We've had a good six weeks to redraft and take on the feedback we received at the Brighton reading and the piece we took up to Leeds yesterday certainly felt like a step closer towards having a finished play. The rehearsals leading up to this performance, held at Greenwich Theatre, have proved invaluable in beginning to fine-tune the dialogue; it can sometimes be a challenge to do 'long-distance' writing - Anna and I are based in Brighton and London respectively - so thank god we have a space to come together and battle those troublesome parts of the script with professional and responsive actors. This feels genuinely collaborative and exciting.
And so, to Leeds. It is hard to envisage how different this process would be without such support from our partners. Leeds City Council came through for us once again by hosting us in the fantastic Carriageworks theatre, bang in the middle of Millennium square. It was a great space to work in and make ourselves at home in for the day.
We were also able to organise some interval drinks with the venue, and there is no denying the merits of a wee dram to tickle an audience into laughter after a long day at the office. Either that or the second half is just funnier.
But in fact our Leeds audience seemed extremely focused on the story, which in turn was very helpful for us to take an unflinching look at the narrative thread of our story. The feedback session proved immensely useful and illuminating. This is certainly a script which asks some engagement of its audience so it was extremely helpful to quiz our attendees on what they had gleaned of the story and at which point. On the whole it was a reassuring response as everyone had in fact followed the action (phew!) and were very switched on. Perhaps even a little too switched on......someone in the audience identified a bit of a plot-hole. Whoops.
Thank god for these sessions.
