We need to select our plays several months in advance to ensure details are included in the Havant Arts Active brochure — our prime vehicle for publicity. A few of our fortnightly Bench Club Nights are dedicated to play selection each year. Any member can propose a play for selection, but there is a catch... if your play is selected, you have to direct it! Would-be directors come to the session armed with essential information about their play: performing rights costs, cast composition, budget estimates, special effects needed, etc. They present a brief synopsis of the play and usually have some extracts to read. This is the exciting bit! Often members are reading and hearing these passages for the very first time, yet in a few short months we could be performing this play in front of full houses! At the end of the session, members vote on which plays they would like to fill our forthcoming slots... the cycle has begun!
Directors get the ball rolling by holding auditions. Sometimes they might approach a particular actor they have in mind for a specific role, but generally any full Bench member can audition and be offered a part, including someone new to the company. Very occasionally we need to go outside our regular membership to fill a certain role: perhaps a child, or somebody who can play a musical instrument, or someone of particular ethnic origin. Usually though, we can cast a play from within our own very talented bunch of members.
Once a play has been cast, the director prepares a comprehensive rehearsal schedule based on the availability of the actors. To avoid overlap, rehearsals do not generally commence until the current production has finished. With five productions each year, this means each production only gets about 10 weeks from beginning to end... so activity is intense!
weekend before the production opens is particularly busy. It is the first time we have the theatre space dedicated entirely to ourselves, so only now can the set be built and painted. (If you think of sets like ‘The Handyman’, ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’, ‘The Memory of Water’, etc, and you can imagine what a frenetic period this is!) The finishing touches are added from our Props Cupboard... a veritable "Aladdin’s Cave" of furniture, ornaments, materials, and bric-a-brac. It might look like junk in the cupboard, but with a wash, polish or lick of paint it can be transformed into a very impressive prop once on stage. Oh, the magic of illusion!
Once the set has been built, it is also the first opportunity to set up the lighting, programme the sequence of lighting changes and set sound levels for any music and sound effects. This is very slow and time-consuming, but essential to the overall success of the show. It is also often the first opportunity for the director and cast to "walk-through" the script with everything in place on the set. This ensures that actors enter and exit from the correct points and allows the stage manager to check that all props are set correctly on stage, or in readiness in the correct positions off stage.
This usually leaves one or two nights for Dress Rehearsals. These are performed as if in front of a live audience: starting promptly at 7:30 and complete with interval. It is the final chance to iron out any wrinkles, particularly technical, and see the whole performance blend together in seamless harmony... well, that’s the plan!
We either have two-week slots in which we give eight performances, or one-week slots which consist of five or six shows. Interestingly, no two performances are ever the same. Some flow better than others; some feel a little more staccato. Much of it seems to depend on an indefinable "feedback" from the audience; not necessarily applause or laughter... and a full house isn’t necessarily more responsive than a small audience. It is very difficult to put ones finger on... a sort of chemistry develops (or not) and is sometimes dynamic! (You may like to try attending more than one performance and see the difference for yourself.) You may also be interested to know that the Bench never use a prompter... if lines go wrong (which of course they never do!!!) actors need to draw on their wits, skills and experience!
The Sunday after the last show is as busy as "Get-In Saturday". It is, however, tackled with slightly less enthusiasm as most members are still a little fragile following the "End-of-run Party" the previous night! Props and costumes are returned to the darkest recesses of the props cupboard, scenery is carefully dismantled and stored – waiting to be transformed into a totally different set next time. Finally, the walls and floor of the acting space need to be completely repainted in a delightful shade of black ready for the next group to take over. It’s as if we had never been there... only we – and you – know different, don’t we?!
Derek Callam