Laura Jane Dean

I think this may be my favourite stage of making and rehearsing a show. Everything has a place, and you get to fiddle and fine-tune and work out how you might get from one section to the next. 

Daisy, Chris and I started day six by listening to pieces of music we had found. What would work best where? What effect would certain pieces have on the audience? Would it work with me and the text, or against it? 

We set up a little stage ‘nook’ and tried out different lamps, then we tested the music for various points. The aim of day six was to bring the various layers together, lights, music, text and action. We had one of those ‘wow’ moments that only ever really happens in rehearsals, and you kind of wish the audience were there to see it. 

We ended day six with the first, proper, full run and it felt good. 

Day seven was made up of tweaking, refinement and chocolate treats. We worked through small bits, shifted some music, made something resembling a cue sheet, and did another full run. By the end of day seven the show feels it is at the point where it is ready to be shared with an audience. The first performance is on Tuesday, it will be an experiment and a test. It’s only been shared with others in a bare form, just me and the text and a chair. Over the past few weeks it has grown, shifted and changed shape. How will it feel for the audience? How will it feel for me? 

The last few weeks have been exhausting, hard, wonderful, emotional, anxiety-provoking and therapeutic. I have learnt a lot, and have to say a big thank you to Daisy and Chris for their understanding, generosity and wonderful creative brains. 

After the end of day four, feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, I took a couple of days off. I didn’t think about the show, I didn’t talk about the show, and I didn’t look at my emails. So by the time day five of rehearsals came around, my head was clearer and I was ready to go again. 

It was just Chris and I today, spending a very sunny day in the chilly basement. I laid out all the sections of text on the floor in a line. It was a long line, and we realised that perhaps this feeling of being overwhelmed and stuck at this point of the process was because it had been feeling a little like, something I needed to get through to get to the end. 

We had conversations about the flow, the structure, moments to breath and worked out a new shape, or way of looking at the show overall. 

We tried sections, we made small amends, we talked more about music and lighting, how I would like the show to look and feel. I tried bits quickly, and slowly. 

It was a good day. I’m going to record some bits, gather some music and buy some lamps. 

Day four was Friday, it is now Sunday.

I’m not sure what to say about day four, I know it was productive but it is a little blurry. It passed in much the same way as day three, but a bit warmer and with more bottles of water.

I was tired and I felt unsure. Lost, caught up in, and overwhelmed by the process - not in a particularly dramatic way, more a quiet consideration of what making and doing this performance is asking of me, and whether I’ve got it in me to do it, and to do it well. I think day four was me hitting the proverbial “wall”.

Before I started the rehearsal process my therapist asked me if it was difficult to connect with some of the material, knowing that some of the obsessions and behaviours are no longer present and also did I think that by doing the show it would somehow keep my relationship with the intrusive thoughts and actions alive? The answer to both of these was, I don’t know. And I still don’t know.

I don’t want to get too caught up in it, I want to be able to see outside of it, I want to be able to separate it out, and step away from it.

This is an experiment, of doing, and seeing.

Today was a little slow (in a gentle, comforting way) but ultimately productive, punctuated by a trip to Tesco to buy an emergency cardigan and socks. Our rehearsal space is full of charm, less full of warmth.

Daisy and I started off by trying out the difficult bit that I’d been dreading writing. I wrote a first draft a few days ago but hadn’t felt like looking at it since then. Saying it out loud today for the first time wasn’t easy but it felt necessary. I’ll keep trying it, and see what happens.

A few times today, as we worked our way through different bits of the text, we stumbled upon the question of truth vs fiction. Where does the truth sit? Is truth always necessary? Is there such a thing as an ‘absolute truth’ in performance? What is my relationship with the truth as writer, and then performer?

The show started to feel like it was properly taking shape today. We began to explore possible action, discovering moments where it worked with the text, and moments where it may feel contrived.

Questions of design, props and sound continue to float around…