Our week of R&D finished on a high. Working on the second of our two pieces we’re faced with a great deal of physical work and these R&D sessions are invaluable when trying to figure out how to ‘do’ something.

These sessions are among the most exciting and enjoyable in our work. Presented with a problem such as how to make a horse drawn carriage using nothing but actors and chairs we like to just play around with whatever flotsam and jetsam we can find in the rehearsal room and see how best we can put it together. The tricky part is often coming to terms with the fact that 90% of what you do is going to be bad and to jut have faith that somewhere in you is an idea that can actually become a useable part of a show.

On Saturday we spent a good hour trying to devise a way to show a small boat being reeled in towards a stationary object with the people in the boat appearing to glide along the stage. This prompted a furious and often ridiculous hour of mime and various different varieties of heaving, pulling, winding and eventually the decision to ‘come back to it later’.