directors and Actors are like wizards, taking the bones of a script and transforming it into a unicorn; 3) it's a team effort - the script is nothing without everyone else and they are nothing without a script, direction and the sense of team.
Marina and the Clone is on at the Kings Arms Theatre, Salford from 15-18 March 2017
Marina and the Clone is kindly supported by Arts Council England
