Food and Theatre

Heather (Metta's Exec Producer and also Producer of Otieno) is always mocking me because I insist every Metta board meeting revolves around food, whether it be eggs benedict or sausage sandwiches at our breakfast meetings, soup with home-made bread at our lunch meetings and casseroles & stews at our dinner meetings. Anyone who knows me even a little knows a) I'm a big eater and b) I get a bit bored talking business for too long. So is the food simply a ploy to keep me in the room? Until Monday I would have rather sheepishly conceded that was probably the case but I'm beginning to realise food and Metta Theatre are actually far more inextricably linked.

Otieno Rehearsals

It's day three and so far only one tantrum from the writer (which bearing in mind he's also the lead actor, sound designer and as of this morning fight director!!! is pretty good going.) But as a director who works predominantly with dead writers I'm more used to fighting with actors! Luckily he is one of those too, and the tantrum consisted of a few minutes of silent mutterings and then a big hug and copious apologies. Though he was only trying to preserve the integrity of the play - which is always something worth fighting for.

Canticle Rehearsals

So this is a busy week - when is it ever not - rehearsing the Canticles for our Little Angel show, getting together the video together for last week's extract of Cocteau in the Underworld at the Royal Opera House (it's going to be used in a lecture on technology in opera or some such) and a million and one meetings for Otieno. Excitingly we're having a read-through of Otieno this afternoon - not that we have a full cast yet, but it will be great to hear the thing read aloud, even if not by the same actors who'll actually be in it. And our stage manager's been out this morning raiding a major props store for Otieno.

Prima donna

A quick update from behind my production desk - we all work as freelancers too, so as well as working on Otieno I'm also designing video projections for Prima Donna at Sadlers Wells this week.
It's a new opera by Rufus Wainwright, directed by Tim Albery, which premiered at the Manchester International Festival last summer.

Otieno auditions going very well...

This time a week ago we were still recovering from the huge success of our Southbank show Waiting when suddenly Southwark Playhouse ring offering us a 3 week slot in May.