Here's the cast for The Opportunity of Efficiency - from left to right, Haruka Shibuya (playing Jennifer Field), Kosuke Toyohare (Ken Lomax), Shu Nakajima (Mr Grant), Reiko Tajima (Mrs Grant), Yuko Miyamoto (Iffy Scott) and Yusei Tajima (no relation to Reiko, playing Jasper Hardy).  In the pic, everyone's at a cast meal celebrating completion of the first week of rehearsals, along with the production team:

About half of the production team made it into this photo!  Kaku - translator of the play, Satoshi - Assistant Director, Mariko - Producer, Ayako - Prompter, Yo - Choreographer, Nao - Interpreter, and Rikki, also a Producer with the theatre.

By the end of the sixth day of rehearsals we'd got to a very good point.  After a first couple of days exploring responses to the play and characters through a selection of moments, in days 3 and 4 the cast chose key sections to work on - passages that felt significant to their character. At first we chose these sections using the moments identified in day 2 where actors felt they particularly liked, disliked, or were confused by their characters.  They directed the sections themselves, working with the rest of the cast to explore what was going on. Then they chose one of the other actors in the scene to redirect, often with a radically different approach. Finally an actor not in the scene worked on it, again often changing things entirely.  This turned out to be a really useful way forward.  I was able to observe a lot about how each of the actors worked.  They were pushed to try unexpected things in a really playful way.  And they came up with loads of good material.  We kept working in this way on and off throughout the next couple of days - moving on to bigger sections. Then on day 5 we read through the script again, for the first time since Day 1, and we started putting the whole play on its feet, using a similar technique. This time the actors took it in turns to take the lead, each directing sections in which they felt like the main protagonist as we moved through the play, with me doing the reworking.  We've got through about 20% of the play this way, and should get the whole thing sketched by the weekend.  It's been a really enjoyable way to work.

While working on this sketch of the whole play, we are also finally addressing all of the questions about translation.  Usually these involve the tone of a line - a tone that will only be decided once the play is on its feet (e.g. just how polite, rude, sarcastic, affectionate etc is the character being). Kaku the translator of the play is in rehearsals most of the time, which makes all this possible.

In the meantime, Yo, our movement director is developing a movement language with the actors that can go from the realistic to the somewhat surreal.  How much we use the more extreme end of this in the play is undecided (probably not a huge amount), but it's fantastic in building up an ensemble sense of each others' physicality.

So a good few days - with one exception!  After fighting back the jetlag and staying awake not only through rehearsals but through morning and evening production meetings from Wednesday to Friday, on Saturday morning I didn't have rehearsal until 1pm, and no morning meetings, so I didn't set my alarm. Bad idea!  I was woken from a deep sleep by a phone call from Markiko letting me know it was 1.10pm and everyone was in the rehearsal room waiting for me!  I made it there in around 20 minutes and fortunately Yo started warm up without me, but I was pretty embarrassed   Sleeping though a morning rehearsal would have been bad enough, but sleeping through an afternoon one seemed a bit extreme!  Anyway, I seem to be more or less adjusted to Tokyo time now, and, after the cast meal last night, had a day off today, with a chance to go up one of Tokyo's many towers, the Mori tower in Roppongi, which has a fantastic art gallery at the top, and  look out over the city: