The end of another week on 'A Kind of Alaska' and its been an experimental week..with the emphasis on 'mental'..in an entirely positive way. Im the kind of director who comes to rehearsal with good intentions to follow a plan and then ends up pretty much changing it as the day goes along depending on the way the day develops...maybe one day ill go in with no plan at all and feel totally liberated... The rehearsals are still exploratory..im trying to find an emotional reservoire that the actors can use. I try to think about what i would need as an actor if i was in the play. I have spent time with the actors concentrating on the words of the text as poetry..lifting the alliteration and repeated phrases as if they were a musical score. Pinter repeats phrases for a reason. He emphasizes words within speeches and puts words together as carefully as a chef chooses a menu and its the job of the actor to find out why he uses words like this..sometimes as weapons ..sometimes as gifts. Theres no room for the actor to question the validity of a line...it is more appropriate for the actor to find his journey to the line and then assume they are on a better road.

Today our designer Steve Denton who is studying for his Phd in Design asked me if he could experiment with a practical session using rolls of plain rough paper and observing the actors response to defined space. I was only too happy to embrace his idea and then develop it with my thoughts. The experiment lifted the process into a new realm ....the paper between two actors became a barrier..personifying tension between them for example...or...sheets engulfing characters in a loving embrace....or it became torn and ripped up into love letters or as a stimulus to arouse our character from her sleeping sickness. Paper became immediate costume or pathways along the floor or ....it became a personification of time...the years they had spent...waiting and watching this sleeping almost comatose woman..crumpled paper piled up signifying years of wasted time. . When invisible things..like space and time become visible ..it unlocks some interesting ideas.Paper crumpled became the sound of rain or of something burning ...and when we discussed the experiment everyone clarified how useful it was for them.

one final thought...and this might be controversial but ill say it anyway...this is a complete collaboration...im an actor/director and see the process through my experience of about 30 years of doing various productions...others in the cast are dancers...photographers....and im reluctant to define where our roles start and end...its will be great for me to take part in an impro and feel the inside of the process....directors dont usually do that but ..i want to..why not?..Our designer ...talks to actors..about emotions and what they are expressing during rehearsal and joins in with physical and vocal warm ups...designers dont usually do that... but why not? We have professionals coming in to offer thoughts on ideas...outsiders dont usually come in... but why not? The bottom line is that i know my responsibilities as a director ...but if your ensemble have more than one skill to offer ..why not use it....

Who knows, maybe next week i might even start rehearsing the play.

Thanks to Lisa Harris and Robert Harper for contributing to the process.