My apologies – I have been most remiss of late in not posting anything about the lessons at Wembley. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is my chronic inability to remember to take some photos, and when there isn’t a photo to accompany a text, I tend to lose heart. Another is that actually, we are on something of a team-building programme, forging a new group. After my session at the Monday group, there was an excellent response the following day, but that has tailed off recently, and we are back to about half a dozen each time. And in the meantime I had made a cojple of abortive attempts to start work on a new play (another look at The Chalk Circle, which I used on Lesbos.) But each time, there has been a change of personnel, meaning starting over each time. Until I manage to establish a basic core of performers, there is no point in trying to work on something which is ongoing.
On the brighter side, there are a few people who have started to attend more regularly, almost all coming from Iran. They include Roji, a slightly older guy, who has excellent English (and acts as my interpreter.) He reminds me a lot of Hamed, for he has the same creative imagination, and the same level of confidence when it comes to performance.
We do finally seem to have solved the problem of Hamed being a part of the group. For a couple of weeks he brazened it out, then he was finally twigged and sent away (which caused a certain amount of consternation among the rest of the group.) The following week he was unable to attend anyway, and then last Tuesday he was allowed in. And since then he has received his official C4C lanyard! Which ought5 to mean all is well. I certainly hope so, for I would like to encourage Hamed to take on some more leadership.
But in the meantime, we have had fun, plenty of laughter, and the group’s confidence has really grown. As soon as I am (reasonably) sure I have a more or less permanent group, we will start to look for a show that fits our numbers.
