“Memories and Ghosts”

“Memories and Ghosts”

January 17 2013

We are now into our final week of rehearsals before opening at the Haymarket Theatre in Basingstoke for our first preview performance on January 22.
So much work has been done to craft this company into a close-knit unit of people who can work intensively and co-operatively for the seven months or so that we shall be touring. Technical rehearsals can be times when things can get tense, tempers can get frayed and the experience can be anything but glamorous and fun: but this wonderful company of actors and technical staff who I’m privileged to be working with are proceeding with energy and loads of good humour. We all seem to like each other a lot, and this is not only going to help us on the road, but also on stage. I believe audiences can usually tell whether the company they are watching are getting on or not - it’s a feeling that seems to seep over the edge of the stage into the auditorium. Of course we have to work closely with each other or it just doesn’t work. Acting is partly an individual pursuit, but a cast needs to be generous with each other and support and help: particularly our leading actors Jonathan Smith, Sarah Jayne Dunn and Tim Treloar whose roles as Stephen Wraysford, Isabelle Azaire and Jack Firebrace are the centre around which everything in the play revolves.

This week we’ve been hugely inspired by our first sight of, and first day working on, Victoria Spearing’s beautifully designed set. It’s stunning, but you’ll have to just take my word for it and come and see it as, for obvious reasons, I can’t spoil the surprise and show you a photograph of it. Technical rehearsals are about us all getting familiar with the set, our true workplace and finding out how to safely move about it and place actors and furniture and props to the best effect. Taxing days and some late evenings are ahead, but it has to be done and the hours we put in getting things absolutely right will pay off on the more than two hundred shows we shall be performing on this tour.

We’ve been spending many hours in singing rehearsals with Tim Van Eyken. For those reading this who have ever performed close harmony singing, you will doubtless know what a powerful and moving experience it can be for both performer and listener. One of the pieces we sing is a beautiful arrangement by Tim himself of a traditional folk song. I am taking one of the bass parts and it’s been a source of worry for days whether I’d ever get the opening harmony notes into my brain - but it’s there now. It’s exhilarating to hear everyone blending together to produce this lovely music, and of course it’s yet another element that will help to keep us listening and staying in the moment as the weeks on tour progress.
“Birdsong” revolves around the memories of the principal character of Stephen Wraysford. 

Time switches constantly as, recovering from a near fatal wound, he moves into memories and scenes from his present and past. As with many things in theatre and the rehearsal process, unexpected comedy moments can occur. There are several moments when ghosts of Stephen’s and Jack’s past re-appear and rehearsing one of these has produced the Comment of the Week for this blog. 
Joshua Higgott, who plays Brennan, a character who survives, appears playing violin in a scene in which the ghosts of Jack’s comrades appear. Josh’s classic overheard and earnest comment was “Remember: I’m a memory, not a ghost.” Honourable mention must also be given to our Director, Alastair Whatley, for his shouted instruction : “OK....and stand by ghosts!” By my next blog we shall have begun our performance journey. I’m loving it all and just can’t wait. 

Birdsong: Rehearsals Blog 1

“How on earth can you stand up on stage in front of all those people?”....... “How on earth do you learn all those lines?”........ “Who on earth are you?”.....these are questions that most actors get asked frequently. Well maybe not the last one. For this actor, standing on stage or learning lines is nothing next to the sheer terror of turning up for the first day of rehearsals and meeting loads of new people . Happily with “Birdsong” that first day seemed a breeze and all those “Will I like these people?” and “Will they like me?” questions seem irrelevant now as we seemed to gel instantly as a company, something that I’d say is rare. 
It’s certainly very encouraging, for the success of this tour. It’s very important too: we are going to be travelling and working with each other for nearly eight months in an exciting and emotionally high-charged production -it certainly helps if we all like each other.

Producer and Director Alastair Whatley has been inventive in finding ways to ensure that we work easily and well together, and that’s hugely important in a theatre company. We don’t have the time or leisure to employ the usual ways in which working relationships build: we may have to begin rehearsing a love scene, or a death scene for that matter, on Day One. This play has plenty of both, of course, so there’s no time to be coy about how we tackle it. 

We’ve been learning military drill, singing together in four-part harmony, learning how to carry and use a rifle, playing energetic ball games such as 9 Square and Bench Ball and learning to portray different ways of dying. All this in a heady atmosphere of seriousness and fun. 
The subject matter of much of “Birdsong”: the experience of being in a terrible war, can be pretty grim. To get to grips with it we need large reserves of humour - as the characters we portray did to be able to manage what might seem to us now as impossible tasks in horrifying conditions. Somehow we have to get under the skin and into the minds of these characters and bring them to life, six nights a week and twice most Saturdays and mid-week. This means breathing the same energy into what we do during week nineteen as we did when we began on week one. Every night is “First Night” for a new audience. 


We began rehearsals a week before Christmas 2012 and several activities have been Christmas-themed, including the wearing of Christmas jumpers. Having packed lightly while away from my home in Manchester I could only manage a burgundy- coloured one but it kind of fitted in. Others had entered into the spirit by buying very racy knitted Christmas socks from the local Primark - which I think showed great dedication to the cause. This made for a sparklingly colourful display when we were rehearsing perhaps one of the most harrowing scenes of the play when the Germans explode through one of the sappers’ tunnels, killing several. Emily Stride, playing a German, in a very nice red Christmas jumper, gets shot by Tim Van Eyken, who plays Evans, in a contrasting blue one. 
I watched with admiration as Emily jerked backwards at the moment of impact and fell convincingly (and safely) to the floor. What I wasn’t prepared for was hearing Emily, now supine and playing dead, remark brightly: “This is a really nice jumper to get shot in.” Where but in an actors’ rehearsal room would you ever hear a line like that?

Here’s another cracker: yesterday we had further exercises organized by our military advisor Tony Green: the company had to go on a 3km run while the rehearsal room was converted into a dark and forbidding No Man’s Land. Being injured through Bench Ball I was excused the run, as was Tim Treloar who is suffering with a chest infection, but we were called upon to help construct the set and play two contrasting “wounded” on the field. 
My job was to be a complete “dead weight” that my chums had to somehow pilot to relative safety (at 15 stone and 6’4” not an easy task) while Tim was to howl with agony when moved as a result of being shot in the chest. All this accompanied by a deafening soundtrack of explosions and rapid gun fire. An interesting experience for us all. It being England in 2012 it perhaps wouldn’t surprise you to read that it was raining outside for the 3 km. run and some of the company were concerned about dragging their wet trainers into the clean and spacious rehearsal studio. According to Tony Green this prompted the priceless command: “Don’t forget to wipe your feet before entering No Man’s Land”.

OK chaps, pip pip for now, more from me just as soon as I can manage it.