Day two in rehearsals and Charenton finally had the chance to breathe its first breaths. We began the day with an intensive warm-up led by Robbie who plays Duperret, or rather, the erotomaniac who plays Duperret. This included a sun salutation during which my arms reminded me that I'd made my first trip to the gym last night and discovered their inherent weakness. Apparently, I can run for twenty minutes but I can't lift heavy things, or not so heavy things, repeatedly over the course of twenty seconds. To quote Mike, who was in turn quoting Quentin Crisp: "If at first you don't succeed, then failure may be your style". Oh well, a whole month to answer vanity's call and get into shape - I should be on some weird reality tv show.
Then again, once we entered the visualisation exercises, it wasn't far from being a Channel 5 programme about past-life regression. We lay on the floor in silence with our eyes closed for twenty minutes as Mike guided us through different stages of our characters' lives, asking us questions which sparked images in our minds: Where do you live? Who are your parents? Have you had sex? Have you witnessed death? Do you have a friend? Are you going hungry? We began with the notion of where our characters needed to be by the time of the play and allowed ourselves to fill in the preceding timeline. This evolved into moving the characters around the room, getting them to sing the copulation song and interacting with De Sade. Nico and Ryan (who plays Coulmier) are the lucky ones in some ways as they are playing "themselves" whereas the rest of us are all playing patients with mental illnesses who in turn have to play someone else within a play. We will eventually have to layer these characters who we met today with acting talents (or lack thereof), knowledge of who they're playing and figure out their levels of compis mentis-ness. Then again, they are playing real people, the ones who have to know what the hell's going on!
An hour passed very rapidly in this way, before the legendary Dr. Colin Sell dropped by to hear some snippets of singing and to discuss the music for the show. Mike excitedly described his vision of a junk opera, full of "found instruments" like pots and pans, washboards, woodblocks and so on. Some of the cast are musicians themselves and among the four lead singers it seems likely that Bill (Polpoch) will be our guitar man and Andrea (our designated music captain extraordinaire) will be lugging about her accordion for the next few weeks. It'll all eventually blend into some wonderful musical mélange. Apparently. He also reiterated an earlier idea he had mentioned about Marat possessing a harmonium or glockenspiel. Watch this space!
We advanced into the afternoon and our wonderful designer returned to discuss costumes. The upshot seems to be scary clowns, fops, shepherdesses and virgins will mingle with the melée of the mad, with plenty of bad make-up (the band Kiss were mentioned as a reference) and a special boil for Marat. Oh good, I've always wanted a special boil. Bill, our resident historian, then gave us a whirlwind tour of revolutionary France in all its gory glory, from tennis court oaths to Robespierre being "basically mental" and every terrible thing in between. Imbued with knowledge and renewed by coffee, we launched into the second read-through of the play, this time reading our own characters. All tentative, all just raising the anticipation ever so slightly. Again, Mike would occasionally interject with ideas and suggestions for how certain things may play out, with his request for protest banners but with a contemporary twist bringing great joy to this politically-minded bunch of actors. Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking "Cuts? We'll give you cuts!" beside an image of an unnamed Conservative Prime Minister with an unnamed reproductive organ in a guillotine...
QUOTE OF THE DAY: "We have to get a precise version of it first and then fuck it up, but fuck it up accurately". Yet again, Mr. Bradwell says it best.
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