Day 6: Full Focus

The last of our skills classes at school completed, a weekend of warbling and singing assessments in the past, our focus is now entirely on rehearsing for "Marat/Sade". A slightly soggy Monday morning saw us assemble at the quite leisurely hour of 11am and we warmed up to the infectious and sing-along-able tones of Scissor Sisters. Their first album, obviously, not the later stuff. Kim (ensemble, now called Marianne) taught us all the indispensable life-skill of rotating our feet without using our knees - use your hips! We then played a game of that drama school favourite Zip-Zap-Boing but using stage combat actions and renaming it Punch-Kick-Block. Leonie and I were the last two standing before the rehearsal kicked off properly with some more character work. The four singers were in a peculiarly mutinous mood (the characters, not the actors) and needed to be asked to vacate the space several times by Mike before eventually assistant director Mauricio scared them off with his big truncheon. Yes, it was that sort of day.

The read through continued, during which we encountered Cleo's rather sweet Mad Animal, Stuart's Paisley-esque Roux and Robbie's disconcertingly glassy-eyed Duperret. Mike considered the possibility of having some sort of Duperret theme for Robbie's massive-codpiece-wearing erotomaniac and confirmed that it might involve some sort of "swelling organ sound" - now, either he's doing that deliberately or Mike's subconscious does a very good line in innuendo! Leonie seems to be connecting very well with her narcoleptic Charlotte - she confessed to falling asleep yesterday when she ought to have been warming up for her singing assessment! Eventually Mike called a halt to the reading and declared that it was time to put some of it on its feet. And the excitement only increased when the stage management team taped out an area of the exact measurements of the playing space in the Cockpit, complete with raised rostra at the back for lunatics to lurk on.

Mike wasn't too thrilled when he realised that the space was narrower than he had hoped - health and safety dictates that the gap between our raised area and audience needs to be 110 centimetres apparently, lopping some bits off the edge of the stage. Never mind, he assured us that we would manage because "we're groovy fuckers". And so we worked through the opening speeches of Coulmier and the Herald in the space, Mike reading, actors moving as they saw fit. We even got into the first half of "Homage To Marat", the first song of the show, with Andrea belting out the chords on her organ and chorus of mentals singing along lustily. The rehearsal was followed by the first of the costume fittings for the four singers, proof positive that we're getting ever closer to the big day. My fitting is tomorrow, I shall endeavour to take photos. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have lines to learn.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Why did Marx only drink camomile tea? Because proper tea is theft". Mike cracks out some political jokes as we discuss the rights of man and the never-ending intricacies of politics.