I love it when a plan comes together

(A perspective from the stage)

Picture the scene: two actors, one director and a writer are all sitting in a hot little room, deconstructing a new play that has one week to go until curtain up. It is unseasonally warm in London, I'm strutting around in a very hot costume, time is running out and the mood in the room is sub-zero.

We begin a scene and the director calls us to a halt yet again to deconstruct a monologue I'm trying to bring to life. It's a little late in the day for this level of analysis, dontcha think? Or is it just me?

Also, the changes that day are different to the changes made to the same scenes the previous week... It keeps evolving - until we settle on a greater truth or something like that. It is art after all, isn't it? I get that, but like I said, why didn't we do this lab work earlier on?

I start to panic.

My character is still in a test tube. I can't bring him to life yet because they keep changing his DNA. Also, with very specific direction, I'm yet not able to bring emotional colour to the character and that frustrates me. I am that large puppet in Being John Malkovich and the director is John Malkovich who is actually John Cusack who is trying to impress a woman from inside John Malkovich's head and who is muttering, "Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich..."

And then, just before we reach tipping point, we break through. 

Everything just clicks into place for no discernable reason and we are out of the lab and onto the stage. The dynamic in the room changes, the mood lifts and we are in a tangibly different place.

My character is born and I get to bring him out to meet the other character in the play; he frolics around in the stuffy little room and we have a bit of fun with him, trying on different ties and deciding whether to give him a serious shave. He's glad to be alive and is looking forward to curtain-up. 

I also get to bring deep empathy to his character by adding in the essential emotional layer: the nuances, the shadow moves and the hidden little tics that are the keys to authentic characterisation. At last I'm an actor, not a lab technician and it feels tremendous.

So next time you're in the middle of it and you think to yourself, "How can anything good ever come out of this? I'm going mad!", just remember that it is a process and believe that it will come together. Whether it clicks in with 2 days to go or whether it falls into place with 7 days to go, the show will always shift into gear suddenly when you feel like you've been idling forever. 

Here's hoping that we are going to do Siren justice on stage.  Watch this space!