Telling stories with imagination.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

Theatre/Baby Metaphors

So I often think that creating a show is in some ways like creating a baby - with the writer being the father who after the initial effort has to some extent sit back and let the director-mother get on with it (which is perhaps pretty telling of how I like to work with writers).
Technical rehearsals are a like a long and painful birth, with a very calm mid-wife (Stage Manager Fergus) wiping my fevered brow through the tears and the screaming (I get quite stressed in techs). Previews are like childhood/adolescence - day by day you have to relinquish your control over the child (production) and sometimes bite your tongue and let them find their own way, even if in some previews they might stumble, so that when their 18th birthday (press night) arrives they have the independence and the maturity to carry on each night without you there to hold their hand. And your first night away from the show is as nerve-wracking as seeing your children out into the big wide world and having to trust that they're getting on fine without you (and recognising that for some of them they won't fully grow and develop until you've given them the space and freedom from you.)

So tomorrow night I'm back in again to see Otieno having not seen it since press night on Friday. I have every faith in the team and no doubt that the show has been growing and growing over the last four performances (and of course I have the comfort of a beautifully detailed show report to look forward to each night charting all the slips and mishaps that are an inevitable part of the production). Still I feel a little nervous about tomorrow... but I can't wait, like any proud parent to see what our baby has grown into!

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