Week One
We meet each other, discover the entire company for LLF is vegetarian and that we seem to share a fondness for silliness. We start the practical sessions - getting the group working together, sharing skills, exploring what we can do, working with the music –day two and we are comparing sore muscles and bruises from the sessions. When we arrive, all the masks, puppets, most of the props and the set are finished so we can start working with them immediately. Loz has completed 85% of the sound score and the animation is done. For the first week we do a speedy plot through of the entire show to get feel of the whole piece and to work with Loz who is only here for the first three weeks of rehearsal. Our job is to discover the action and how we tell the story – we get to end and struggle to remember what we did at the beginning. A week seems a very long time ago.
Week Two
We start at the beginning of the show again and work through scenes in more detail. We try out physical moves, work in masks a bit more and realize that we can’t see anything at all straight ahead because of the spacing of the eyes in the masks. We sweet talk Alison into widening the eyes holes just a bit to give us more vision, she does. Frances and I try out acrobatic sequences in mask (before the mask eyeholes are widened…it’s a bit scary!) We all play with the puppets to discover what they (and we) can do. Mark makes his puppets do wondrous things and gives us tips. Jonny has been designing and rigging lights and setting up sound with Loz. I wonder if he’s sleeping on set as he’s the last to leave in the evening and is always there when we arrive in the morning. The Boo is busy with the administration team upstairs, us downstairs, Bob dreaming up the next show (seemingly in the kitchen), Ali doing marketing in a room off the main rehearsal space, Loz working in the sound room (occasionally we hear him singing loudly or shouting at his synthesizer), Steff the animator coming in to see parts of the show and volunteers working in the meeting room, not to mention a stray dog waiting for its owner in the office. (Later I see Esther carrying a plastic bag to the bin, the little dog couldn’t contain itself).
The days are already going very fast.
We start at the beginning of the show again and work through scenes in more detail. We try out physical moves, work in masks a bit more and realize that we can’t see anything at all straight ahead because of the spacing of the eyes in the masks. We sweet talk Alison into widening the eyes holes just a bit to give us more vision, she does. Frances and I try out acrobatic sequences in mask (before the mask eyeholes are widened…it’s a bit scary!) We all play with the puppets to discover what they (and we) can do. Mark makes his puppets do wondrous things and gives us tips. Jonny has been designing and rigging lights and setting up sound with Loz. I wonder if he’s sleeping on set as he’s the last to leave in the evening and is always there when we arrive in the morning. The Boo is busy with the administration team upstairs, us downstairs, Bob dreaming up the next show (seemingly in the kitchen), Ali doing marketing in a room off the main rehearsal space, Loz working in the sound room (occasionally we hear him singing loudly or shouting at his synthesizer), Steff the animator coming in to see parts of the show and volunteers working in the meeting room, not to mention a stray dog waiting for its owner in the office. (Later I see Esther carrying a plastic bag to the bin, the little dog couldn’t contain itself).
The days are already going very fast.
By Nicky Fearn - Cast Member
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