Our Dorian cast has met twice now, within the prison-like walls of the (very wonderfully inexpensive) Bloomfield Centre, here in Halifax. If you've ever been to Bloomfield (which serves a vital role in our community, providing desperately needed space for arts and community groups) you'll know that it's butt ugly, so I just couldn't torture you with pictures of it. Feel confident that we are beautiful people and as soon as we get to another location you can see us at our best! We are working fast. Night one was show and tell for musicians, we played a bit to discover our sound, and to show the actors what things might sound like. I was so happy that it was so easy to play with Lukas, Gina and David! I mean, I knew it would be, but you always feel a little relief when it actually IS! And we discussed possibilities for the show, and the basic ideas Karen and I have been working from in our meetings together. Night two was the actor's turn. They showed us a couple of little scenes that Theo and Sebastien had worked on in the summer (the actors have been working with Dorian Gray for a bit - more on that in later posts). Both scenes dealt with unspoken tension, and gave us musicians some good food for thought. We talked a lot about where we might begin, and one of the ideas that interested all of us was providing backstory for minor characters, or creating situations that might have been in the story. Then we separated for a few minutes, with actors working on another scene and musicians working on music. We musicians worked with the idea of idiom, which is sort of obsessing me, and we figured out some simple signals to drop into different styles simultaneously: faux jazz, victorian waltz, late romantic, modernist and recitative. The actors created a scene that might have been from the book (but wasn't), and we played it together. The result was rough, but good food for thought! This is hard and fun, and I think we now have a few conceptual frameworks to fill with improvised material. The next few sessions will work with those, refining our interactions (between Music and Theatre) and solidifying some of the directions we are moving in. Sunday we meet again (in a more attractive location), so I'll get some pictures to prove that we're not making all this up! Stay tuned......
Nov 5, 2011 at 10:03