Tuesday, August 14

Crappy Blocking

There's all these tables at the St. George Tea Room in the play and Sam and Willie have got to set the place for the next day of business. So, I had them move the furniture today. It was painful and laborious. ANd just awful to watch.

At one point the action of the play was all upstage - trapped behind these ugly tables chairs knives forks.

Awful. Restaged. All is well.

But the lesson I suppose is that no matter how you plan things, there's nothing like seeing in reality. And the reality here is that the most important stuff has got to happen front and center, not upstage and hidden.

We've practically staged the whole play - there are maybe 3-4 pages left. There will be no fireworks when we finish, but it'll mean we can get to the nitty gritty sooner.
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2 comments:

parabasis said...

Hey Hal,

Funny you should mention that, the one production of Master Harold I've seen (in DC), the production was so obsessed with keeping everyone moving + setting things at the top of the show, that a great deal of the first scene just got toally lost amidst the now they move this table/set this chair/sweep this bit shuffle.

It was a directed by a guy well known for his kinetic staging of very talky plays such as August Wilson's "Seven Guitars" and "Two Trains Running" but here that kineticism was actually misplaced.

12:26 PM
Hal said...

Hey Pal

It's a conundrum. Fugard definitely wants Willie to be onstage the whole time, and a lot of it cleaning the floor. So, if you want the cleaning to have logic, you've got to find the way to keep him onstage, but invisibly so...Meanwhile, Sam - the waiter - barely cleans at all.

It's by no mean solved just yet, but we're getting closer.

8:25 AM

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