Session 27 - 15 July 2009

With our beloved Director Vik away, today was more about the technicals that make up our show. We started off with meeting two more people of the GULP team, Lorna our Stage Manager and Sinead our Assistant Stage Manager. They talked us through their roles and what they expected of us, it's been really exciting to meet these two as it's given us a clear idea of just how much has been going on without us as the company really being aware of it. There are so many people to this company, we know nothing about the technical side to our play and by meeting these two it's made the whole play seem a lot more real. We're being treated like a professional company, it's brilliant! But also sort of scary. A lot of effort has gone in to Or Nearest Offer so we better come up with the goods!

After meeting our stage management crew, and being warned about Lorna's ability in bollocking (clearly we can't be fooled by her lovely persona) we got down with the rest of the rehearsal. The Sunday before we had done our first run and today was just about going through the notes again but this time with more emphasis on Tanya's notes. As the writer she knew best about what were the most important words and phrases in each of our characters scripts and as we found out some of these important parts were being lost whether due to loss of clarity, speed or paraphrasing. After talking through the notes Anne took some of us in to a one-on-one session to work through these important notes. I'm not sure what each person did but you could really tell the difference when we went through some of the scenes. After this we were all given our adverts to write up in black marker, I'm not sure what will happen with these but I'm looking forward to finding out... After the fumes of the makers pens got too much for us, we also went through the dance and the songs to make sure they were looking and sounding great.

Now to the really important part, costume! All through the session each of us was being taken away to the glamour of the phone room (we've been assured that all the professional actors have their costume fittings here even if it is a small office with a mirror leaning on the wall!) Yet another part of the Almeida workings we wouldn't have seen had it not been for LAB. The costume fitting, as you can imagine, was awesome! Finally we were getting to see what each of our characters was going to be wearing. For me personally, it helped me to really get in to character more, I could see what sort of clothes Ellie wore and I know when our dress run comes the costumes will really help with our movement and giving a real interpretation of our characters. It's clear to see just how much time and effort Fabrice has put in to this play. It was great to be in rehearsal after each person had their fitting, everyone would crowd around asking questions; what we were wearing? Did we like it? And Desara, were you really going to be a fully fledged chav!? (The answer was yes - she even has the fake nails to go with it!!) All of this has made the play seem real, in a week we WILL be performing on the Almeida stage. Exciting, but bloody scary!

MK