We're Out The Gates!

The wild and uncut stage as we begin to block. Lear, Kent and The Knight
doing the business - dunno who the bloke in the hat is though!

We took the first, faltering steps along the road to August last night...and it was a huge amount of fun. Well, I thought it was; I've only had response from a couple of people, but that was pretty positive.
As someone said early on in the proceedings, 'It doesn't seem like a year since we were up here doing this; it's almost like we've never been away.'
Never was a truer word spoken! There's a particular atmosphere to an ITC rehearsal at the castle; it's full of laughter, yet everyone gets stuck-in and the work rattled along at a fair old pace. We didn't get all the first act blocked but it actually didn't matter that much. What did matter, to me at least, was that a group of friends, old and new, came together and started working on something magical. And it did, it felt magical.
We were blessed with a beautiful evening and the moon did it's favourite trick of appearing and casting its light across the water and on to the departing actors and techies.

Shaunagh Radcliffe as Goneril and Jon Miles as Lear (in the foreground),
being watched by Shahar Lashkor as The Knight, as the play progresses.

It's obviously early days yet and we've a shed load of work to do, but everyone came and did their bit, starting to get to grips with some of the most complex characters that Will ever put down on paper. And it seemed appropriate that we started the whole thing off on his birthday: not planned that way, but a serendipitous piece of timing.
The bonus for me was that, before the actual blocking started, a couple of the sound and light guys (thanks Dan and Ben) and our set-designer (and thank you Caoimhe) came along early and, after a conflab and a look about the setting, agreed that it would be possible to achieve everything that I'd scribbled down on various bits of paper and get the look that I wanted. Chalk another one up to having-a-go!

Cordelia's hiding behind that bloke in the hat - who is he?

Thanks to Janie for firing up her old camera - the one she usually uses went belly-up back along - and grabbing these shots of all and sundry. It's good have a pictorial record of what we get up to. There will be more and we'll put some of them up on the web-site too.
Finally, an appeal: if you know of anyone who might like to come and join our merry band, please, bring them along. We still have speaking roles and we still need a great number of actors to people the stage. It's not an easy job, and it's not just standing around looking pretty - or pretty bored! - these characters bring life and meaning to the play as much as any of the leads.
Come and have some fun. 

Ben Hamilton as Edmund, Ernie Wingeatt as Gloucester and him again.