Blocking, Day One

First blocking rehearsal last night. Good rehearsal, although it was somewhat amusing to find myself remembering first blocking rehearsals from previous productions thinking "Why the hell is he always looking down? Doesn't he know that.....what the hell....oh, I see. He's looking at his fucking script!" One good or bad habit (depending on how you look at it) I have as a director is that I'm constantly visualising stuff in my head and in my head nobody's holding their fucking scripts!! Ah, what joy! What fantasy! (Firstly, I just want to make it very clear that I only have these thoughts when I'm directing and, when acting, I am guilty of exactly the same shit. But c'mon, you know what I'm talking about, right? The thought of going clubbing is always more fun than the actual going......ok, I think I may be in the minority there.)

Where was I? Oh yes, rehearsal. There is nothing in a Beckett play that doesn't have a reason for being there. His stage directions are incredibly specific. There was some discussion as to how faithful we should be with the stage directions. Should we follow it as closely as possible? Say fuck it and do it our way? Find a middle ground perhaps?

Personally, I feel there's isn't much point tackling writers like Pinter or Beckett unless you're going to adhere to the genius of their work. Their plays are considered masterpieces for a reason. With The Homecoming, we strayed from the stage directions quite a bit but as that was a familiar, living room environment, it was easier because although the play itself might have been a tad off center, it was grounded in a reality that we could all recognize. Endgame, on the other hand, exits in a different reality. Beckett's reality. I know that sounds wanky, I'm flogging myself mercilessly as I write it, but I don't know how else to put it. Beckett's plays depict the world in a way only he saw it. So to do Beckett, you have to leave any preconceived ideas you may have at the door. Otherwise you'll hate him and hate yourself and not understand why and hate everything else because of it. And then you'll die a slow, miserable death courtesy of Kakiseni.:) (A joke people. Please put the phone down. Its not worth calling your lawyer.)

So what we've decided to do is remain faithful to the broad strokes of Beckett's directions (we'll be faithful to the big stuff and play around with the small stuff, if the opportunity presents itself.....oh, who am I kidding, we'll probably change all of it, kidding) and to put our creative mark on the characters and the relationships between them. When it comes to stage presentation and movement of characters, Beckett is pretty clear about what he wanted. What he has left open for us to play with is everything in between. The relationship between Hamm(U-En) and Clov(Alvin Wong) for example. Yes, we know they are master and servant. We know they are stuck together in this room. We know they have been together for some time. But the complexities and subtleties of their relationship are more or less fair game. Imagine, if you can, being stuck in an enclosed room with someone, outside exists nothing but death. Imagine the bond that you might share with someone in such a situation. You may hate them and love them somtimes, but wouldn't you also grow to need this person more and more with each passing day? Don't you think, in many ways, you might come to see this person as the only real thing you have left? These are a fraction of the questions we have to ask ourselves to in order to create a believable relationship between these two men. I'll be working with Nagg(Kelvin) and Nell(Nani) tonight so I'll wait till tomorrow to talk about their characters.

So yeah....blocking......I didn't really say very much about it, did I? Oh well, never mind, you're getting off light. It would would have been dull as fuck if I had made a post saying '.....and then I had Alvin move two inches to the right. I told him to stay there until U-En had finished his line. After that, I told U-En to smile here because I liked the look of it, after that I asked Alving to walk seventeen steps to the left while picking his nose......' Asleep yet?

Talk again.

Peace.