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Table Talk

Writers spend a fair amount of time with bum on seat. So I thought that the first day of rehearsal would involve bounding onto our feet and making the play in three dimensions from the start. But I'm not going to be let off the hook that easily. No script is perfect. Mine needs some serious tweaking.

'Table work' is a chance for writer, actors and director to thrash through the broad shape of the script. What's unclear? Where is more exposition needed? What are the characters feeling? Where are they heading? Do we care? Director Philip Howard and the cast dive into the guts of the play. It's a chance for me to hear the new draft properly for the first time.

For a writer, this is incredibly valuable. If I ever win the lottery, I'll be hiring a team of actors to help me with the writing, testing and tasting the script, making sure it does what it's meant to, and shamelessly nicking the best of their ideas.

Real-world wake-up call: writers work (by and large) alone. But script readings are a great chance to expose what's over-written, over-obvious and overloved. Writing is a drawn-out process, while performance of the same scene can be over in seconds. What works in one time-span might not work in the other. Fiction writers beware: writing for the stage is very tough. The inner world of fiction doesn't translate easily to the more externalised world of drama. Nowhere is this clearer than sitting round a table, hearing your words expertly floated into the air. It's very exposing.

But I love this process. It's a chance to hear the music, and make everything as tight as possible. As a radio journalist, I'm used to writing for the ear rather than the eye. I've never written a word of dialogue that I haven't read out (yep, the neighbours are worried). Even so, the table read-through gives me a chance to try new ideas and clarify fogginess. It's also a chance for the actors and director to try out ideas for characterisation and think through some of the problems of staging. Meanwhile, Philip is handing out playing cards, until the rehearsal room feels like a poker den. Why? Watch this space.

posted by Jules Horne @ 4/07/2006 10:31:00 PM