DramaFest Notes - Let Me In

Finally, with the new ITA site up and running, i belatedly deliver on a promise to participants in the youth section of Drama Fest '99 to put up my notes on the shows. My particular apologies to Shannon who has waited very patiently!
These are some of my scribbled thoughts recorded on paper while i was watching the productions in progress. They might reveal more about my state of mind than the productions i was watching!
The notes are very much in point form. If you would like clarification either here or by email, by all means respond and i should actually have some time to get back you! I'm working through the plays in chronological order and i might edit out repeated comments from later notes, so don't be surprised if the notes get shorter!
So here's the notes on the first play:
Scarp Theatre Company
Let Me In

Great to see a creative outlet not denied to these people because of the strong language in this piece - much easier to offer a warning that some people may be offended and ask the younger children to wait outside. Well done, organising committee.

Watch textual changes, some playwrights are more sensitive than others to having their work altered, but all living playwrights (and some dead ones!) "own" their work and have the right to expect that you will keep to the text they have written. Check with playwright first. You'll often find them accommodating and genuinely interested.

Very appropriate choice of house and opening music "When you're a stranger"

Long delay getting going. Cueing is difficult under festival conditions and requires meticulous planning. Plan the running order for the start of the show carefully and take advantage of the brief technical rehearsal time to run through this.

Lovely establishment of setting - sfx, lighting, tableau, set, costume all set the scene immediately the curtain opened. Clearly established period, place, time and created expectations in terms of character and plot.

symmetrical setting - not strange?

Watch floor gazing. Particularly if you have been rehearsing in a flat space or a venue with a raised stage, there is a tendency to allow eye lines to drop to the floor. In a venue like Harbour Theatre with rakes seating rising well above the stage, this is disastrous. Encourage actors to aim at the back row of the venue, wherever they perform.

Perhaps fade out rain sfx after a while? Just a little intrusive. Nice reaction from all to rain stopping briefly!

Watch the cues. Frequently actors were slow for no apparent reason in picking up and responding to cues. This drags the pace and energy down.

Important to identify who you are talking to - if anyone! It was not always clear that the characters or actors were clear precisely who they were addressing their lines to. Remember you won't open your mouth on stage until you have a reason to say something. Clarify the reasons.

Just as important to identify, from moment to moment, who is listening. May not necessarily be everyone.

Lois choosing Norm as a sympathetic partner struck me as a bit at odds with the text. I wondered what evidence you found to support this interpretation. Nice business though!

Careful about grouping characters together when they are having a confrontation. Confrontations - Norm and Nan dobbing business - may work better with two arguing across a greater distance. If you have to argue with someone across width of a stage you will speak louder and be more animated as a matter of course.

Norm's costume? Towelling hat and name badge? Might be fine to change it, but important to ask yourself why the playwright specified these in the first place. What was the playwright trying to communicate by nominating these costume items? Did you alternative convey the same message?

Nice costume Fred - but Docs?

Mil's costume... hmmm.... looked very smart and business like, but Mil says she has no education, no trade, no job. She was applying for a job working in a canteen, but looked like she was dressed for an office job. She refers to herself as a battler - looking after her family - but didn't dress like one. However! Incongruous reference to her experience on a 747 that doesn't seem to tie with the other things she says about herself. Tricky!

Occasionally Lois' slinking and Nan's foraging in the foliage were upstaging the action of the play.

During long soliloquies it is probably not necessary to refer anything to you fellow actors. People were often upstaging themselves by trying to talk directly to other actors. It's not necessary - the stage is yours, own it.

Norm switched a couple of important lines. Speaking of the girl he is making love to he said "She dialled 000. She woke my landlady." Very different sense when the line is delivered correctly with those two phrases reversed!

Mil clearly has an axe to grind and might have pushed the militant feminist agenda a little harder.

I wonder whether Fred is entirely truthful? Character's don't always tell us the truth about themselves, anymore than other characters tell us the truth about them.

At one point Norm referred to Fred as "he", no wonder poor Fred had a problem!

Fred's introduction to mateship worked beautifully even with the gender swap.

Good choice with the "leso's" comment - it is nothing more than a warm and comforting embrace - Norm is clearly the one with problem. Not the least in that, he thinks calling someone a lesbian should be insulting?!?!

The closing seating arrangement mirroring the opening one was a nice touch.

Norm needed to commit to the moment a bit more during the last few lines.

The line that clearly struck a chord with the audience: I only feel really alive in Kmart

Ok... watch out for another set of notes soon.
Cheers
Grant