Week 2: day 6

A weekend away and the arrival of Monday seemed to spark off a shift towards outcomes rather than experimentation. Clare and Ronan had both written scenes, and Tristan and Charles had come up with four possible ideas to pursue. In the morning, Clare worked with Keith and Pauline on her scene (latterly joined by me) while Dave and Ronan worked with the other actors recording some of Ronan's chorus dialogue. Tristan and Charles went off in search of interesting locations with Marisa. In the afternoon I directed a rehearsal of Clare's scene and also had an invaluable session on Walden with Ewan, Clare and Debbie. The problem with Walden is also the reason why I want to do it - it is an apparently simple yet astonishing complex piece of writing. How do you communicate all those ideas? I'm trying to find a number of ways of performance that reflect the different modes of the book - we only did two tiny fragments of the text today but made a big leap in terms of understanding what it possible. They feel like studies of what is possible. At the same time in the other studio, the others worked with Marisa on her piece, which combines a huge live video projection with live action - eventually spread over two studios.