Packing up in Cornwall
So our final morning of rehearsing at the Ritz has happened. Julian was a lovely host and the space was invaluable, so we send out thanks to him and all those involved in running the space.
Today we were at a point where we had more ideas than things to play with, we had scenes we wanted to explore but not the necessary means to explore those ideas and see what came up. This, in turn, created a build list about 2 foot long, (lots of work for next week), and only helped fuel my excitement for the expectation of what we can create within this show. However we persevered and explored some more of Alf’s scenes with the set that we had.
A thought that Molly raised in a previous blog is that we work so visually that its difficult to pin down a narrative. Now we have created a narrative, we have gone ahead of the concrete materials that we had to hand, which of course is natural, as we didn't want to waste time and money building something that we would then decide not to use in the show. Working in the medium where the puppet, and the set are so key, it is not so simple as just testing an idea. You need the physical object there, not having the puppet of a character is akin to not having an actor there for rehearsals, you cannot just devise that character’s scenes without the person playing them there, just as you cannot puppeteer without a puppet. It sounds obvious but now that we are making concrete decisions with the narrative we can bring the scenes to life after making what we need.
After packing the set and Alf (and Gertie) all back into the van for the final time this week we went off to meet Kneehigh at the Lost Gardens of Heligan near Truro. For me this was my first time seeing any of Kneehigh’s work, and so went without many expectations apart from what was through word of mouth. We had a great first meeting with them and managed to watch their show in the evening, which I thoroughly enjoyed. One thing I particularly noticed was
their set and how it was quite important in the show. Its versatility and impressiveness really imposed itself early on; it became a character in itself; which draws parallels to how Smoking Apples work with set, and how we don't just use one bit of set once, but it is multiple things at once: a table, a shadow screen, or a fridge. We get easily bored by a piece of set being used for the same thing over and over, and this is what helps create clever and interesting visual theatre, we never seek the easy option, we always aim for the exciting and innovative.
Bramley Apple Out
