The British Theatre Guide: Rehearsals 1

School & Youth Theatre

Rehearsals 1

Apart from dress and technical rehearsals, which are self-explanatory, there are four basic kinds of rehearsal: blocking, movement, exploratory and performance. This may seem an obvious thing to say, but - regrettably! - it isn't, because there are some directors who seem to know nothing about movement or exploratory rehearsals. The aim of every rehearsal is to make the eventual performance as good as it can possibly be, and each of the four different types has something to contribute to that aim. Let's look at each one in turn.

The blocking rehearsal is the kind done at, or close to, the beginning of the rehearsal period and is concerned with the positioning of the characters on the stage. In it the director places the actors where he wishes them to be and gives them the moves that they will make at the relevant points throughout the piece.

Many directors plan this very carefully: some have a huge plan of the stage on which they move around counters representing the characters (a sort of board game!); others build a model of the set and move around cut-out figures; others write long descriptive notes. Then there are those - like me! - who write brief notes on all sorts of scraps of paper, and then forget to bring them to the rehearsal, so they work off the tops of their heads!

Now this latter type might seem to be pretty careless in their approach, but they aren't really - or, at least, I'm not, because I have thought hard about the production long before the first rehearsal, so the best and most workable ideas are engraved on my brain. And as for those ideas I forget, well - they can't have been that good or they'd have stuck!

The reason I have this seemingly cavalier approach to blocking is that, for me, blocking is only a temporary thing. It's a way of getting started. As the show develops - and let me interrupt myself here: the worst directors (and, as an actor, I've worked with some pretty awful ones!) have something in common: a contempt for their actors. What else can you call it when a director comes along to the first rehearsal and tells you exactly how you will play your part? They leave no room for development, no opportunity for the actor to bring his/her ideas to the part: they simply move their actors around the stage like so many puppets!

To get back: as the show develops, you'll find that moves need to be changed. Actors get insights into the character that you missed; you see things in the characters that you didn't the first time round; relationships between characters grow. All of these things will happen and will necessarily give rise to changes in moves. If you refuse to change the moves, then you have to reject all insights but those with which you started, and that can only lead to, at best, a shallow version of the piece, or, at worst, a dead thing.

Then again, you probably will be working in a rehearsal room: most companies (whether school, youth, amateur or professional) don't usually manage to get on-stage with a set until about a week before the show. Things look different on the rehearsal room floor from the way they look on the stage. If you can't recognise that and make the appropriate adjustments, you're left with a show that feels awkward and unconvincing.

No matter how you approach blocking - totally prepared or totally unprepared - if you can't be flexible, you'll kill your show!

So let's move on to movement rehearsals: how do they differ from blocking? Blocking determines where the character is on the stage and when (s)he moves there: movement rehearsals, on the other hand, are concerned with the quality of movement. This phrase quality of movement comes from dance and refers to how a movement is made. I find I need to do movement rehearsals in very specific situations:

when actors have to move furniture or change the scene (this is by far the most basic - in a production of Little Shop of Horrors we used scenery on trucks and the Three Girls - Chiffon, Crystal and Ronette - had to be the scene shifters);
when a lot of people have to move all at once (usually chorus work);
when the movement is dance-like (in my production of Toad of Toad Hall there was a great deal of this kind of movement);
when the expressive qualities of the movement have to be very precise and clear.

Each situation, of course, requires a different approach and a different type of rehearsal. A couple of years ago I did a show called Don't You Know There's a War On? which was about the Home Front in the UK during World War II, and that required a dozen people to do some quite complex marching patterns. The rehearsals for that scene were completely different to those for the chorus of weasels, ferrets and stoats coming out of the audience onto the stage in Toad.

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