Holding Together

Had a bit of a natter with Angela today regarding our drama guys' version of Medea. My sense of the success of the production was reinforced as retrospectively I was struck by just how assured the whole enterprise felt. All the elements came together with a strong sense of purpose in their unity. The masks, for example, felt essential, both amplifying the various characters and emphasising the otherness of the drama, despite the sometimes naturalistic feel of the acting. It was heartening to be reminded that these had been specially created for the show by non-performing members of the group. 

Part of their peculiar power emerged for me when the ensemble took off the masks in the curtain call and the applause, which had been plentiful, got even louder. The 'revealing' of the real people behind the masks said a great deal about how the performers had been subsumed by their props, had become strangely lost in them.

It was particularly interesting to hear of the difficulties experienced in the rehearsals. As any director of any play knows there are always difficulties and, at least once in the process, these will seem insurmountable in terms of realising the vision. So best to do away with the vision and go for what can be made to work. Which this Medea did, such that the elements of the initial impulse to do the show, the key ideas, shone through and the whole held together.

I commented to Angela that I would have tried to make more of the wonderful drone sounds employed, basically at the beginning and end. I loved their primitive power - and that of the more extensively employed drums. But even as I said it I was aware that in the reality of the process, the rush to get the thing on stage working, there might well not have been the time to develop the inessentials, and the important thing was to guarantee the essentials.