Make More Noise | Rehearsal Diary 2
20 Jul 2018Over the next couple of weeks, Associate Director Maisie Newman will be reporting from the rehearsal room of Make More Noise and giving us an inside look into this all-female production.
This is it! We’re in the last week before intensive rehearsals for Make More Noise, we’ve got two sessions this week until we finally have the cast in all together for full working days next week.
We finished the script early in the week and on Wednesday we started to work through the show from the beginning mapping entrances, exits, props and costume journeys and working on transitions. The show feels like its coming together in a really exciting way. It’s always really nice at this stage.
The cast and creative team get a feel for the show from beginning to end and also get to listen to some of the fantastic music and sound design that our musical director Alexi has been creating throughout the process. Alexi is originally a female DJ from Bristol and she is doing an absolutely incredible job of transferring her skills into a theatre setting. It's always a really exciting moment when we see scenes with music for the first time. Sound can really bring everything together and help establish the mood and journey of the piece.
During the day on Wednesday our design team
and stage manager were down at the scenic workshop with myself and some of the
cast members to start painting the dance floor which will be laid out at the
front of the stage. We had a scenic painter in for the day who beautifully
marked out Anna Orton’s fantastic design for us all to paint. Being able to
slowly watch this floor come to life was really exciting. We were able to start
to visualise the design and what the show will look like up on the stage. You
can watch a small time-lapse of us all painting on our twitter feed
@bristololdvicyc.
Our aim for the end of this week of rehearsals is to have mapped through the entire show with broad brushstrokes. This is so we can start really pulling things together next week, during intensives. That’s when the show will start coming into its own as we’ll have time to make sure every moment is polished and transitions are clean and slick. This week though we’re starting to get a feel for what the show will be and feel like. It’s really lovely to see the ours and the casts ideas, all the things we’ve spent these last three months months devising and working from, threaded throughout the piece and slowly evolving from individual moments into a full performance.
Catch us on the main stage 2-4 August. You can also join me for a free intergenerational theatre workshop on Sat 4 August at 12:30pm. The workshop will explore feminism in contemporary performance and exercises used to devise Make More Noise. It is open to anyone who is aged 11+ and identifies as being female.
Make More Noise comes to Bristol Old Vic from 2 – 4 Aug. Book your tickets here.
