So, here we are, just over a week before we begin rehearsals for our 2008 Fringe production. This week we've had our first cast meeting and Bill, our costume designer, has been busy trying the cast on with the creations for this years costume. For me this week I have had the slight luxury of not having too much else on in terms of work so have been spending time preparing and sorting various things we need for the production. For example, booking the lighting kit that we need to have to light the show both inside and outside the Chapel. We have to order this well in advance as the fringe is an extremely busy period for all the lighting companies, as i'm sure you can imagine.
As well as this work I have been looking at the script and trying to pull together a definitive version that we will use for rehearsals starting a week on Monday. The cast and I had a very productive discussion this week about editing the script to suit our needs and we came up with some really good ideas about how best to tell the story of Romeo and Juliet in the Chapel with our limited resources.
As for ticket sales we have done extremely well so far with nearly a quarter of all tickets already sold. This is an incredible amount for this early in proceedings and shows the popularity of the show. If you haven't booked your ticket yet and want to take advantage of the £5 offer for the first 3 nights I strongly advise you book soon as we are selling more tickets every day. The box office number is 0131 445 4023 in case you don't already have it.
This can be quite a frustrating time for a director as you have a lot of ideas and things you would like to work on but you still have to wait for rehearsals to start. I am going to heed the advice of an old Hungarian director i met at Drama school whose advice was simply this : as a director you can't read the play enough times. Very sound advice and one of the hardest things to remember to do, but it always reveals something new about the story or the characters which you hadn't seen before. I'll try to read it at least twice more before we start on Monday
Between now and then I am off to Inverness for the week to the National Theatre of Scotland's Exchange Festival. This is an annual festival of youth theatre bringing together 9 youth theatres from across Scotland. I have been working with Vertigo Theatre from East Kilbride and The Rusty Boat Youth Theatre from Greenock since December. I am really looking forward to the week as it will be a good chance to see what everyone else has been working on and the atmosphere of the festival promises to be electric!
If you have any questions about the process or anything you would like us to cover on our blogs do get in touch. I'm hopeful some of the other participants will be sharing their thoughts with you over the coming weeks.
