Rehearsal Blog 8: Forgive Them Father

Catching up with the rehearsal blogs from Lauren... this is for the latter half of week 5 of devising/rehearsals:

Post 8: Forgive Them Father, for They Have Sinned.

The rest of the week was spent developing each story section individually, with a view to having another run-through of everything on the Friday. This focussed on what the performers will actually do whilst telling the story, especially if they are the narrator.

Most intriguing of these sections came from Jorges’ experience of confessing to a priest when he was young. This links to a ‘sin line’ in France, which we were surprised to discover still exits and was immediately worked into the show.* Since a lot of the stories are told in the first person, it didn’t feel like a problem that one of them is actually a personal experience, but it was also attempted with Chris confessing to Alex.

On Friday the performers did a run-through of all the developed material, in a rough order without any transitions or ‘connecting’ sections and it came to almost two hours. This was a little more than the performers were expecting, but didn’t see this as a problem as they felt the show would shrink with further rehearsal. In discussing it in the afternoon, some sections were agreed on as needing big changes, but no-one was prepared to rule anything out entirely at that point.

There was still a hesitation about the role of the screen and live drawing, but it was left until further development was done to make the final decision. It was also thought that Jorge needed more 'normal' things to do and say, as there was a danger that he would be seen as the 'clown' of the trio by the audience.

At this point, some stories that were on the ‘in the show’ pile had been left undeveloped, and would probably remain so as there was already a lot of material written or prepared. The week ended with the performers feeling pretty happy with how the material was coming to life, and were hoping for more of the same next week.

*If you feel the need to confess any sins to an automated Frenchman, the number is: France 0982 463 438