Yesterday, I was fortunate enough to get a sneaky preview of Waking Exploits latest production by infiltrating one of their rehearsals!

Love and Money will be showing at Chapter Arts for ten days starting this Wednesday before touring around Wales (A full schedule can be found here).

Now, anyone that knows me know that I suffer from earlientitus, so it will be no shock that I arrived a little early to the rehearsal room. This turned out to be a complete blessing as I got to see director Ryan Romain in action. Ryan was working on one of actor Gareth Milton's monologues, it was a real insight to see the process first hand. 

After Gareth ran his monologue Ryan laid out several chairs across the space, asking Gareth to switch chairs every time he had a new thought. This instantly layered the monologue, breaking up the text and adding to the intention behind the lines. The next time Gareth performed the monologue the difference was definitely noticeable, it was as if the process had almost subconsciously added more movement to the scene. This all took place in about ten minutes and the depth it added was phenomenal. It left me thinking, if thats what Ryan can do in ten minutes I'm excited to what he's achieved in four weeks!

Next Stage Manager Phil Richardson gave me a little tour of the set. There were large gauze flats positioned around the stage, lit up by a projector. I'm really excited to see how they utilise these in the performance. The set fits the play perfectly; it's cold and anonymous. I won't ruin the fun by telling you too much about the aesthetic aspects of the play, but I will let you see this little guy that I met on my travels!

In the afternoon I was lucky enough to see a full run through of the play.

The play tackles the dangerous anonymity of debt, exposing several characters' intertwining stories as they battle with the dark side of our financial industry. The play's rebellion against the chronological makes for a captivating watch; creating a stream of consciousness across events that led to the horrific incident revealed in the first scene. Whilst the content itself is dark, certain aspects of the story are guiltily hilarious. I found myself chuckling through parts of the rehearsal.

The cast were incredible, it felt as if they had lived in their character's heads for far longer than four weeks. Taking the time to understand their motives, afflictions and experiences. They were the perfect mix of intense and funny.

Overall, the whole day was amazing. Everyone was so welcoming and friendly, they even fed me chocolate.

I would also like to add that I am not just writing this because I was bribed with chocolate… no really... it wasn't even Cadbury's!