I had been the day before back to the tailors for a final fitting for my jacket; I had never done such a thing before in my life. The jacket was a little tight, and the sleeves a little long, but I was assured all would be well. And so it was, when I returned today to collect (and pay for) it. Everyone seemed to think it looked very smart, and I too was pleased with it; I have wanted such a jacket, with an Indian collar, for a long time. And now I have it.
And the price was, as promised, more than reasonable, with a heavy discount (I have no idea how much of that was down to Yogi, to my own status, or to normal business practice.) The jacket was treated with care, placed in its own special bag, and handed over. All most satisfactory.
The other event of note was the first actual rehearsal, appropriately enough dealing with the meeting of Romeo and Juliet. A real first meeting, at that; they did not know one another. As I might have predicted, Richa arrived with a clutch of friends – all wanted to take a look at Romeo, but then the three of us found a classroom (more particularly we found a classroom with aircon.)
There was inevitably a touch of awkwardness, and one of the first exercises we did was one I had seen fifty years before, when Gerard Gould had conducted a demonstration rehearsal, of Romeo and Juliet, at Culham College. Each character sat still, with their eyes closed, while the other looked at them. Nothing more, and I admit I had not been impressed at the time. But now I could see that it might take such an artificial situation for each person, each actor, to begin the process of getting to know the other person without embarrassment. All the more so in socially conservative Nepal, where such frank examination is very far from the norm.
As expected, the hard part of the rehearsal was translating the poetic words, even after I had stripped a lot of the poetry out. But I am old-fashioned in my approach, and had not banked on how simple it might be to use a translation app to move things along.
I was very, very pleased with the rehearsal. We even managed to put the books, script pages, phones down, and play out their first kiss! In our case, the moment when they press their palms together.
I am old-fashioned in my approach (2). I ran into Pranita, who plays Juliet’s mother; there had been a confusion about rehearsal times It was only during the conversation with her, that I realised that actually I did not need a physical script at all, and that making an actual book might be a complete waste of money.
D’oh!
