We're about 5 days in to our rehearsal schedule. With 10 shows to rehearse (the 9 shows for The House Above and Dracula for EIF) our schedule for this month is a masterpiece of excel genius.
For the type of work we do however, our rehearsals always have a very large hole in them. When making theatre in which the audience play a vital role we're constantly saying 'the audience could do this...' or 'what if the audience did this...' or 'why can't the audience do this...' or my favourite 'what the hell do we do if the audience do this...'. It sounds terrifying to essentially rehearse with a major part of the show undecided until the magical 'moment' but this really is what I find energising and exciting. Last November when we did a run of 'The Trial' at the Southwark Playhouse, we could never have planned for dealing with 50 grown adults, running around, blindfolded in the dark and then scaling the walls - in honesty we assumed that common sense would prevail and people would be aware of the terrifying dangers of doing this... whilst blindfolded. When this happened it was a heart stopping moment but we managed to keep on top of it, we just had to run and climb a little bit faster and of course we had the advantage of not being blindfolded.
For this reason, a lot of our rehearsal time is devoted to improvisational skills and spontaneity. It's impossible to plan how to deal with every scenario and so instead we train ourselves to be able to deal with any scenario extremely quickly. This means that the audience should get a greater freedom - though you always get a few scarier members. We were once asked whether the audience were allowed to stab eachother in our shows because we'd taken away the fourth wall and invited them into another world. This of course is not the case because fictional world or not, the real world laws still apply. However this does highlight an interesting point about rules. Once you take away the stalls, fourth wall, interval drinks etc, you've taken away the conventions. With convention comes familiarity, you know you take your seat, watch a play and clap at the end. Without the convention, you lose the familiarity, you lose the recognisable rules. This is where there is a major danger zone when creating work of this nature; Unless you as the artists know what the rules are then you can't expect the audience to. In the vital early rehearsals (which we've just come out of) we always make the point of establishing these rules - if the audience are allowed to interrupt scenes then how do they know when to do it? How do we tell them they can't? How do we let them take an active role in some parts and not others? All these questions are answered just so there is a very firm structure in which the audience are allowed to play freely. Non conventional theatre shouldn't be synonymous with anarchy; it's got to have a different set of rules.
More often than not, you can build these structures but an audience will always find holes in it, it's important to catch them before they see the 'strings' but it's these moments that make the structure stronger for the next show.
We always say that we can't do dress rehearsals because aside from fussing over directors and stage managers to the point of harassment, there's just no way of properly rehearsing audience interaction. This isn't a negative point whatsoever; it's the most exciting part of my job. That first performance with an audience is terrifying because it's the test, it's that moment where you see if this lovely ship you've been building is watertight (I like that analogy) and it's so rewarding when you find it is... it's also that bit more rewarding when the audience jump at your invitations and surprise you in a way you'd never think logically possible. That's what makes these rehearsals exciting, we're preparing for a big expedition with only educated guesses on the landscape and climate (slightly more tenuous analogy) and that's what I think theatre is about - the live moment, that liveness that only comes from an almost random assortment of strangers (unless they're all a school group or something, or a work bonding experience - we've had that before) working together to create the finished product.
So, that was a little ramble about how important the audience has to be in our rehearsal process and how much they are missed.
Less than a month though till everything comes together though!
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