Wild Duck goes into performance

Last night was the final dress rehearsal of "The Wild Duck", which begins a run of eight performances at the Arts Centre tonight. Kitten the director expressed herself satisfied with the end result and was looking forward to seeing the audience reaction to it. She was certainly more upbeat than she had been at the end of the Tuesday dress rehearsal, which had technically been a slog through cold porridge and the acting reflected it. Tuesday was one of those moments as a director when you look at the result of months of preparation and rehearsal and think "Have I been wasting my time?" Hopefully these moments are swiftly followed by dress rehearsal like last night when you think all this show needs now is an audience.

Last night I dried on my line "The forest... the forest you see... the forest (He drinks)...is the forest." As you can see it is not a line that has much semantic meaning as written on the page but is one of those lines that should resound in performance and is the key to Old Ekdahl, the character I am playing. The fact that I dried and forgot it, is not a surprise because it is a line I have found difficult to memorise. In fact this sequence of three or four pages has always been a problem area for line learning. There is another line about wearing my cap. I knew the line like I do the forest line above but they arrive from nowhere like non-sequiters. The trouble is they are seminal and essential lines for the characterisation. Kitten has worked hard at eliminating some of my over used mannerisms on stage and it is probably time someone did. However I have lost some of the devices whereby I find a character through investigation, sometimes disappearing down cul de sacs, and sometimes by over-acting. What I haven't discovered is Old Ekdahl's fear of the forest and the sense of shame and humiliation he has out in public. Both these deep feelings are assuaged by the wonderland created in the loft. Both Ekdahl and his son Hjalamar are dreamers hiding from real life, which unfortunately for them as a nasty habit of creeping up on you and biting you in the arse.

I have produced a highly technical and adept performance which will get me through the play and probably service the plot very well. As an actor however I feel a little cheated of the depth of feeling that could be found in the character. One of the reasons for this state of affairs has been the strange hybrid role as Movement Director. This has been something of an adventure into the unknown - I have some thoughts about the role and the impact it should have - I am not sure I possess the necessary qualifications and skills to help the actors as much as I should. I know that instinctively and intuitively I have the skills as a director to create stage pictures, and am very interested in actors' body language on stage and in character. I am sure I can do the former but am worried that it crosses into the territory of the director. I am very interested in body language and can tell when it is wrong but am unsure how best to help. I think this production was a tough one to start with as some of the actors seemed to start from a low opinion of themselves as physical beings able to interpret characterisation through their bodies. The old adage about Bench actors being good from the neck up is not entirely without a basis of truth.

What being Movement Director, whilst playing a part, did for me was to make me more aware objectively of what was going on around me, whereas I am a subjective sort of actor who only cares about others as they impact upon the character. I describe myself as a non team player but in reality I tend to specialise in a role and leave the wider vision to others. In football analogy, I am the striker who thinks "Ball....kick....back of net...goal" and wheels away in triumph.

I think the production has opened up my eyes to a number of theatrical quandrums that I need to think through more carefully both as an actor and as a Movement Director and as a director.

I saw "Stockholm" by Frantic Assembly at Chichester Minerva Theatre yesterday afternoon (not perhaps best preparation for a dress rehearsal in the evening). It is on till the 17th so if you live in the vicinity I would recommend you get over there and see the show. It is a terrific 70 minutes of high powered physical theatre examining a relationship through text (brilliant script by Byony Lavery), dance and movement. The production ideas are ingenious and some of the theatrical solutions are mind boggling. I hop eto write a more considerd review in my next posting. However for now I am going back to look at the part of Old Ekdahl in "The Wild Duck" and consider how to achieve the performance without upsetting the dynamics and the other actors - a loving surprise for them rather than a rude shock might be the better approach.