It’s never quite as easy as you think, coming back to a show. It has been a busy two months since the last performance of Louder Is Not Always Clearer and a lot has happened in that 50+ days to all of us. Jonny has been working with National Theatre Wales and Quarantine on ‘English’ for the Festival of Voice. Chris has been in Florida studying the soundscapes of Disney for 3 weeks and I have been to Prague with our show (F.E.A.R.). What we all remember was the brilliant night we had at Taliesin Arts Centre in Swansea, where the biggest audience of the tour were with us from the outset.
Now being back in the rehearsal room with the team was not quite as straightforward as I had imagined. There were doubts about stage position, certain hand gestures, pace of delivery and repetition. There were some technical anomalies with projection size and cues for video clips. We stumbled through a few moves and tried to rediscover the essence of the ideas behind them. We went for lunch and chatted about anything other than the show. Then without much more than a few words we tried again… and this time it clicked.
The body is a wonderful thing. It retains such memory and information. It is able to suggest in silence great emotion and will and here in the afternoon, in this black box of a theatre space, the shine slowly returns to the show. Jonny is compelling, passionate and easy to watch. He gives it everything even though I am the only one watching and there it is. The show. The one we made together with a great team of people. There it is and it’s ready once again for an audience.
Jonny in rehearsals – Chapter Arts Centre
There are three more places that you can see Louder Is Not Always Clearer this year and then we will bring it out again next year and tour it a little further afield. We might take a little longer to find it once again. However I am confident that we will.
Gareth
Louder Is Not Always Clearer
20 April – Torch Theatre, Milford Haven
26/27 April – Riverfront, Newport
1/2 May – Theatre Clwyd, Mold