Week 7, Part 1

Transitions. Vitally important in a play such as Love in the Time of Social Networking. Well, vitally important given the manner in which we have chosen to stage it. If the transitions are poor, the whole play suffers no matter how good the scenes. People remember the bad. And the good. But mostly the bad. So we have to nail our transitions. This means practice. And more practice. And more practice. We practiced so much that the cast hate the transitions and I hate the cast. But they look good. Which is all that matters.

Being in the final week means that the panic is setting in. Not about the production per se. I have total faith in my cast and crew and am confident that the play is good. We are all still laughing regularly (intentionally, of course) and rehearsals continue to be productive and enjoyable. No, the panic concerns the one thing that every play needs – an audience. It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest play ever with the greatest actors ever. If you don’t have an audience, it will all be for nothing. The word is out there in print and online. But we  need word converted to ticket sales and that is mostly out of our hands. So if you haven’t booked yet, please do. It’ll put our minds at ease. Contact neonfringe@gmail.com or book through axis (www.axis-ballymun.ie or 01 - 8832100). 

We have built it, you need to come.

Week 6, Part 2

Theatre is strange. The rehearsal process is strange. We spent over an hour on a scene today that we have been over before and had pretty much nailed down. But something wasn’t right. So we tried it differently. And it still didn’t work. So we tried a new approach. And it worked much better. Of course, it meant re-blocking the entire scene. And changing some dialogue. But it is now a better scene. Remember back in Week 4, Part 2, I said that issues left alone would eventually sort themselves out? QED.

Overcoming this block is a perfect example of theatre as a collaborative process. The issue we eventually resolved was one that had been bugging me since the beginning. But I didn’t know how to fix it. And now that it is sorted, I can relax. But I can’t take the credit. I said we tried a new approach because the change came through collaboration between director and cast. Some will say that actors should act and directors direct. But if a director can’t solve a problem, why shouldn’t he ask for help from the very people he has to trust to deliver the scene? If it makes the play better, fuck it, why not?