One Play, Two rehearsals

This past week, we began the first rehearsals of the school play. On Tuesday, we welcomed everyone to this year's play, and asked them to sit in a circle and present themselves, stating why they wanted to participate and what were their expectations. While Siu took attendance, writing down the names of our new actors, we warmed up by making the actors balance the space. As we moved forward, we set a few rules, such as when we said one, they had to jump, when we said two they had to drop, and so on and so forth. We moved on to play feet-on-floor, making the tasks harder each time. Finally, we ended the rehearsal with an impro-match, in which we were the judges. We gave them titles such as "The king is dead!", an specific number of actors, time to act, and a theatre tradition such as melodrama. The second rehearsal was quite similar, but we began with "Ha Hondom" instead, while Olenka took attendance. Then, while balancing the space, i gathered the Form VI guys, who will help us direct, in order for me to show and explain to them our proposal for the play, the structure and some details about kathakali along with our application of it to the play. On the other hand, the girls were directing the balancing the space with the rest of the actors, making them group and form shapes such as bridge or a throne. Finally, we ended the second rehearsal as the first one did, with an impro match. On the other side of the coin, during class time, we dedicated ourselves to construct the structure of the scenes. We used the proposal of the play to guide ourselves with the structure, and as the play was divided into 7 acts, we turned each act into a scene. Of course, there were a couple of acts that we knew had to be 2 scenes due to its significance and how long the act actually was.

Personally, i feel extremely strange and old, and i am not linking it. I guess, after 6 years of plays, i always imagined what it would be like when i was finally in charge, and i thought it would be the best thing ever. I do love being in charge, i do love being the producer, and i feel absolutely great, but it is a lot more work than i ever imagined, and even though I'm enduring it, it's still A LOT. The thing is, i always saw the producers as the "big guys", and i always looked up to them. Now, I'm the guy in charge, and there is no "older guy" above me who i can rely on, and i feel old, very old. And on top of that, now I'm the "big guy" for the younger kids, and i need to be their role model, which makes me feel a bit nervous to be the one they look up to. However, it bothers me that some of the older guys (Form IV and II) already know me since a long time ago, and they don't recognize my authority sometimes, and i feel like the bad guy when i put them in their place. I guess that in a process that requires every one's support and collaboration, being the bad guy is essential to make sure no-one is doing as they wish. One thing that truly makes me sad, is that there is literally one boy from 6th grade, and that makes me wonder if that promotion is going to keep on the theatre spirit once they grow up. Also, there is usually around sixty people coming to the school play, and this year there was only about half of it. I'm not sure how well we are going to manage with a shorter cast than the usual, but there is one thing i am certain of: there is a lot of potential in our cast members. I've known most of the actors, and i have seen them improve over the years, and now they have a lot of talent that will make this play amazing. There is even a lot of new talent I've never seen, and i trust they will work incredibly well with us. Now that the structure of our play is complete, i feel much more confident about it, and some of my doubts are gone. I can see things more clearly, and i can say this will be my best work so far.
During this week of the first rehearsals i learned more of what being a producer is. Coordination is key for success, if things are planned loosely, failing is inevitable. As producers, we had to plan every single minute of the rehearsals, and have certain backups, in case things changed. Hence i learned that producers in theatre have to have their plans clear and set straight, for them to work properly with the cast and the directors. Balancing tasks is also essential for this type of work. Being producers and having to run the rehearsals without a director is quite time consuming, and i guess that's why there is more than one producer in each play. I also learned more about adapting a play, and that is actually setting a structure. The next step after the story, is how the scenes are going to be laid out. I learned that some big parts of the story can be altered in scenes for it to work out. For example, the entire beginning of the Ramayana is unrelated to our version, and we manage to structure a scene so that this part of the story, which is important, can take place in a simple matter, this being a prologue were a narrator tells the story. Moreover, i learned that stories can be told in different ways, and a scene can represent parts of it without taking too long. In theatre, creating a play, and adapting one for the matter, is an entire process, and each step gives you a clearer view of how things are going to turn out. Now that we have structured our play, we can move forward to the next step, which is casting our characters. And thanks to our layout, we have a better view of the importance of each character, for us to see who could play them. Also, i have come to realize, that some of the voids we were trying to fill when we adapting, were of great influence when structuring, as they were the ties between each scene, and helped us decide which characters were in which scene and why. Working as producer is quite a lot of work, and later on we will have to double up as actors, which makes me wonder a lot, how can some actors work as both the director and the actor, or producer and actor? How do they manage a balance between both works?