Game On!

One week out from the beginning of rehearsals – some major shifts:

• Personnel change
• Tolli meets his lighting operator
• Rehearsal schedules a nightmare

 :

We have a change of personnel. I’ll be directing the play, with Fraser Corfield as senior practitioner and critical friend – i.e. we’re co-directing.

I’m an inexperienced director. This is the biggest thing I’ve ever done – a complex and multi-levelled piece of theatre that also calls for obedience to very specific genre rules, heightened language, a tonne of timber in the set, no build space as yet, young actors, and the biggest challenge – leaving behind the writer’s head.

Moreover, the rehearsal schedule is proving to be a bloody nightmare. We’re working around 4 actors’ commitments and the stage manager’s Sunday job. The funding from Arts Queensland was fantastic – it basically allowed us to pay people up front for the work they did – but, of course, it wasn’t enough to let us to pay them award/union rates. And so they still have other work commitments – including other theatre gigs: Kathryn’s performing in Bronte, Sam is bumping in and then performing in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, Jess works some week-days and Anthony has a pretty much full-time workshop commitment to a project over at LaBoite for the first 2 weeks of the rehearsal period. Shit…

Thank god for Laila at Brisbane Powerhouse. She has accommodated our changing schedule in any way she can. The woman is a goddess! Thank you, Powerhouse! (We’re in the Stores building – primarily in the studio, or upstairs in the Level2 space – only 2 stage mark-ups for Staycee and Shaun to do.)

And thanks, !Metro Arts. Robert (director, operations) took myself, Tolli, Staycee and Shaun Kohlman (our ASM and lighting operator) through the Sue Benner space once more. Tolli checking out space and rig, getting it in his head as he heads south for a new job just after our first reading this Sunday. That’s going to be a challenge – getting ideas, developments, blocking for a terrifying thriller set in a pine plantation, down to him as he tours Menopause The Musical around regional NSW and Victoria! This industry creates bizarre paradoxes.

He absolutely wants to do this show, logistically difficult as it may be. Tolli was a lighting tech at QPAC for 5 years – and that’s how people think of him in Brisbane. He has designed lights for shows in Sydney and Melbourne, but never been offered a gig here. He’s hoping this show will break that barrier, show his work in a new light. I hope so, too.