It’s been quite a week. We knew we would show some of the work at the end of the week to some of the venues supporting the project and this focused our attention for the duration. We spent all day Monday (and evening) filming material for the backdrop to the set. I smoked endless amounts of cigarettes to embrace the film noir theme and drank bottles of cold tea….less hard boiled than the fags but equally as staining to my taste buds. We had a day out on Tuesday for a family get together to celebrate Janet’s life and then re-shot and re-examined the material to date on our return, whipping together some scene’s with Peter, our expert creative technical chap…..(I no longer ask if things are possible because he just says yes all the time).
And then it was Friday….. It was lovely to see Rachel from the Riverfront, Lauren from Newport and the Taliesin posse Nia brought down. Their feedback was really useful as we were undoubtedly getting snow blind. There was a building mania to the showing and the selections came in thick and fast at times that we were barely able to re-set. I loved this. We had to run around to find a second to simply compose and then stride into the next scene. We’ve been training and the physical conditioning is paying off. However we were left with the feeling that there are two shows in one here and perhaps too much information. There is an action between the scene selections that is a metaphor for a deteriorating marriage. Is this now lost in the piece? Does it add anymore validation to the work? It is difficult when you throw so much energy into something and then discuss cutting it. If the truth be told I was not interested in this additional activity until we started rehearsing it and even then I thought it was too much. But now the thought of cutting it is not resting well with me. Its become part of the physical endurance, part of the fabric of the show. Sean has guided us expertly through the devising and has pushed us into new creative avenues. There is something so satisfying about devising, working, re-working and reflecting on process. I genuinely feel this is the happiest part of life as it engulfs me, demands full attention and at the end a show is born, spanked and sent out into the World. So there are some hard decisions to make, a tightening schedule and a potential audience to woo.
Finally I was interested to see the nominations for best film at the Oscars. There is a bit of a nostalgia fest happening across the waves but it was interesting that both The Artist and Hugo celebrate the power of cinema, or so Mark Lawson says. This is somewhat coincidental because we too are celebrating cinema but the more repressed and sinister world of Film Noir, with those fine cinematic visuals from expressionism – Fritz Lang, Ernest Laszlo et al – and inspired a genre of film that is as loose as any can be. We have of course deconstructed it a little, played with and exaggerated elements but NINE has become an ode to film noir and to the wry, black, metaphoric images it portrayed so smartly.
So with less than a fortnight to go, we are in a good place but with still some work to do and still in search of an ending to the show and the selection process. We could just go on all night until all have left or one of us collapses. Answers on a postcard…..if they still exist.
Gareth