S.O.S

This week's blog comes from Tom Straszewski, writer of 'S.O.S'. 

 

The word rehearsal literally means “to repeat aloud”, but is derived[1] from the same root word as “hearse”- a funeral vehicle- and from there to “harrow”- literally to break up the ground, but also to torment the soul. All these might be used to describe the process of handing over a play to be rehearsed, but thankfully it’s the first meaning of harrow that described Joe Steele’s approach, breaking up the hardpan soil of the script and preparing it for growth. Having spent the last month digging up an overgrown allotment, I like this metaphor. Let’s see how far I can push it...

Although S.O.S. has been work-shopped, drafted, redrafted, scrapped and rewritten entirely and read aloud by a number of groups and individuals before coming to this point, until Saturday it was entirely in my head. Now, I've had my first chance to see it performed in a roughly final state- at least as far as the text goes.  But there was still work to be done! Once outside my head, passages that felt right on the page were awkward in performance. Through Joe’s direction and the actors’ performance, I was able to see and uproot these occasional rocks that might throw the plough, and uproot the weeds that might later take over the plot.

That's enough farming metaphors for now. 

It also allowed the actors to query phrases and moments in the text where I had been unclear or contradictory. I’ve had the good fortune of acting with Ian (playing the Henry Pelham) and Richard (playing the enigmatic Spargo), and their intelligence in the rehearsal room is one of the qualities that encouraged us to cast them. At their prompting, some lines were changed, other paragraphs cut entirely, and some I insisted on keeping- often because they intentionally revealed contradictions in the characters.

Once the run-through was finished and the initial round of cuts and notes were made, we started discussing the characters and their key moments. If it’s harrowing to place your script in another person’s hands, it’s also deeply rewarding when an actor pinpoints without prompting the exact subtext you wrote. And that’s why I like writing for the stage- because at some point you have to give up control and let nature (or rather, the rest of the creative team) do its work.

Next week on the blog, Joe will be discussing the director’s view on all this. As a musician and composer, he’s already been thinking about the background sounds, in a play full of sound effects, missed messages and storms. But he’s also looking at the script as a piece of music- lending his skill and attention to the play’s pauses, beats and rhythm. I’m excited to see it all come together- and you should be too.

[1] According to that esteemed academic, Professor Internet.

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