Just wrote a new version of a speech for Daniel, a rewrite for back in the second scene. Daniel plays Gautr, an old father to two sons,the favoured son and the overlooked son, of course. He has a stirring speech in the course of a war council, cajoling the council members with past glories of Geatland, demanding they prove themselves worthy of their ancestors. The first version was okay. But Daniel is doing far better work of the text than the text is giving him to work with. Which is a nice sort of challenge to the playwright, the imperative to bring your game up to be worthy of your actors.
This morning begins inauspiciously for our playwright. Ken’s laptop is open, I mention I have a new scene to insert, that fits right between the first two short scenes we’ll work today. This one’s even shorter, maybe twelve lines long. Which makes three short little scenes in a row. “When did this turn into a movie?” asks Ken. Or something like that. Which is a big ouch. Film is short, pithy, visual scenes. Theatre is long, meaty, probing, dialogue soaked scenes. Directors everywhere disdain playwrights who write film scenes for stage. My next play has 48 tiny short scenes. But Ken’s a game guy. We’ll try the new scene tomorrow, but already he’s got to re-imagine how to set the first two tiny short scenes of the day to accommodate this new one.
The first scene up is, well, maybe eight lines long. It feels kind of, uh… filmy. Andrea is Gussi, a young man recruited and unprepared for battle, about to go AWOL. Rhys is an upper class warrior who catches him sneaking off, but is beyond caring. Within two minutes, we’ve all realized the initial circumstances of the scene are wrong. The imagery in the middle is completely confusing. And the ending is…. a big, long film moment. Rhys and Andrea manage to put it together and pull off a completely workable storytelling scene. But… their work is far better than what the text is forcing them to make do with. And I have no idea how else to set this crucial moment. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it? Or bring the game up? Table it for now. 
Jamie and Ben – AKA Lara and Halfburinn—are up next. After much problem-solving over how we’re going to establish the new convention of a tent on stage, the intimate love scene works out quite beautifully. Moving on, disaster strikes (in the story this time, not the rehearsal hall). Tons of physical stuff to work out, big fight scene, but the bones of the scene are good. Composer Mark’s marimba underneath make a beautiful sad linking of the two contrasting halves of the scene. And it all leads to the big trial scene I rewrote my first night here.
Which works far better than I’d supposed. It’s long. Or I suppose you could call it a long, meaty, probing, dialogue soaked scene. And it seems to work, holds tension, has lots of identifiable moments I can trim to tighten it up. But I have a long list of scene fixes to work on and I agree with Ken not to mess with it any further until after tomorrow’s end of the week stumble-through of everything we’ve worked through up until now.
11pm, I broke that promise the moment I got home. Went straight to the trial scene, spent two hours revising, then started chipping away at the list…. Only got three items crossed off, but including that nice, meaty little speech for Daniel to sink his chops into. All coming along.
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