The intention today was to run the second half of the play. Since the two scenes which involve the largest number occur late on, I decided that I would run the second half of the second half first – if that makes sense, – so that those people whose only involvement was in those scenes could then leave.
But that plan was immediately derailed by the non-appearance of various key people, most especially the Pujari, who has only had a single rehearsal, and Capulet, making even those scenes difficult. Nonetheless, it seemed the best plan… but in fact even that did not really work. It is very difficult to rehearse scenes with key people missing. In normal circumstances I might step in myself, but that is not possible when I can’t speak the language. And even for those parts when we did have the right people, it was clear that they were still far from ready. Juliet was pitifully weak in the small moments she had to do; Paris was inaudible; the girl playing the messenger gave no performance at all.
Dhir, the man helping us with the music, was there, ostensibly to get a feel of how the play was running, but ended up doing a lot of directing, because he could speak to them in their own language. I did not feel undermined; I had thought that either Aparna or Khushi would be doing some of this, but they were either not there or unable to do this. Last year, in Ethiopia, I had been similarly handicapped, but they had been performers, in the way that too many of this cast simply are not. And either Binyam had helped out, or they had had a natural understanding of what it takes to perform. I fear the real problem is that I have not been able to give too many of them the skills that I assumed they would be able to pick up: to focus, to project, to react.
It is not all as desperate as I am making it seem. Some of them are very good. But I fear that all of them are desperately under-rehearsed. I have been here, or somewhere like this, many times before, and I do know that miracles happen in the last few days. So all I can do is keep working, keep plugging away, not let it get me too down… and hope.
