But now, with all the scaffolding down, the props and set packed away for another year, I can draw breath and reflect upon what has been an amazing production.
Everybody involved put so much effort into the show and they deserve all the plaudits that are currently flying in their general direction.
It never ceases to amaze me how we achieve what we do in the time we have. I worked it out, somewhere, but I think this little snippet of information deserves repeating.
A professional company, for a production such as this, will spend months planning and rehearsing and fine-tuning...as do we, but only to a certain extent.
A company like, for the sake of argument, the RSC will, on rehearsals alone spend anything up to six full weeks, six or seven days a week, ten plus hours a day to get where they need to be.
We, as a company, if you break it down, spent every Tuesday and Friday evening rehearsing from about 7pm to approximately 9.00/9.15 for fifteen weeks.
Break it down again, and we got this together (not including admin, advertising etc) in the equivalent of just over eleven days RSC-time!!
I am so inordinately proud of everybody who gave their all for this production; who not only believed it was possible to do but that I could do it!!
We have had glowing praise from pretty much everybody who was at the castle...and, for once, it barely rained. But it wouldn't have been a Dartmouth Shakespeare Week without a tiny sprinkling on Saturday night. My heart nearly stopped when it started...but only for ten minutes or so.
There was one thing that really puzzled me, with regard to some of the comments I heard, prior to the run, as we were setting up.
The castle has a huge number of visitors strolling around as we beaver away and I heard, time out of number, this comment/conversation in any number of forms:
Child (anywhere from 8 to 13/14): What are they doing?
Parent: A play. It's Shakespeare.
Child: Ooh, can we come and see it?
Parent: a)you wouldn't understand it
b)wait til you learn it at school
c)no, it's just old stuff that's pretty boring.
What? WHAT???!!
They're showing an interest in something! Encourage it! Don't wait for some teacher, who possibly doesn't get Will him/herself, to suck the enthusiasm out them! Nurture it!
Sheeesh.
BUT, that being said, one of the young people who performed in Lear this year is, said her Mum, so enthusiastic about Shakespeare, since thye've been performing it, that for her birthday this year, she wants to go and see a production at the Globe! And they're going.
That's what we need; not just for Shakespeare, but for theatre generally. Get 'em when they're young and you'll give them the greatest gift any parent could give a child - love of performance and stories and entertainment and an understanding of how we got where we are today!
Thanks Will.
Thanks everybody.
And, once again, massive thanks go to our Keith, who spent Saturday night crouched up a scaffold tower, snapping these. It's just a small selection at the moment, but more will follow and I'll assemble a special page on the website to display them in all their glory!
Aren't they magical?
Makes me think that we did pretty well...and that we'll be back again next year with 'Taming of the Shrew'.
Now that's much more cheerful.
But we'll be doing other things in the meantime and I'll keep up this blog to let you know what's happening...although it will all be 'other stories' pretty much.
I'm going to miss Lear.
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