Friday 23 October 2015

Today was the first rehearsal of Scantlebury with Juliet Fraser at The Pound and it was really good to start shaping the piece in the performance space.  What quickly became clear was that we would need some more props to set the scene effectively.  You can expect to see more household objects on the night compared to the picture above!

The duration of each section of the piece was an important element that needed to be worked on in this rehearsal.  Although I had sketched out guidelines for the duration of each section, I was always aware that the only way to refine them properly was by hearing the piece performed in rehearsal.  This was due to the way in which I have notated the piece – there are a lot of text instructions that outline how to interact with the tape part. The different text instructions require different lengths of time to establish themselves.  There is a fine line between performing an instruction for not enough or too much time.  I composed it in this way as I wanted Juliet’s relationship with the tape machine to be as natural as possible.

We have more rehearsals in just over a week and I look forward to building on what we achieved today.