Rehearsals have begun for our new play Ten Months in a Cold Town (possibly to be renamed Spy Play. For it is a play. About spies).
Were going down the same development path of what we did for Beginning of the End, and some of the rehearsals for Warrabah’s Melbourne season, of improvising based on characters in order to flesh out the story. This time, however, instead of doing characterisation through ‘types’, were going to a more organic approach, which means a lot of research from me, and a lot of thinking for our two actors. I want this to be based on Character rather than Personality, the actions of the characters we’re creating. When I say character, I mean the action, and reaction of people to situations dictating what type of person they are, rather than Personality, which I’m beginning to see more and more as a distraction, a false construction of the way we think people behave, the way they are built. These things I know are all basic building blocks in creating stories in theatre, but I am still interested in the way people view characters, situations, in real life, and how this reflects on how we want to build people in a dramatic situation, how we want to construct them.
We’ve also been watching a lot of farces. Go figure.