The Outside Eyes and Ears by Bryn Holding

Today is the third day of our Common Lore remote rehearsal process. Last week the call was made to cancel our original rehearsal plans and move rehearsals indoors and into our respective homes. Sophia spent the weekend transforming her front room into a make-shift rehearsal space and I set up the home office equipped with phone, laptop, I-pad, rehearsal draft of the script, notebook, pencil and of course, biscuits…just to keep me company…

When Common Lore was originally staged, in 2018, we had three wonderful weeks of rehearsals at Northern Broadsides in Halifax before Sophia took the show out on tour. Common Lore won ‘Breakthrough Performance’ at the 2019 Rural Touring Awards and there was a real appetite to re-rehearse, re-mount and re-tour this work to reach a wider audience. Little did we know that the re-rehearsals would land in the middle of a global pandemic…but...as this work pushes the very nature of what is possible with one performer, smoothly integrating live loop pedal and live projection technology, we wanted to embrace the creative ways in which we could utlilise our technology to rehearse remotely.

We have found that a clearly structured rehearsal day is absolutely vital, perhaps even more so when you are working remotely/from home. The schedule ensures that Sophia has clear tasks and structure to her day, it enables me to be able to give thoughts, notes and guidance throughout and it ensures the rest of the team know when we are available for additional meetings or creative conversations.

The show is incredibly physical, which is why we have the fabulous Richard James-Neale on board as Movement Director. Though the text is always our guide, we had to ensure Sophia could to get to grips with the physical demands of the show above detailed text work on stress and consonants. This time, however, our remote rehearsals are enabling me to push the text work on much further; reminding Sophia of the incredible richness in every line, allowing her to be surprised by the text once again. I am a text fanatic. It is the absolute guide to all I do and I love work that arrests the audience’s ear as much as it does the eye. We live in an ever-increasing visual world; sometimes, I believe, at the detriment to the clarity of the story for our ears. Therefore, in true Elizabethan fashion, we are using our remote rehearsals to push how the play meets the ear and how the characters use and need language. Sophia has written an incredible piece of work; it is a playground for the actor, it has rich use of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and punctuation; it is laced with punchy spoken word. 

Tomorrow Sophia has a day working (remotely) with Movement Director Rich, where our work on text /clarity of thought will meet movement as we all try to tighten verbal and physical storytelling as one. This show is a multi-taskers Olympic games but Richard and I, as the outside ears and eyes, need to ensure Sophia’s incredible dexterity in performance doesn’t ever step on the clarity of the narrative/text for an audience.

As a busy freelancer, I have spent most of the last 12 years working away from home for lengthy periods of time, I am notorious for being in the car, clocking up many miles (distance is never a barrier to the work I do) however, during busier periods I have been known to say ‘Oh, if only I could work from home…’ – well – be careful what you wish for! Now, here I am working from home, thoroughly enjoying our re-exploration of this piece, hearing it afresh but I have to admit I am yearning to be in the rehearsal room with Soph; to be able to respond more immediately to her needs, to be able to see the bigger picture, to stop and start the work as it unfolds and to simply engage with the kind of subtle physical communication that is only truly possible when working in the same room. Having sessions over the phone/video call has been really useful but I am missing that extra element, that which we take for granted; being present together in the same time space able to collaborate with such immediacy. That said, I remain in utter admiration for the incredible talent and inspiration that Sophia is to the whole team and I remain incredibly grateful to be able to work on this show, however remote, at this difficult time.

Thanks for reading, stay safe and well x