Much to my surprise, I am enjoying the sessions I am leading with the teachers immensely; what is causing me headaches at present is casting the play. I have had one week only to get to know the students in really quite a profound way, to assess their ability, their attitude, their potential… let alone learn their blinking names… and to assign them roles in the play. By Saturday.
Let us address first the learning of names, a pretty vital part of a teacher’s or director’s job. (“The part of Lion will be played by… thingummy!”) We even started, when I first met them, with name games. Which quickly proved useless, partly because of my increasing deafness, but partly because of reasons of economy. Eh?
Let me explain. We rehearse in the Examination Hall, and for no doubt sensible reasons, the school has equipped this with a huge number of the sort of stackable plastic garden chairs that one sees everywhere. A wise move, in nearly every occasion. But I insist on students I am teaching sitting in a circle, and because of the arm rests, plus generous seats, they are about twice the width of a normal school chair. Which made the circle about twice as large, meaning they were twice as far away from me as I expected. And when you add in lack of projection on their part, plus an unfamiliar accent, I found it difficult to hear what they had to say… including their names.
But that was Monday, this is Thursday, and I have made real progress (though sometimes you would never guess, seeing as I am still asking them again and again.) But repetition helps, and even more so seeing the name written down. Soi why didn’t I get them to wear badges or labels? I don’t know!!!
I should state that they are a great bunch, and I like lots of them already. So apart from the pressure, working with them is a pleasure. Today, I handed out the scripts, and assigned them two character extracts from it to quickly rehearse and present to me. And for once the enormous room came to my aid, as it easily allowed everyone to have some space… and me enough space to assess each pair in turn.
After that, I gave each person the opportunity to say which character they would ideally like. Naturally, everyone was over-ambitious; if I needed a herd of Goats it would have been fine. Or a pride of lions. Only one, out of all of them, played it tactically. I would like to be Eagle, he said. Which means he almost certainly will be.
