I went to see another rehearsed reading in the Restoring The Repertoire series this evening - this one was The Rent Day by Douglas Jerrold, first performed in 1832.
Fabulous stuff! A lovely rounded boisterous drama in two acts. Just enough comedy to make the tragedy stark and real - and subtle propaganda to the audience not to gamble their inheritance away, thus ruining their tenant farmers back at home on the estate.
I love these rehearsed readings put on by the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds. The actors only open the scripts at 10 o'clock that morning - and are giving a performance full of enthusiasm, insight and simple joy-in-acting at 7 in the evening. Long may you run, guys!
.
7 comments:
Long may it run indeed. It sounds wonderful.
Was great fun, Debs. What they do is to try out these plays on the audience after a single day of rehearsal to see whether the dynamics work and to get a sense of the audience-cast interaction. If it goes well, they'll consider staging it as a full production in a future season. There is always a discussion afterwards on what the audience and the cast thought about it. Great research from my point of view!
Sounds excellent fun. V. original way of doing it.
Great blog. I've only just discovered you and hope to be back!
Welcome, Jan - glad you're enjoying the blog.
It was great, Susie. I expect this sort of ting is done in other parts of the country, too. I'm just lucky it happens here. You get a much better sense of the play on the stage, rather than just on the page.
'ting'??
I meant 'thing', obviously.
"Ting" fits beautifully with Trisha's "radnom" and Katie's "virtically". Keep it in.
We've done a couple in the past at our Playhouse here in Whitstable, but only for members. Would love to do more. Still, we have got an evening with Jo Brand and Harry Hill coming up soon...
Post a Comment