With just over a week before our first performance, this was our last rehearsal at the Welsh Harp Sailing Association clubhouse. It has proved extremely useful – without it we would have had no space at all – though some of the members there have appeared somewhat bemused at the weekly arrival of a motley crew (most appropriate for a sailing club) that is our cast. But there has never been a cross word, and there have been other advantages – we have been able to borrow one sail, to act as the symbol of Hamed’s breakdown, and two stools, to fill out our bar scene.
The rehearsal itself went rather better than I had expected. Despite having just the one week to go, today we welcomed another member of the cast: Amen, a young Iranian asylum-seeker that Hamed met. It did cause me a certain turmoil, as the role he is to play is one of two roles currently played by Jesus, that of the driver of the lorry taking the refugees from Bosnia to Italy. I am always reluctant to change a cast for artistic reasons, to improve the production, and so I did have some concern: as an educator, my focus is on the performers, not the product. On the other hand, there were some compelling reasons for the addition. It is always good to give the idea of theatre to as many as possible, so an extra person is a plus. It is also the case that Jesus is the only one doubling speaking roles, and so it makes sense to find someone to play one of them.
But it is also the case that Jesus, as a non-English speaker, is struggling with learning the roles, so it could be argued that we are being helpful by reducing the burden. But I did my best to make it clear that the role of the Driver was his to relinquish, and he was remarkably professional about it; it would be for the good of the production. Jesus is a performer in Spain, in a form of physical theatre, so it is clear he knows what performance is all about.
Today was also the first o;portunity we had to work with the sound track, created for us by Oscar, the son of one of our biggest supporters, Matilda. Dealing with the technical side of theatre is always time-consuming (and I am always too impatient to give it the time and care it deserves) and so it proved today, all the more so as we were also doing a full run of the play. For the first time ever, we had a full cast (though Roji was joining us, as ever, via WhatsApp.) And somewhat remarkably, we very nearly got to the end of the play, just leaving out the final scenes between me and Hamed.
Very few rehearsal time left, and only one, on Tuesday, with the entire cast; otherwise, people are coming in to do odd bits at odd times (including Sam, who is covering for me on Friday when I am flying to India.) And so it is, as ever, flying by the seat of our pants: hoping, rather than expecting, things to go well in performance. On the other hand, there are many factors which ameliorate that situation: the fact that this is a work-in-progress, not a finished theatrical production; that people will not be burdened by over-expectation; and not least the fact that we have set the production up as watching actors rather than characters means there is an automatic fail-safe: people can admit an error, and correct it, within the structure of the performance.
But that in itself is a sophisticated concept, and only to be used sparingly, in emergency. In general, the hope is that the production will sail through without the need to resort to such interventions.
