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Please note: these comments and opinions belong solely to me (Peter Deane) and are not necessarily reflective of the "official opinions" of Wyong Drama Group Inc.

Last entry date - Thursday 13 September 2007 - the blocking period

29-Jul-07  (Sunday)  Our first cast meeting was arranged for 2pm.  Christine Vale was also holding a major rehearsal for Communicating Doors on the stage at the time and I was also aware that Wyong Musical Theatre Co was getting very close to their opening night and may have also been rehearsing.  Every cast member except Brendon Flynn was able to attend this meeting, so along with myself, Sharon and Millie we would have to fit eleven people in somewhere  However, there was only a WDG rehearsal going on and we were able to use the Blue Room for our meeting, which otherwise may have had to be in the Kitchen or the Lobby of the hall.

This was an administrative meeting where we distributed scripts, determined rehearsal and show dates, introduced ourselves to each other and generally did those things you have to do before commencing a play.  I warned everyone that I am a chronic arthritis sufferer and it has decided to currently attack my ribcage, so I was not as able-bodied as I was three years ago. The risk was there that I might get very sick - I was hospitalised for a fortnight in September last year and had to pull out of Millie's play.

I mentioned that we need to trust each other to perform our own tasks, and not worry about what others are doing.  I asked that everyone simply do as good a job they can at what they had to do.  And if everyone is working on that basis we'll have a great show.  If everyone is instead worrying about what the others are doing, they will disturb the preparation of the other people, won't be concentrating on their own tasks fully, and by definition would be remiss in their duties.

I also reminded everyone that I love to get input, and will take on board everyone's feelings on various issues, but as director it was my responsibility to actually make the decisions.  My fallibility was highlighted - I make as many mistakes as anyone else, but I do often get things right as well.  I also apologised to the cast for not being someone who says "well done" enough.

I then asked, "Okay who wants to run the play for three weeks?".  Not a soul put up their hand.  That question was answered without any more discussion (or the need for it).  We then turned to which performance dates would be selected, and the results of extensive discussion were to not do the second Saturday Matinee, but swap that for a second matinee on the Sunday of the first week instead.  The reason for this is that performing two shows on the closing Saturday and then pulling down the set is a big ask and we should avoid it if we could.

We then had a coffee break, and a full read-through.  Our rehearsals (for now) would be set for Mondays and Fridays, and we would try to get the hall at Meander Village in which to rehearse, in order to free up the hall for the (four) other plays in rehearsal.  Millie Sampson is to be thanked enormously for arranging that for me.

03-Aug-07  (Friday) Our first real rehearsal with blocking and moving around.  We settled in to our new premises at Meander Village quite readily.  There is an interesting library at Meander Village, and cast members have been able to serendipitously access a few works of fiction from there.

Now, we knowingly have cast members absent throughout this production.  John Czerniecki (Harris) is in Europe until 21 September.  Brendon (Hugo) was to be married on 18 August and was on his honeymoon in Fiji for about a fortnight after that.  Laci (Ronnie) had a trip to the Snow in early September.  The TheatreFest is on 8 September, and those in other plays would need to concentrate on their performances for that.  So I was aware of the impending high absentee rate for this rehearsal period.  The object is to simply hold as many rehearsals as possible to give the cast enough opportunities to come in whenever they have a chance to do so.

06-Aug-07  (Monday) At this rehearsal the object was to record the show to CD in order to provide the cast with a recording for learning their lines from.  So we had to hold this rehearsal at the Green Room because I'd be using the Drama Group's sound equipment (mixing board and microphones) and I wanted to borrow a laptop to directly digitally record it in order to save recording to tape, and then re-digitising it back to CD.  Unfortunately Pam was doing a run-through of The Dumbwaiter for the festival when I arrived and I wasn't able to setup the equipment early as I had hoped.  There was also a Communicating Doors rehearsal on, but that world start later and be on the stage so we could have the Green Room to ourselves eventually.

It always takes longer to setup the sound system than you think, but finally I had it going, and then Damien arrived with his laptop Macintosh.  It took us some time to get sound into the Mac, but eventually it was all working and we started the read at probably 8:30pm.

We got to the interval and took a break.  Damien's Mac took a long time to save the file.  A hell of a long time.  In fact we couldn't commit the soundtrack to the hard drive by the time we'd all had coffee, so we opened the Mac up to append to the memory file for the second half.  This took it probably ten or fifteen minutes to do; however we finally got it to be able to record and we read in the second half, finishing at about 10pm or so.  Damien took his Mac home and it saved the file to hard drive overnight.

It wasn't successful either, in that we only got 3/4 of the play on to CD.  It hasn't proven a big loss, as it seems no-one wants a CD to learn their lines from anyway!  We might do it again later, although we might not either!

10-Aug-07  (Friday) Back to Meander Village for a normal rehearsal.  We did some good work, but thanks to absenteeism, it is getting very tricky to block the play.  Thanks to Millie Sampson for contributing her body to the rehearsals.  Barry Sampson and Renee Campbell were also able to substitute for other cast members as their own roles called for little work.  We blocked a lot of the play but we reached a point where we had two more characters enter, so I sent everyone home then and there!  It's hard with two or three "phantom" characters on the set.

13-Aug-07  (Monday) A fairly normal rehearsal, blocking is hard work, but we are getting there.  Still a few people away, but we are settling into the digs at Meander Village.

17-Aug-07  (Friday)  Another fairly normal rehearsal.  Good progress made, although Brenda and Damien have horrendous colds or influenza...

20-Aug-07  (Monday) At this rehearsal, because of the progress we have made and other people's commitments to the Festival (and other things) we decided to call off the next Friday's rehearsal and all have a rest.  It was welcome.  What I always aim for during a rehearsal period is to block the play for half of the time, and then run the full play as a rehearsal for the other half of the rehearsal time.  This means we needed 7 roughly seven weeks blocking and 7 weeks of full play.  It looks like this is going to happen.

24-Aug-07  (Friday) No rehearsal as per our plan.

27-Aug-07  (Monday).  Sharon and I were to move house the next day!!!  We have been here at Narara for ten years and accumulated so much junk, it was obvious we weren't going to get everything in boxes in time for the move, particularly if we had to stop and go to rehearsal that night.  Early in the day I started to ring everyone and let them know that tonight's rehearsal would be cancelled.  Nobody was disappointed!

28-Aug-07  Sharon and I moved house on this day.  This process would have been worthy of its own blog, if only I had the time to write it up!  I was up all night the night before packing, packing and more packing.  The removalists arrived at 7am, had done one trip by about 11:30am, had lunch, did the second trip and had finished up at 2:30pm.  It was a hard day's work for them and us.  Lifting and carrying is not something I'm very good at with my arthritic ribcage, and I was in great pain for the next few days.  I won't dwell on it here.

27-Aug-07  (Monday) Back into it at Meander Village, although one or two cast members went over to the hall.  A minor hiccup, however.

31-Aug-07  (Friday) This was an interesting start.  Sharon, Joan and I arrived at Meander Village at 7:20 pm but there was no-one else there, and the Meander Village hall was locked up.  I wanted to avoid the Memorial Hall completely because there was a lot of preparation going on to tidy up for the TheatreFest and clean the Green Room up.  However a few of us had the idea that the rehearsal was to be at the Memorial Hall.  At about 7:40, after making a few unsuccessful mobile phone calls we decided to drive over to the hall, where, sure enough, there was a massive clean-up/organising session going on.  But there were a few cast members as well.

We thought about it for a while, and after umming and ahhing, I decided we'd hold the rehearsal at Meander Village and we'd go back over there.  While this was going on, Barry and Duncan who initially went to the Memorial Hall, decided it was on at Meander Village after all and drove over there only to find no-one there either (we had come back to the hall!)  Brendon arrived at Meander Village a little late, saw all the cars departing and assumed (reasonably) that the rehearsal had been called off and went home!  It was only Duncan and Barry coming back to the Memorial Hall...

So by this time, we'd all met each other either at Meander Village or the Hall, I had decided to rehearse at Meander Village and we all went over there.  Rehearsal commenced at 8:25pm.

03-Sep-07  (Monday)  We still get to a point in the blocking where there are too many characters and not enough actors, so we have to stop.  Still good progress, however.

07-Sep-07  (Friday)  This was the night before the Theatre Festival.  We planned to not rehearse tonight, and we achieved 100% attendance at the non-rehearsal!  Let's hope one day we can achieve a 100% attendance at the real rehearsals, because it hasn't happened yet.

10-Sep-07  (Monday)  Our first rehearsal in the Green Room.  There is a LOT of furniture in the Green Room which is impinging on our rehearsal space.  The Drama Group simply has too much stuff and not enough room to put it all.  Storage is expensive, and probably would exceed the value of the goods being stored.  So really, we need to chuck things out, and then re-purchase them on a needs basis rather than hanging on to everything with a view to using it again in future productions.  Rehearsal went well, and we are now up to page 64, with only 18 pages to go.

13-Sep-07  (Thursday)  This was the most interesting rehearsal so far.  We blocked the rest of the play despite a few absences.  It took about an hour the first time through to get from page 64 to 73 (tricky section).  When we came back through it a second time, it took about fifteen minutes!  Joan gave us the slip of the night:  instead of saying "they could send you a recent photograph", it must have been freudian in that she said "decent" instead!

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