Begin with images

I don't often repeat posts from one of my blogs to another, but in this case this extract is not only apt for Christians, but also for writers in general. Alan Jacobs, in his book, The Narnian, a biography of C S Lewis as well as an overview of his books, shows how much effective a story is if we start from images rather than 'themes' or theories. 

"Everything began with images," he wrote: "a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion.  At first there wasn't even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord."  There was not, he says over and over again, an evangelistic plan in the making of Narnia, no apologetic scheme: "Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; then fixed on the fairy tale as an instrument; then collected information about child-psychology and decided what age-group I'd write for; then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out "allegories" to embody them. This is pure moonshine. I couldn't write in that way at all."

Or perhaps he could have, but knows that it would have been a dreadful mistake, a giving over of his imaginative life to the "expository demon." What he has to do instead is trust the images that come into his mind - or, more accurately, trust that he is being formed as a Christian in such a way that the images that come to his mind are authentic ones, ones that lie at, or at least near, the centre of his soul. He can do this only if he rejects not only the market-driven questions of modern authors and publishers ("What do children want?") but even the more morally sound question of the Christian apologist ("What do children need?"): "It is better not to ask the questions at all.  Let the pictures tell you their own moral.  For the moral inherent in them will rise from whatever spiritual roots you have succeeded in striking during the whole course of your life."

This is a terrifying, or liberating, word: liberating in that one need not expose oneself to the sanctimonious drudgery of drawing up lists of Christian truths and hammering out allegories that will meet the desires or needs of children. But terrifying because as those images rise from your mind you discover what you are really made of: you discover whether you are one whose moral and aesthetic responses have been shaped by the Christian narrative or whether you remain a person "without a chest," lacking in true spiritual formation.  Trusting the images, you find out who you are.

Pages 243-4 The Narnian. 

Printer to Script to Plays to Television

Following the example of my daughter, who has to print out pages and pages of University material this year, we bought a Brother printer which prints at speed - but only uses black ink, no colour.  (But there is a cash back promise comes with it.)

No problem, we thought: we hardly ever use colour.  Of course the first two things I print out both have colour in them...  We haven't got rid of the printer that does do colour; if really necessary we can just hook up that printer and go for it.

One of the items I was printing was the script for Grimhilda! - the prompt needs a copy.  It was printed in record time.  Stageworks, the company that's producing the musical, has a wonderful lady called Jan who'll be doing the prompting.  She prompted for The Mousetrap, and very occasionally got herself accidentally seen by some members of the audience (if they were paying attention to what went on backstage) when the downstage door was opened just a little too far by one of the cast.  Or when, as one night, it opened by itself...

Jan also prompted for The Christmas Carol, which we did a couple of years ago.  Prompting is not a job I'd like to do.  It seems simple reading along in the script as the play progresses and hoping nobody will dry.  That's the easy part; it's when an actor skips a section and another actor has to follow, and the poor prompt isn't sure whether they'll catch up with what they've missed, or forget about it entirely.  That's what happened to me once, in The Magician's Nephew.  The young fellow playing Digby skipped a page or so of dialogue, and, because I was in the wrong place for the line he spoke, I went completely blank in a way I've never done before.   The prompt was on the opposite side of the stage, and was prompting like billyo, but for some reason I couldn't pick up what he was saying - there was what seemed to me to be an eternal pause before we managed to find our own way back to native soil.

I always admire actors who do weekly television series, especially those who get long speeches that they've got to have memorised within a couple of days and be able to say with the utmost conviction.  I'm a slow learner, comparatively, and like to feel my way into lines so that by the time I'm on stage with them I feel utterly confident.

Which reminds me, for some reason, of last week's Doc Martin episode, and the uncongenial Doc's remarks to the funeral director's son who was taking supplements of various kinds in order to make himself stronger and bigger (and more attractive to the ladies).  He was also having cod liver oil (which made him unattractive to the ladies - one of them telling him to stay 'over there, your breath stinks.')   He was also tanning himself, and the cellar in which he was doing this was not only full of muscle-building supplements, but tanning supplies.  Doc Martin stormed in there, barely managing to avoid hitting his head on the very low beams, and verbally set the place alight, giving the funeral director himself an earful for letting his son go through all this nonsense - and bringing on him some obscure medical problem in the process.

People on these medical dramas/comedies never have plain ordinary illnesses.  You wonder where the writers dig up all the peculiar problems that beset the characters.   I understand that variety is the spice of life on television, but some of the illnesses are just plain ridiculous - though not to the characters, obviously!

Changing looks and computing plays

A few days ago I decided to change the look of this blog to Google's new dynamic approach, which means that not only can the writer of the blog change how everything appears on the page at the drop of a hat, but so can the readers.

However, there are some frustrations with this new look. firstly, it's much harder to search on it.  For one thing on some of the dynamic pages you can't even find a search box.  Secondly, all the additional matter that you've so carefully added to the page over the years seems to go AWOL.  The Google ads are still there - on some versions of the page - but not consistently.  Links to other sites seem to vanish completely, and other interesting bits and pieces are all hidden away somewhere that I haven't been able to discover since I did the change.

So tonight, as the observant will note, I've changed the look again (or the 'template' to use the correct term).   In fact I've done it on all the blogs I have on Blogger.   Given them a facelift, but left them so that they're still easy to follow and won't go swishing all over the page as soon as you touch something.

I quite enjoyed that, but I didn't enjoy trying to find some information again on one of this blog and spending far too long doing so.  In fact, anything that's older than this year, it seems, just comes up as a complete chunk of stuff: all the posts from 2008 will arrive if you ask for some info on a post that was done that year.

Not so hot.

Incidentally, what I was trying to find were the dates of the plays I've acted in over the last decade.   It's been quite a productive time in that regard, with roles in nine plays, and music written for a tenth.   Here's the list.

1.      Mr Beaver in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, [second production by Narnia Productions], 2004 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

2.      Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, Sept 2005 (Teachers’ College auditorium)

3.      Mr Dussel in The Diary of Anne Frank, 2006 (The Playhouse)

4.      The Father in And Then They Came for Me, May 2008 (Globe  Theatre)[also co-directed]

5.      Reepicheep in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Sept 2008, (Mayfair Theatre)

6.      Ormonroyd in When We Are Married, May 2009, (Playhouse Theatre)

7.      Jacob Marley and Mr Fizziwigg in The Christmas Carol Nov 2009 (Mayfair Theatre)

8.      Pianist for Love – or Nearest Offer Apr 2010 (Playhouse Theatre)

9.      Rev Harry Harrington in Shadowlands, May 2011, (Playhouse Theatre)

10.  Paravicini in The Mousetrap, October 2011 (Mayfair Theatre)

I've kept a journal since 1987 (the first entry discusses my daughter waking up in the night with a rat in the room - the only time such a thing has happened - and dropping it down the toilet to get rid of it) you'd think it would be easy to track down the dates of these productions.   But for some reason there are chunks of time when I didn't make entries in the journal, and often they seem to coincide with the productions of these plays.  Furthermore, I've often written about these plays on this blog - or so I thought.  But in fact I hadn't.  I only seem to have mentioned Anne Frank in passing - after it was finished - and the two earlier Narnia plays barely get a look in.  Odd.

The Star newspaper is supposed to have some references to a number of these plays, but when you click on the Google search results, invariably you find that you locked out of the archives.  So you try the Star page...worse still.  The search box that's supposed to be available according to the help page is missing and when you try to access 'all' newspapers, it happily gives you nothing more than 2011. 

The photo is from The Mousetrap: all cast members on stage in Act II (Natalie Ellis, who played Mrs Boyle, doesn't appear in the second act).  I'm sitting comfortably on the couch keeping the audience guessing as to my role in the situation.  The photo was taken by Andy Cook, who designed the set.

Update as at 30.3.13: I've now completed another role, or rather two roles: Rev Hinton, and the Doctor, in Harvest Field, the Ministry of Rosalie Macgeorge.  This play had its world premiere last night, and its one and only performance, as part of the Dunedin City Baptist Church's 150th Celebrations.  The script was by Greg Brook, who also directed.  The play was performed at Otago Boys' High School Auditorium.
And, while I haven't acted otherwise since my part in The Mousetrap, the first part of last year was greatly taken up with Grimhilda! which I'd written with Cherianne Parks, composed the music for, played the piano during rehearsals for (and occasionally stood in for the Music Director).

The Children's Musical

Back in the days when I was still thinking acne treatments might be of some value to me, a friend and I began to write a musical. We were still in Secondary School, and we knew no one else who'd written a musical.

It never got past the first half of the first scene, though I remember it did have a song that began, 'It is raining in Siam' and went on to bring New Zealand into it somehow, a name that proved remarkably difficult to rhyme with.

The only thing surviving from that attempt at collaboration is a song called Wishful Thinking, which I wrote both the lyrics and music for (so obviously the collaborative aspect didn't go far). It was written without knowing where it would fit in the musical or who would sing it. In spite of the fact that this song was written way back before I left school and before I knew how to write an accompaniment to it, it has survived in my memory, and I can sing it to this day. Not that anyone wants to hear it.

Some years later - I think it was after I'd conducted a children's 'opera' for a local entrepreneurial young producer (he'd only been out of school himself for a couple of years perhaps) - I hit on the idea of writing a children's opera. In a great burst of creative energy, I wrote both the libretto and music as I went along and completed some twenty minutes or more of the piece.

And that's where things stopped. For more than thirty years. When I first bought the Sibelius music program (sometime early this century) I had another burst of creative energy, and transcribed onto the computer most of the music I'd ever written, including those twenty plus minutes of the children's opera. What's more, I orchestrated it as well. And again things languished.

I kept wanting to complete the thing, and wrote another whole scene, and orchestrated that as well. And then....well you know the story by now. This year, having seen 'children's opera' come up again and again in a my list of projects, I decided to help myself get this thing off the ground.

I asked a friend to act as collaborator on the piece. She's been involved in all the Narnia productions (with one exception, I think) not only as an actor, but has also assisted in the script writing and pre-production work. As well as making props, often from scratch. She has an innate good sense of what works on stage and what doesn't, and more than that, she is very concerned that the structure and the plotting of the thing makes good sense.

I'd gone into this process with the idea that what I'd written would be our starting point and I'd just 'finish things off.' Nope. We've gone back to square one and recreated it from the beginning. There are elements of the original story: much of the opening is still along the same lines except that it's been developed more broadly; only four of the characters remain the same - the rest have either been dropped or altered; new characters have been introduced as well as new approaches to the way the story functions. The entire script has been rewritten, and the idea I had initially of it being a composed-through piece (that is, there's music and singing throughout) has been laid aside in favour of a more accommodating music, singing and dialogue approach. One scene I've just written has no singing in it at all, although there'll be some music underpinning it.

And last night I came very close to finishing the first draft of the script. It was my goal to finish it this weekend, and I will. We've already hammered out changes and re-thinks of many of the earlier scenes, but there's still a good deal of work to be done on refining the script itself. And then comes the music, of course. I wrote some music the other day for the chorus to sing at the beginining of the third act, and I know what I'm going to do for opening music (about a minute's worth before the curtain first goes up) - and I may even be able to salvage or re-use other odd bits. But essentially the thing is a re-write.

I'd hope to get it produced next year. Time will tell. In the meantime, things have made great progress in the last few months.

Photo taken by my wife of me writing music the hard way.

The Horse and His Boy

Aravis also had many quarrels (and, I'm afraid, even fights) with Cor, but they always made it up again: so that years later, when they were grown up, they were so used to quarrelling and making it up again that they go t married so as to go on doing it more conveniently.

From the last page of The Horse and His Boy, by C S Lewis.

Aravis is the heroine of the story; Cor (known mostly throughout the book as Shasta) is the hero.

Stardust

I read Stardust, by Neil Gaiman, two or three years ago, when I was ploughing through his books at a rate of knots (having only just discovered him). A friend lent me the DVD, and it only clicked that I knew the story when they started talking about the village of Wall. From then on in, it was pure enjoyment.
Roger Ebert is surprisingly fuddy-duddy about the movie. James Berardinelli much more equable. Furthermore it actually tells the story better than the book did, which must be highly unusual. I remember that the last stretches of the book were somewhat rushed, or underwritten, as though Gaiman had run out of time or energy. Here in the movie, they have room to breathe, and the climax is truly a climax.
I can’t say I’m overfussed about Robert de Niro’s turn as a gay Pirate ship captain; that’s definitely a departure from the book. But since Gaiman had considerable input into the movie, he must have been happy with it. And it works well enough in the context of a fantasy world where nothing is quite what it seems. I seem to remember too, that the last of the nasty brothers was despatched well before the end. Here he survives until the last scene, which is more appropriate.
Charlie Cox is an absolute delight in the main role of Tristan; he and the role are one. Clare Danes does an English accent pretty well, (and is wonderfully down to earth) as Gwyneth Paltrow has done in a couple of movies – in fact, there’s a considerable resemblance between the two. It was almost as if Paltrow had dubbed Danes’ voice – or maybe they both have the same person dubbing for them?
There are a host of other names in the cast, from Michelle Pfeiffer at her gorgeous nastiest to Peter O’Toole having a day in bed as the revolting old king. Ricky Gervais gets a double comeuppance, first having his voice turned into that of a chicken’s, and then being dealt to with a sword because he can’t speak properly. There might be certain customers who think both were appropriate! Cox gets turned into a mouse at one point, Kate Magowan is a bird as often as a woman, Jake Curran becomes a goat, then a woman and a goat becomes a man in the form of Mark Williams, who manages to retain a great degree of goatiness. This isn’t a world where you want to meet the wrong person.
Nathaniel Parker turns up briefly as the grown-up version of the young man we meet early in the piece – he’s played by Ben Barnes (Prince Caspian, for those who don’t recognise the name). Here he isn’t the handsome Narnian, just a good-looking young village boy, with a taste for adventure.
Berardinelli, for some reason, compares the movie unfavourably to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. They’re worlds apart: the humour is quite different, particular the black humour, and there’s a sense that anything could happen here, whereas LOTR has a much more focused logic about it. Perhaps it’s the old problem of Yanks not finding British humour quite so appealing. Ebert certainly seems to have had a bad lunch before he saw the movie.

Goodbye to Narnia, until next time

Narnia has been left behind finally, for this year. This brings both a sense of relief and sadness. After several weeks of intensive rehearsal, and nine performances, we’ve probably given it as much energy as any show can take – from an amateur troupe. But it’s still sad to see the set dismantled, and the props put away, and the costumes lying in piles. For a time the theatre becomes our second home, so we’ll miss that too, in spite of the fact that the facilities aren’t exactly A grade. Nevertheless, the Mayfair is the only theatre in Dunedin that most amateur groups will perform at: it’s a good size, but not over-large (like the Regent) and even though it was built as a picture theatre originally (as far as I’m aware) it has great acoustics, and a sense of place.
I was even more fond of His Majesty’s before they turned it into a nightclub – one of the many disastrous decisions made by various City Council members, back in the 60s and 70s, who appeared to have had little foresight or vision. His Majesty’s had been the home to hundreds of local amateur groups over the years, as well as innumerable touring professional shows. It was a good size, (again not overlarge) and a proper theatre. Its backstage facilities, by today’s standards, probably wouldn’t have been that hot, but the many companies who used it don’t seem to have complained a lot. I remember the rabbit warren of dressing rooms out the back, and the orchestra pit with the names of dozens of musicians scribbled on its walls. There’s been talk of revamping the Mayfair on a number of occasions (the company that owns it just doesn’t have the money to upgrade it) but in spite of it being an asset to the city, it’s surprising how little enthusiasm there is on the part of the City Council to help support it; yet they’ve been hundreds of thousands already on the blasted Stadium with far less support from people, and seem to be intent on spending far more.
Anyway, all in all, The Dawn Treader was a great success – perhaps not financially, but certainly with the audience. Those who came seem to have loved it, and many declared it the best effort yet from the Narnia Production crew. My wife took photos of the play on Friday night at the behest of the director, and until I saw the photos even I hadn’t realised just how good it all looked. There are some scenes in the play that I never see: I hadn’t realised just how the good the costumes looked in those scenes, and how great the art work on the sets was. (I usually have my back to the sets!) But when you can actually step away from being in the play and see it more as a whole, you begin to more appreciate the work other people have done.
We presented about a quarter of an hour of the play at church this morning, at the request of our senior pastor, who discussed some of the themes in the book/play. It was a bit like doing it naked: I didn’t have any makeup on (which was great from my point of view as it meant I didn’t have to have another big clean-up) and we had none of the scenery (it was still down at the theatre) and only some of the props. Nevertheless, the actors managed to rise to the occasion.

In the photo, Edmund, Lucy and Eustace have just arrived soaking wet on the Dawn Treader.

We continue to survive the Dawn Treader

The Narnian performances have been going well this (second) week, with much better houses; even though the bookings were low, the door sales have been high. Ridiculous, but there you go.
There have been the usual share of minor calamities, and my tail has been caught so many times either by someone’s foot or in a piece of scenery that tonight I finally got wise and took to carrying it until I was actually on stage. Seemed to improve things. The poor tail has had a rough time of it, altogether. The seam above it has been opened twice, it’s got a bit of a bend in it, and it’s grown…through being left behind when I’m moving forward.
But the tail is the least of it, though one muddle yesterday involved it. Before Eustace is supposed to ‘swing’ me by the tail, I’m sitting on the barrel minding my own business, and waiting for the tail to be pulled. Last night I felt a tug as usual and stood up, swung round – only to find Eustace hadn’t even got near me….! Don’t ask me what the ‘tug’ was – perhaps the tail moving of its own accord – but it took a bit of recovery to get past that.
Much more spectacular was what happened during the storm scene on Wednesday morning. I climb down from the poop once it’s begun, holding the chess set (with the pieces all blue-tacked on) and usually just waddle my way round the crew who are going in all directions. This time, however, something tripped me up – I thought it was a crew member, but the director thinks it was the ‘mast’ for the sail. Whatever, I went flat on my face, banging onto my left knee and making it feel as though I’d bust something in it. Absolute agony – well, I have to say that to make the story more interesting. Certainly it was painful, and I think I must have banged my hand at the same time, as my right wrist has been very unhappy today. Some of the chess pieces went flying as well, so various members of the cast were grabbing at them as soon as the curtain closed.
Tonight I managed to get left behind somehow prior to the Rhoop scene, and had to skip on as the curtain was opening. The only problem with that was that I had to do it ‘off’ the boat. Reepicheep had apparently been off for a little swim…
Amazingly the set has survived the season: the poop creaks and groans worse than a real ship, but survives having more than half the cast (of 19) on it at one time during the sea monster scene. It isn’t pleasant to be inside it when people are walking about on it; it sounds as though something’s going to give. The prow hasn’t fallen over, even though it’s not exactly the most stable piece of scenery ever produced, and none of the triangles have gone over either. Last year, apparently, my son (who was in the play) knocked over one of the triangles. At some ten feet tall or more they ain’t a small thing to come crashing down.

Photo is of the poop deck.

Narnia and some more bruises

Found it hard getting back into Narnia again after a two-day break. I already felt a bit under par, and by the time I'd had my tail caught in the poop deck's back doors, had it stood on later in the second act (undoing the seam again), and fallen over, flat on my face, in the storm scene (scattering chess pieces across the stage in the process) I was beginning to feel it wasn't quite my day. In the fall I came down with a clump on my left knee, which is of course would be the one that's not feeling the liveliest, and though I don't seem to have done any major damage, it's quite unhappy at the moment. I don't think I'll be adding that particular stunt to the play from here on in.

We had a large audience of schoolchildren, which was good, even though they failed to laugh at any of the real jokes. Instead they laughed at an odd line of Eustace's: There's a strange look on his face. Don't ask me why that struck anyone as funny. Who can understand the nature of audiences? I'm sure someone's done research on it somewhere, as they have done on everything from Electrolux vacuums to how many days of the year the average person sneezes on, but I doubt that they were able to come to any decent conclusions.

Apropos of nothing above, I've just been listening to John Adams' violin concerto again (with the sound turned up - there's no one else home). It's hugely energetic in the two outer movements, though it's not always easy to feel a cohesion between the orchestra and the soloist (Adams says that'ss the way he's written it), and it must be a bit of a nightmare for the soloist to figure out where he is at any time - though admittedly he hardly ever stops playing anyway! The Chaconne is a strange piece, with the constant bass line moving at the 'pace of a glacier' (to quote Adams). The line, however, never moves consistently; as the piece progresses it gets more and more out of sync with itself, and the listener is forever thinking - whoops, they've forgotten to come in. That's part of its charm and design, no doubt, and it adds a curious edginess to the slow movement.

Another Dawn Treader review

Alan Firth, of St John's Anglican Church, has once again written a very favourable review of a Narnia production. Alan has supported the shows since the beginning (I think), not only by attending but also by writing them up for the Church website.
I particularly liked this paragraph in the review:
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, scripted and directed by Erina Caradus, is structured almost like a cinema film, with rapid cuts between scenes but no breaks in the action. The set design and stage management is complex and very effective. Fine painted backdrops set the scene on many of the islands, while a mobile and versatile Dawn Treader set fills much of the stage for the shipboard scenes. (The ship's crew double as stagehands, to the extent that handling the ship is sometimes indistinguishable from handling the scenery.)

It just occurs to me that Eustace says at one point, 'I bet there isn't any tax here'. He's such a fussy character, going on about British Consuls, and depositions and other such nonsense. Yet the one thing he never mentions is his lack of a passport...curious that!

Narnia reviewed

While trying to see if the review of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was in the Otago Daily Times online, I found the short article and photo that we've all been waiting to turn up in the newspaper. The lack of this piece in the newspaper has been a bit of a sore point with us, as it would have helped with the advertising. As it was, the review took two days to get in, and then was not quite buried in an obscure part of the Saturday paper.
Anyway, I can't quite figure out how to copy the original version of the review and still make it readable, so here's what it said:

Painstaking Presentation
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Mayfair Theatre
Sept 18, 2008
Barbara Frame

That huge dedication has gone into Dunedin City Baptist's Productions' presentation of C S Lewis' classic is evident. The detailed sets, props and costumes have been meticulously designed and constructed. Music and lighting have been selected with care, and the performances are clearly the result of painstaking rehearsal.
The story is a fantastic one: Lucy and Edmund, well known to Narnia fans, find themselves obliged to spend a long summer with their disagreeable cousin, Eustace. An argument about the merits of a painting suddenly propels them into another world, where they are reunited with their friends Aslan and Caspian, and during the course of the voyage to the end of the world they find out a great deal about themselves and the nature of existence.
Everyone in the large cast does a good job. Matthew Scadden, as Eustace, convincingly goes from nasty to nice-ish after a harrowing spell as a dragon, Dara Caradus is a confident and radiant Lucy, and Mike Crowl occasionally steals the show as Reepicheep, the pugnaciously noble giant mouse.
A good pace, co-ordination, and indeed just plain hard work are much in evidence. Erina Caradus' adaptation of the children's novel tidily condenses many adventures into two hours, and a great deal of thought has gone into every aspect of the production.
About 100 people attended last night. This is a great entertainment for families.

There was some quibble amongst our lot about the use of the word 'painstaking.' I thought it was complimentary, but some felt it emphasied 'pain' too much (!).
I met Barbara, who's someone I've known for about twenty years (she's a librarian), in the supermarket the day the review came out. I told her that I'd intended to steal all the scenes, but she said she felt she had to mention at least some of the younger ones (!).
We think there were rather more than a 100 people present on the Thursday night: the theatre was at least half full, and it holds around 400.
Nevertheless, it was a very positive review, and gratefully received!

More on the Dawn Treader

I’d never enjoyed the book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as much as some of the other Narnia stories, but working on it as a play has made some its values clearer. Nevertheless, the episodic nature of the story isn’t easy to overcome, and the curious way Eustace is redeemed long before the ending makes that part of the book seem less important than it is.
Alongside this part of the story is the quest for the seven lords, and Reepicheep’s desire to get to the ‘utter East’. These three are mixed together in a way that perhaps isn’t totally satisfactory; in other words none of them is quite important enough of its own, or rather none of the three is stronger than the others. Even Eustace’s change of character after meeting Aslan isn’t given the prominence it might deserve. I’m not sure what the point of finding the seven lords is, apart from its being a hinge to hang the story on - or as my wife suggests, a story about finding ‘that which was lost.
However, the audiences seem to find the play works for them, and perhaps I’m unusual in not enjoying the story as much as some of the others.

In general the play's gone well since opening night, although the houses haven't been too good. Seemingly the houses for Ruddygore and Cats weren't good either. Perhaps it's the economic climate, or maybe the large number of shows on at present; or perhaps the upcoming Arts Festival has already chewed up the 'discretionary' income...

Dawn Treader on a roll

First evening performance of Dawn Treader, and a much more responsive audience. Although the place was full only in the centre section, the audience was involved and heard the humour and laughed and did all the right sort of things audiences should do. Which encouraged the cast greatly. So confidence has been restored for everyone: the director’s very happy and the cast feel affirmed. Great!
Everything on the technical side went pretty well except for two incidents that were out of the control of anyone: a curtain got stuck on one of the triangles when it was being moved, and held up the show, and then in the second act, the front tab just wouldn’t open, no matter how hard the bloke on the curtain tried. We were seriously considering options when it suddenly came loose and things came back to normal.

The Voyage begins

First performance of The Dawn Treader this morning in front of a fairly quiet audience of school children. They laughed at a couple of things early in the piece, and then seemed not to get much humour out of it after that, which was a bit of a surprise. I think a lot of the humour is geared at adult understanding of language and such, and may have gone over their heads. Or they may just have enjoyed it all in a quiet way!
Don’t know what they thought of the five and a half foot mouse, except that the applause at the end was okay (he’s described as being two foot tall in the book). You can see photos of an actor called Warwick Davis playing Reepicheep (in the tv series) - he's closer to the right size, though I think I prefer my costume to his. That one looks all-enclosing and rather too fluffy to my mind. Warwick Davis also played the Goblin bank teller in the first Harry Potter movie.
In general the actual performance today went well, but it’ll be interesting to see how it goes in front of an older audience.
No major disasters, which was a relief, and all the scenery managed to get into the right place at pretty much the right time without hold-ups. Eustace was left burbling on a bit at one point, but not for long, and one of the ancient sea captains didn’t make it on stage for his couple of lines, so the other two captains covered for him. (He has to make a very quick costume change, and just didn’t get there.)
I sat down this morning about seven o’clock and wrote out a resume of the scenes, just to get them better into my head. Apparently everyone is having the same trouble trying to remember what comes next at certain points in the play – it probably differs for everyone, and may even differ from day to day. Yesterday, for example, I managed to miss getting on in time for the ‘water’ scene, having got left holding the chess board (and blue-tacked-on pieces) and finding nowhere to put it down, or no one to give it to. It’s not been a scene I’ve missed before.
We’re still making changes to the thing: the director has just rung me up to say we’re getting rid of the ‘waterfall’ – it’s only on for about thirty seconds (if that) and it causes a need to shift the infamous poop deck out of the way yet again, and then put it back. For the sake of some quiet at a moment that needs quiet, we’ve made alternative arrangements for Reepicheep’s departure from the play.
It’s amazing how insecure even amateur actors get. If we don’t get feedback we think we’ve done badly, even when we know in ourselves that we haven’t. It must be something to do with putting yourself out there in a vulnerable way; you’re kind of opening yourself up to the public, making a kind of fool of yourself. And if you don’t feel as though anyone’s thought it was all okay, you immediately drop into some ‘I’m terribly insecure hole.’ Well, I guess you have to just run with that, and keep on pluggin on!

The photograph is of Reepicheep (holding his tail for some reason - maybe to display it to the photographer). Taken this morning while he was offstage for a few minutes.

Long Narnia rehearsal

Yesterday I got into my Reepicheep costume at one p.m. and didn’t get out again till eight. Fortunately, even though it was a lovely day outside, it wasn’t hot in the theatre, so I wasn’t that uncomfortable – though I did pull the hood back off my head whenever there was a chance.
Rather than it being a rehearsal where we aimed for a straight run-through, we stopped at every scene change to make sure all the cast and crew knew what was happening with the scenery and such – and then often practised this again more than once. In several instances we made adjustments to the way things run, for expediency’s sake; it’s just too late to start adding bits to the script to cover scene changes.
It was rather frustrating in terms of keeping up the energy for the acting, but hopefully it’s solved all the problems we’ve had with the ship and the ‘triangles’ (as the large sets are called: they’re triangular-shaped constructions with a different piece of the scenery on each side; and this year they had additional flaps so that fewer of them have to be used. Complex!)
A lot of the cast were in their costumes, so that side of things was beginning to come together as well, and most of the props and additional bits for various scenes (such as the treasure cave) are starting to appear as required. It seems an enormously detailed show, now that we’re right in the thick of things. Obviously the acting side of it is the least complicated! My coracle is now virtually complete; instead of being a skeleton of a boat with troublesome wheel castors that won’t move easily, it’s got a ‘skin’ on it, and flows along with barely any effort on my part. Fortunately I’m not in it for long, as it’s quite wearing on the legs!
I was very tired at the beginning of the rehearsal, for some reason, and it took a long time to feel as though I was thoroughly ‘with it’, but it often seems that I have more energy in the midst of performing than I have when I finally stop. Suddenly I become an old man again! (Okay, 63 may not be super old, but it’s a time when the body’s starting to feel the strain of having been up and running for a good long time.)

Nearly Narnia

From today we don't leave Narnia until sometime in the week after next, when we have a couple of days' break from performances. We had a run-through for (most of) the principals on Wednesday; it was a bit chaotic, because we were back to not having the boat to perform on. (We were rehearsing in the Green Room at the Mayfair.) The young ones got a bit out of hand at times, including one moment when Caspian managed to hit Eustace on the head with his sword (purely accidental) and nick a piece of his forehead. No one noticed the blood for a half a minute.... Tonight we have a walk-through with the technical people; I imagine it'll go as these sort of rehearsals usually go: slowly and awkwardly and frustratingly. But it's a necessary process. The boat is starting to look more authentic, particularly the poop, which looked the outside deck of someone's house, as someone put it.

Narnia two in a row

Two solid Narnia rehearsals, one starting yesterday morning at 9.30 and going till 1 pm, and another today from 1 till 5.30, (which meant I missed my daughter’s birthday, which was attended by all but one of my kids and most of my grandchildren – boo hoo!). Real progress in both rehearsals; even more so today. We’re beginning to feel as though this might really go well. (The usual Kiwi understatement.)
Lots of technical things still to be tidied up, and lots of little details: for example, obviously no one in Narnia would wear zipped up boots, but one of the characters has to get his (modern) boots off in front of the audience at one point, and the only way to get out of them is to unzip them. What to do?
The music for the play has mostly been written, or ‘discovered’ but there are still moments when another few seconds of music wouldn’t go amiss. The young composer is going to be kept busy right up to the last minute. (He’s a very talented schoolboy using some wonderful midi orchestral sounds).
We were using two rehearsal spaces today: one with the ship in it, and the other with a ‘cleared stage.’ Consequently we spent the afternoon traipsing back and forth between the two rooms, dragging the CD player with us on its ultra-long extension cord, the only one the director could find at home. This meant we didn’t quite achieve the flow the completed performances will have, but at least it means we’re not trying to work around the ship in the scenes that don’t require it.
It’s still a tricky play to get your head around, in terms of what happens next. Because it’s episodic (as the book is), it’s not always easy to remember which scene comes after which. This can be a bit chaotic, especially if you’re supposed to on the poop deck when you’re actually somewhere else, or on one side of the stage when you should be on the other. Still, most of us are getting the hang of it now.
I wore my mouse costume the entire time yesterday, getting the feel of it. Can’t say it’s the most comfortable costume I’ve ever worn, with its heavy ‘bum’ at the back, and a sense of pulling on the hood, but at least it’s bearable even when it’s hot. The two people playing dragons have a much worse time: almost totally enclosed in their costumes in a way that could be claustrophobic.

Photo of one of the dragons being 'incarcerated' in her costume: her head is actually below the dragon's head.

Narnia Productions

I'd forgotten that there's a Narnia Productions site, and have just spent several minutes checking out the photos from the previous productions, and the backstage shots. It's a great collection, and well worth a visit. The various reviews from the media are on there too, for the most part, including the sequence of photos taken when I had my beard shaved off (rather publicly) for The Magician's Nephew.

We continue on with The Dawn Treader

Another Dawn Treader rehearsal today. I was tired when I arrived, and much more tired by the time we finished. It hadn’t helped that I’d stayed up watching The Red Shoes until 1.30 am, but even when I did go to bed I slept very fitfully, and felt as though I’d been more awake during the night than asleep.
I sometimes wonder if actors aren’t mostly introverts: they appear to be extroverts because they get up in front of people and perform, and they’re often quite noisy at social occasions. But in a rehearsal setting they swing widely from putting themselves on the line in terms of their part to looking like hurt children when the director chides them in some way. And as hurt children all that energy and life can fizzle away in a moment.
I said in an earlier post how each time you begin the rehearsal period for a play you have to overcome that feeling of inferiority in regard to the other actors (who are probably doing the same) and you have to build up a sufficient level of trust in each other to be able to do what can often be quite daft things – especially if your character is in any way ‘out there’.
Acting is a bit like a bloke wearing an engagement ring: being regarded as slightly odd goes with the territory.
Anyway, today at our rehearsal we used a different room. We’re rehearsing in the old King Edward Technical College building right in town (it’s now called King Edward Court) and have been using a large corner room in which the Dawn Treader ship fits (even if our heads virtually touch the ceiling when we’re standing on the poop deck, or where someone incautious can knock their head on a fluorescent lamp swinging from the ceiling). Today we worked in an even larger room, full of sunlight, some carpet around the perimeter (which reduced the level of echo - the other room is very echoey), and a general feeling of plenty of space. We were working on scenes that don’t require the ship, and discovered that nearly all these scenes were ones we’d done two to three weeks ago, and hadn’t really worked on since to the extent that we felt at home in them. So the afternoon was a series of disappointments not only for the director, as she saw all her hard work seeming to crumble, but for the actors, who probably mostly felt as dispirited as I did, because we seemed to be forgetting lines and moves left, right and centre. We came away feeling as though we’d all been sacked from the wine of the month club.
However, now that we’ve got ourselves back into these scenes, we’ll hopefully cement them into our psyches a bit more, and the next time we come back to them, things might be a bit more cheerful!

The photo is of the Stuart St frontage of KE Court; it's a vast building that extends over a good deal of the block.

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…!