Time / Tom

There was great focus in rehearsal yesterday with five songs having been 'gone through', harmonised and 'learnt' in just two days and the whole of the first song, 'Beauty and the Beast', having been choreographed. I also shaped the very first scene of the piece.

There are tremendously creative people in the rehearsal room which means that so much of the detail that you might usually focus on, but which is impossible to develop given the time factor, happens quite naturally and instinctively. Thank goodness.

Discipline in the evening, when our young actors arrived, was equally impressive and concentrated. This may have been prompted by a very sober intro. about 'time'.

But there is an incredible challenge here of getting the balance between still being able to play and generating the material. The latter, in isolation, does not sit comfortably.

Tom Cocklin (1979 - 2004) used to always say that everything was just about 'time' and 'energy' and that that is what we get paid for.

The energy bit is the easy bit: it's time that is the challenge.

I talked today, with one of our actors, about missing Tom - especially in the rehearsal room...