1 June Romance in the Rehearsal

1 June
I spent the morning going through all my quotes for the lockers, chairs and tables and inputting them into a spreadsheet. Okay, so its not the most exciting of things in the world but I do quite enjoy the fact that if you know how you can let excel do all the hard work for you!
After seeing Bart off (who was leaving for home, USA) we chilled for a bit and I completely forgot about today's drama rehearsal in Nyalenda. I hopped on the back of a bike and headed over, the usual guy that takes me was waiting for me, he knows the times I go to Nyalenda and always looks out for me.
Nyalenda is a strange place, a mix of mud and concrete huts with garbage and some sewedge leaking out to the mud track road that leads deeper into the "slumb" neighbourhood.
Literally hundreds of kids shout "mzungu how are you". I'm starting to know more people in the area and feel more comfortable. Occasionally I see a very intimidating person looking at me strangely, I usually say ask "Habari", how are you and they reply that they are well in kiswahili and smile. The same crazy lady shouts at me from in front of her house everyday which always amuses me. As long as its still light I feel quite safe, as soon as its Dark I get out of there as soon as I can. It just doesn’t feel right
After arriving at the centre and chilling for a few minutes we played some warm up games like Zip Zap Boing and Tubo Tubo. Together we then ran the scene we had been working on a few times. We then ran the second scene which evolves a wife trying to convince her husband to go to the hospital as they cannot conceive (the husband assumes it’s the woman's problem). This scene had currently been an argument but one of the group made the suggestion that the scene is to be played at a lower level. I straight away thought this was a great Idea as most of our work tends to be high tension arguments and raised voices. I'm not being judgemental but a lot of Louel (the tribe from Kisumus language) does seem to sound like that. The word for respect and fear are the same, I think that does show a lot.
So, the scene was played at this new "level" and it was fantastic. I really began to see sincerity and truth in the characters, the two actors did an amazing job. They spoke softly and held a lot of eye contact. It almost felt Brechtian, like they were no longer characters on stage but just actors speaking to each other. The first time watching this I not only felt a warm feeling of excitement, not only real empathy for the situation but I also really felt like I was looking into someone's life. I've always heard directors and books talk of "breaking the fourth wall" well I think if anything was an example of breaking the fourth wall, this was! I almost felt like I was intruding on someone's life, truly amazing.
We worked on how to create a little more subtle intimate physicality between the pair, looking at the wife wresting a hand on the husbands. Watching the actor do this was really effective, its just one simple movement but it was so emotive and powerful. To me it sort of symbolised the wife reaching out to support the husband. It felt like with this hand movement she was saying "I know its not me that’s baron, but I am here for you, lets work through this."
I then asked for the two actors to sit on chairs centre stage looking directly at each other. (I say centre stage, we are in a derelict classroom with a concrete floor and old asbestos ceilings) I wanted them to try a little rehearsal technique my group has used when we devised a version of 'Our countries good' at college. The two actors looked straight at each other and one would give a compliment e.g. "I love your brown hair" the other would then say "I love you" and they would swap round. This exchange would keep swapping while they looked into each others eyes. The first time or two, the actor playing the husband began to laugh . I also was very much got the impression he was acting what he thought it looked like to be in love. I said to him, "don’t act, just be" possibly one of the most pretentious thing a director can say. "Don't think about acting just think about love and this girl in front of you, almost be yourself" was my instruction to him. The action that followed was truly incredible. I asked the wrest of the group what they thought and they were just blown over, as was I. I thought the scene earlier had shown truth and sincerity, this was ten times more than before. It honestly felt like you were witnessing love or a real couple. I think it was the subtle and softness of the way they spoke, the strong eye contact and dropping any sense of acting. They were just purely in the moment fixated on each other.
At the end of the session after the usual warm down and prayer I expressed my excitement of the work we did today. Who knows what the next rehearsal will bring...