Narnia again

Another long Narnia rehearsal today, with a lot of time at the end spent trying to get the movements of the ship right. Because we change the audience’s point of view of the ship from scene to scene, it has to be moved around the stage. At the moment it’s only the actors doing this, although in due course hopefully there’ll also be some stage hands.
There are a couple of issues: remembering which way it has to be turned, and what has to be moved out of the way, for one; and getting all the right bits and pieces picked up or shifted out of the way for another.
There are some twenty or more people involved at any time, some of whom have got to get to another part of the ship and some of whom have to move things. All in all it’s taking quite a bit of co-ordination. Without this complication, we’d probably have more time to rehearse everything else! However, it’s an essential part of the play, and has to be worked out thoroughly.
We’ve just about covered all the play – I think there’s only one or two small scenes right at the end that haven’t actually had any rehearsal time. But since they only involve the main characters rather than the people who play pirates, sailors, dufflepuds and ‘crowd’, it should be a bit easier to get them sorted in the next rehearsal. Once they’re done, we should be able to concentrate on getting everything really tight and tidy. We went back and did some of the earlier scenes again today, since they involved the ship, and it was a relief to find we still remembered what to do and say…!