Half Way!

6 weeks of rehearsals down, 6 weeks to go!

We are having a blast in the rehearsal rooms - Charlotte Jones has written an amazingly funny play and the cast are revelling in the opportunities it is giving them to create vivid characters and hilarious moments.  That is not to say that the play is without a darker side - and these sections are by turns shocking, moving and very touching.  It really is an embarrassment of riches and one that we are enjoying working on.

Blocking Complete!

So, five weeks into our process and we have worked our way through the entire play. My rehearsal book is spilling over with pencil scribbles and eraser marks, all in the quest to know what each character is doing at each time.

Now, we move up to four rehearsals a week and our assembly stage of rehearsals. This is where we piece together the play, brick by brick. And while the cast do that, I need to work on writing down all the blocking notes so I can hand them out to our understudies so they can have some idea of what we've been doing without them for the last month!

Random Jottings from the Director – First rehearsals...

After many months of planning, rehearsals for Humble Boy have now started and it is a joy to be working with the cast and crew to put this great play on the stage of the Oxford Playhouse.

But why this particular play?

I remember reading it many years ago and loving it for the clever blend of humour and emotional honesty. Charlotte Jones – as any good Oxford-educated author should – manages to combine a whole range of topics with some deftly drawn characters into a script that can make you laugh and cry with some brilliant lines.