Rehearsal: Week 2

Hello, Alex here to welcome you into our second week of rehearsal, and it’s going rather swimmingly.

This week we’ve spent a lot of time devising short pieces which focus on particular areas of Ernest’s – our main character's - life. We’ve been incorporating music, movement and dialogue to help tell our stories whilst using anything at hand as props/set.

The techniques we’ve been using to write our dialogue are really simple ones, yet have produced some amazing stuff. Here are just a few of the exercises:

• Write a love scene using only three letter words
• Write a duologue without using the letters A and E
• Free write for 15 minutes using an object as inspiration

These exercises don’t always create a full scene but they’re a great place to start.

On Wednesday we explored the physical aspects of Ernest by imagining and inhabiting his body; it was a great way to share our personal vision of him with the rest of the group. We proceeded in creating his house and improvising stories around his belongings, all building layers and history to his life and story.

Ernest's house.

                                                           George's brilliant telescope.

We realised we hadn't jammed together since Northern Stage’s Annual Dinner and it was well overdue, so we enjoyed a full day of singing, playing and composing music for the show which ended in an enjoyable mini concert.

Finally we spent Friday making stop motion films about Ernest and She (oh yes our Ernest may well have a lady friend!) You can check them out here https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=575844214286. We were all loving how handy Mr Blair is with his camera.

And on top of all this we managed to fit in directing the StageDoor performance of ‘And It Cannot Come Again’ AND have a Malteser orientated competition (pictures to follow soon). Phew!

Love from the NOFFICE

North_NS