Reporting Back from the WandelProbe

 High Camp! We made it! This working week ended with a run-through of The Love Goddess that seemed to leave everyone happy, including our composer Logan Medland who now has to return to New York, and certainly me. I also learnt a new word: WandelProbe, pronounced "Vondelprobe", which means... well, what we just did. As I said when we started: everyone is lovely, and I'm trying not to be too weird. I don't think I'm always succeeding. However, I've decided to blame two decades of making work at the last minute with whatever was to hand for any sudden attacks of lip-chewing anxiety I've experienced when, say, asked suddenly to enter holding a phone that we don't have yet (because I mean how much of this phone will end up existing? Just the receiver? Or maybe it should be just the receiver? Or will there be a wire coming out of it? Why? Or why not? And how long will that wire be? Where does this world end?) or to dance in time with the music.

 

credit Sonia Sanchez Lopez

 

 (But wait no, because this bit isn't a dance, it's just a scene in which the characters happen to be dancing. And maybe my character isn't a good dancer. Or maybe he is. Maybe I haven't decided. Where does this world end?) "Trust the process," says our choreographer Jacqui Jameson who, let me remind you, has a dancing shoe named after her. I don't always understand the process though, I think. But then she says, "You're impatient." And she's right. And I knew this.

 

 credit Sonia Sanchez Lopez

 

 Also though, it has always for as long as I can remember made me uncomfortable in warm-ups when I have to bend over and stick my head through my legs, because now I can't see what everyone else is doing, and what if they suddenly do something else? How am I supposed to learn then? All bent over with my head through my legs? I don't know if that's necessarily impatience. Anyway, as I say: we made it this far. I feel very lucky to be working with these people, and look forward to playing with them. We open on Friday.

credit again Sonia Sanchez Lopez

 

 Here is fictional actor Nicholas Craig's take on the rehearsal process, care of Nigel Planer pictured at the top, and illustrated with some mercilessly harvested contributions from the non-fictional. The Naked Actor first went out in 1990 when I was still doing school plays, and was an instant hit in whatever crypt we happened to set our satchel down in. "Rehearsal! Aye! Ha-ha! Rehearsal!" we'd all quote. Or: "Janet my love?" Or: "A bit Freddy Frautington." Does that sound like the kind of gang you want to be in? Then enjoy. The opening credits are honestly the funniest I've seen, and distil perfectly a very specific moment in British culture when a happily subsidised mainstream could regularly present to the masses something a bit like something a bit like something thrilling and experimental which the director had popped in on.