Wyrd Sisters : Hallowe'en Panto (nobody mention Macbeth...oh...er....well, that is. Erm)

When shall we three meet again?

That question might soon get a bit harder for the cast of Wyrd Sisters. A week from the publishing of this blog post, we go on for first night.

Now, anyone who has been vaguely following this blog will be expecting an 'eeeek', or an 'arrrggghhh' or some form of semi faux breakdown and panic. But that won't be happening. Because people, we have a show.

I love Wyrd Sisters. It was my first Pratchett book, and introduced me to the bonkers, brilliant mind of Terry Pratchett and the Discworld, where he most often plays. And it became my first play for the Canterbury Players as director. When I joined the Players in August 2010, I thought of myself as a director who dabbled in acting. I then spent three years discovering that I really love acting. But directing was always there as what I wanted to do at some point. This year has been about that, from assisting on Teechers to directing Wyrd Sisters, I've been getting back to old directing ways. I expected it to be hard work. I expected it to be rewarding. What I didn't necessarily expect was for it to be so much outright fun and enjoyment.

The main reason for that is that I haven't really directed this. Nosiree. This show has been created by the cast and crew. I've simply been an enthusiastic, supportive, occasionally constructively critical audience member, observing the show building. I really hope that you'll come and see the show and enjoy it the way I have. Let me give you some reasons why:

The Witches

Perhaps inevitably, a play called Wyrd Sisters lives or dies by the performance of the three (nominal) crones around the cauldron. And this play is alive....ALIVE...ALIIIIIVE! (That will make sense if you see the show).

I was nervous about casting Ellie as Magrat. Not because I thought she couldn't do it. Quite the reverse. Ellie is a hugely talented actress, but tends to get certain kinds of roles, and I was worried that if I cast her in this, she wouldn't get to use the range she has again. But she graciously accepted the part, and is brilliant. Her own natural dry, sardonic sense of humour is deployed to great effect, bringing the often missed wisdom of Magrat to the fore. She holds her own against the formidable presence of the other witches, giving Magrat a steel which is also often ignored (I honestly get a little bit nervous when she is holding the knife to the guard's throat) and her chemistry with the Fool is brilliant (mind you, it had better be, she is married to him). A little bit of improv from Ellie is also responsible for my favourite moment of the play.

Jill is someone I have acted with on a number of occasions now, and she is consistently excellent. She was pleased to be cast as Nanny Ogg, mainly as family members had told her that she 'is' Nanny, and I can see their point. An impeccable sense of comic timing, and the ability to quietly steal a scene from under the more serious characters, and also 'manage' Granny, makes her the ideal Nanny Ogg. Going away and creating lyrics for a short snippet of the infamous Hedgehog song on the basis of an off the cuff comment from me is also an example of some of the commitment and extra depth she brings.

Sally IS Granny Weatherwax. Actually, that's unfair. Apart from some lighting work I did on Barefoot in the Park, I hadn't worked with Sally prior to this play, but knew her socially, and she is a chaotic whirlwind of generosity, madness and fun. So she isn't Granny Weatherwax. But when the hat goes on, the voice comes out, and the stillness and anger comes out, she inhabits completely my view of the character. I will never be able to read the books starring her character again without hearing her voice, or indeed those of the other witches.

The Court of Lancre

John is a Fool. Er, John is THE Fool. He came into Wyrd Sisters with his eyes wide open, being a massive Pratchett fan, and he may feel a little ignored during this production. But actually, it is a testament to his performance. Right from the get go, John has been capering when he should, playing with the voice of the fool, adding in bits of business and suggesting reams of ideas (the daffodil head dress was all his idea). On two occasions, he was given the instruction by me to 'vamp' and this has led to short stand up routine and an out and out audience invasion. John directed me in Bouncers, so he understands all too well the pressures on a director, but also the sheer joy which can come from an actor throwing ideas in, whilst not being precious about them. He also manages, on two very specific moments to abandon light, comic performance and bring to bear dramatic, disturbing turns for his character, whilst still seeming in keeping with what has come before and after.

Jim messaged me early on in the rehearsal process with a question. "Have you seen Robert Carlyle as Rumpelstiltskin in Once Upon a Time?". At that moment, I relaxed - before I'd even started directing him as Felmet, he had already nailed the idea of what I wanted from the part. By turns menacing, feeble, mad as a box of (dried) frogs (pills), and perverse, his Felmet arrived virtually fully formed, and has simply built. I've worked with Jim on a few occasions before, and he is always good value, but I honestly think Wyrd Sisters is the best, or most flamboyant, I've seen him. He is a constantly cheery presence, and goes away between rehearsals and comes back with idea, suggestions, props and on one occasion, annotated sound effects CDs.

Stella scares me as Lady Felmet. As she should. She joined us about a year and a half ago, and has appeared in most productions since. However, I hope that the two productions she has done this year have been particularly fun. She displayed great comic timing and the ability to switch from one complete, convincing role to another in an instant in Teechers, and here, we've given her the chance to play the out and out villain. She's dominant, threatening, sarcastic, sadistic and powerful. I must remind myself never to cross her...

Scene Stealers

Wyrd Sisters has a cast of around 17 (I can never remember the exact number), and over 25 speaking roles. But there are no duff roles, and some great performances.

Peter, Jo and Adam form the world's oddest triple act as the key part of Vitoller's players. Peter's TomJon, we all freely admit, is not massively like the character in the books. There are a lot of allusions in Wyrd Sisters to TomJon getting into a lot of trouble when left on his own - and yet his character strictly as written seems not to back that up. Peter's mannered, fun take on the character reintroduces that, without losing the idea that TomJon is the best actor on the Disc. Jo as Hwel is sublime. A flippant line in my audition notes led to her auditioning the part in a Brummie accent, and when I said she didn't have to carry on with it, her response of "Do you mind if I give it a go?" laid the foundations for a great performance, with a dry sense of humour, the most terrifying beard ever, and a little touch of the Cheery Littlebottoms. Adam's Vitoller fulfills my original brief that it should be Brian Blessed meets Ian McKellen to the full, and is an actor manager of the old school. The rumours that he is the man behind the Death mask are yet to be substantiated. I maintain that Death HIMSELF has deigned to make an appearance, and small performance....whether I asked him to or not.

Sinead waltzes off with the scenes she is in. As the obsequious chamberlain, she brings a very Pratchettian leavening to a scene which starts as pure Shakespeare melodrama, and as member of Vitoller's players, her comic reactions, attempts to 'be' Death, and imitation of Stella's Lady Felmet  all enrich the scenes she is in. But is is her turn at the sarcastic demon the witches call on for help where she leaves me giggling uncontrollably every time. I wonder how many people will spot the Family Guy reference in that scene.

Richard's deceased Verence is a difficult part. By turns petulant, regal, invisible to almost all the characters and lumbered with a couple of key speeches which act as plot exposition, the character in the play version is primarily a plot device. Richard is making him funny, entertaining and believable.

Becky, Kasia, Dan, Lucy, Lisa, Tessa and Alanna have some of the toughest roles in the play. As various actors, robbers, guards, peasants, they have more often than not been given a few sharp, pithy lines, and a geneal guiding comment from me to improvise around a theme, and they have taken it, and run with it. They all have a moment to shine, and also have come together as a team of performers.

Behind the Scenes

Plays like this, especially big, slightly lavish productions, tend to rely on both those in front of, and behind the scenes, working together. And the team here is excellent.

Derek designs and builds pretty much all of the sets we do with the players. He and I had a lot of exchanges early on, and some wacky, creative and brilliant idea were discussed.Once we had agreed a design, Derek trotted off and has been busily building. I popped down to the Warehouse where set items and props are stored last weekend, and even by his own standards, Derek has surpassed himself. His stage will create the atmosphere and setting before a single light is plotted or line delivered.

Sally, Nick, Becky and Sarah, along with the cast, have pulled together the key issues of props, costumes and planning for backstage management with aplomb. In particular, Sally and Nick, who are both newcomers to the players, have been a god send,co-ordinating the props and the stage management planning with aplomb. Becky's calm, thorough approach and Sarah's moral support and knowledgeable advice have made this easy for this non detail focused director. Alanna also has taken my vague requirement for a small dance number and made it a real high point of the show.

We have more crew coming in for the final week. Robbie and Jean-Paul will come in to do sound and lights. And Claire as DSM will essentially, along with Nick as stage manager, take the show off myself and Becky. Claire has been a key player behind the scenes from the start, acting along with Becky as someone for me to bounce ideas off, contributing ideas and a source of calm and reason. I honestly couldn't hand over to a DSM I trust more to make the show work.

And through it all, has been Becky, probably better known to lot of readers on this forum as Miscriant. She and I have 'double acted' two of the three Canterbury Players productions this calendar year - her directing with my largely technical assistance for Teechers, and now a reverse of directing roles for Wyrd Sisters. She even effected to be happy taking on a smaller role in the play than perhaps she wanted because I wanted her to help me direct. She has been a godsend, working away behind the scenes, plugging in the gaps in my detail, helping actors with sticky bits, taking detailed notes, being willing to act as bad cop when I got overenthusiastic with my notes and became good cop, and killing a couple of recent panics dead. This is as much her show as it is mine.She's also recently been playing with photshop, and has taken the rehearsal shots which she has so kindly given me permission to use, and made them something more like what we see in our heads when watching rehearsal. A couple of examples are below, with credits for the additional art work provided below.

 Great A'Tuin -  nicolsche, http://scribblenauts.wikia.com/

Blasted Heath - Gaius Duke, http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=172601

There are many other people who have done a lot here both in front of and behind the scenes. This post isn't intended as a thank you, though it includes that. What I wanted to convey was that this play, which I always hoped would make for an entertaining and diverting couple of hours of theatre, has been made, by the brilliant people involved in it, something which I think will be quite the show.

I've thoroughly involved being a long term audience member for this production. I look forward to seeing the last few performances, and whilst I will be glad of the rest, will miss it when it is gone. I hope we several will meet again very soon.

But don't take my word for it. Judge for yourself by being an audience member. Come and see the show at the Gulbenkian Theatre Wednesday 6th - Friday 8th November. Whether you are a Pratchett fan, a theatre fan, a Shakespeare fan,or just want to have fun, there is something there for you.

Sisters are doing it for themselves.....

It's entirely possible that I may have confused my cast.

But, I'm starting in the middle again. Bad habit. Following the non too subtle hint from Miscriant in her own blogpost about rehearsals, I have finally sat down to do the first of two updates on the progress of rehearsals of Wyrd Sisters, the plan wot I iz currently directoring.

There will be some people out there who have a dim and distant memory of me directing them before. What comes below will not be a surprise. But to anyone who has been directed by anyone before, including my stint as assistant director on Teechers, I suspect rehearsals for Wyrd Sister may have started a little confusing.

First, let's start from the beginning (these blog posts have more false starts than Return of the King has false endings). Rehearsals have been going well. After an initial small panic. Sadly, for a number of different reasons, several members of our cast had to drop out of the play during the first week of rehearsal. The loss of the odd cast member in a large cast amateur production is,sadly, a fact of the pass-time. But several, all at once, including at least one major character? I began to be convinced that the play might be jinxed. With the help, and calming influence, of a couple of invaluable people, and the flexibility of the cast, roles were juggled, and actually, I really love the way the cast has ended up.

We spent the first month of rehearsals 'blocking and locking' scenes. My weekends were filled with me scribbling pages in the notebook, talking to the set designer, plotting the basic physical layout of each scene, and the transitions from one scene to the other. There was also the gathering of the backstage crew, acquiring the rights, and starting the process of promoting the play. It's very easy to see the role of director as being about the prep, and it is, but you are basically on duty the whole time you aren't at work once you have taken on a play. I would never claim it is as hard as being the lead in a show - in the end, there are no lines to learn, no final, do or die performance, but it is very hard work. I knew that from my own previous experience, but it has been a pretty sharp reminder.

So, 'blocking and locking'. This is where I may have confused my cast, or at least one of the places. Blocking is essentially the first step of rehearsals, where you work through scenes one by one (rarely in order), pacing through them, working out moves, key beats, and starting to form the basis of the performance. Blocking rehearsals have virtually no props, or costume, and the cast pretty much always have a script in one hand, with regular pauses as they scribble notes in their script so as they learn the words, they also learn the moves and the key emphases on lines. Most directors (rightly) come into those scenes with an initial 'starter for ten' on how they envisage the scene being performed, whether they are directors who have every move planned, and a particular and specific vision, or whether they are ones who simply like to provide a framework. I like instead to set a scene, give a start point of the scene (which I took to referring to as 'Previously on Wyrd Sisters'), a description of where the characters are, and where they need to be by the end. I then get the actors to have a go at the scene and we build from there.

That was a bit unfair. I am the director after all...I'm supposed to give them some direction. But I do find that this produces the best outcomes in the end. By discussing themes and ideas, we can then try and create something which they enjoy performing and which tells the story, rather than creates a framework without their input and then forces them to build in a certain direction. The creative people who I am lucky to have in the cast come up with all kinds of things I would never have thought of...and I take some degree of pride in the fact that what I think are the best moments in the play have come from where the actor has just tried something that they thought of, and it worked. But it is a bit different, and high risk.

Locking is a key part of blocking rehearsals. It is all well and good blocking the scenes and making notes, but you should always finish a blocking rehearsals running the scenes with a 'performance speed' run, albeit with scripts in hand. This not only locks the scene in the mind of the performers, but it also tests that the decisions you've made whilst staggering through it work en masse.

Having run a couple of rehearsals for each scene like that, we took a 'reading week', so people can learn their lines. Well,okay, it was also so I could go to Poland for the 2013 Commander Tours, but honestly, all that did was decide when we had the week. We had a reading week on Bouncers, another high energy, script dense, funny yet serious play which John (the Fool in Wyrd Sisters) directed a small group of actors, including me, in last year, and it really worked for putting the actors into the position to run and polish performances when they came back. I wanted that to happen in Wyrd Sisters.

Once back from reading week, this is where the fun really starts. Books go down, props and costumes come out, and the play comes alive and the performances become more real.

But that, and a bit more on the brilliant people I'm working with, will come next time.....on Wyrd Sisters.....

Enjoyed the blog? Intrigued by the pictures? Just want to come and see a good, entertaining show?

Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, adapted by Stephen Briggs, is on stage at the Gulbenkian Theatre, Canterbury from 6-8 November 2013. Tickets available from The Gulbenkian