PANTO SEASON: BEHIND THE SCENES - First Rehearsal

There's a strangely low key air to tonight's first rehearsal. With the majority of productions, the first rehearsal is greeted with a mixture of optimism, fear and ethusiasm. Tonight, the prime concern is to dismantle the set from the October production - a murder mystery dinner - sufficiently quickly for the rehearsal to start at all. Everyone pitches in to ensure that this is done. At Cubbington Players, it doesn't matter if you were in the production or not, if you are there and there is work to be done, you help to do it - be it taking down the blackout drapes, removing the bunting that adorned the stage or selling off the leftover wine from the bar.

There's a spot of confusion as the rehearsal proper begins. It seems that although everyone knows which part they are supposed to be playing, the producers have not told anyone who is playing any other part!

Once this oversight has been corrected, things progress rapidly. Tonight is not a complete read through of the script. Instead, the producers pick sections and take the cast through them, offering comments on such things as characterisation as they go. (For example, one of the 'baddies' improves immeasurably once the producers make it clear that the character is supposed to be the baddest of them all).

The pleasing thing is to see how quickly the various actors develop their characters in a way that is sympathetic to the others. Nothing unbalances a production more than one person trying to play their part so that it stands out from any other. Such rabid egocentricity occurs even among amateur groups, but none of it appears to be present here.

Rehearsal schedules are handed out. The document looks fiendishly complicated at first draft. However, it is clear that the intent is to give everyone as much time off as possible. This is essential, because this year rehearsals become twice a week from mid-November; in 1979, rehearsals didn't even start until 19th November and any midwekek rehearsals were held in January. In 2009, it is all very different.