Our share of tomorrow 16th June 2009

My first rehearsal with another actor.

So, now I have a son. A real one in the ‘flesh and blood’ sense of the word real. The impact of this is enormous. Using hand improvisation to actually hold a child and comfort them is an astonishingly 'bonding' experience. The complexity of marrying together two imaginary worlds however is an enormous task. It is so important to allow the other actor room to work but the fine adjustments one has to make to one's own imaginings are multiple. When Jot (Tommy) described the way Leo (his dad) had behaved in one of his memories it made an enormous impact on how I (imaginary me) now feel about him (Leo). I was forced to see a slightly darker more unpleasant side to him. Interestingly it makes the separation of the characters more understandable on an emotional level. Blimey this is complicated...roll on Tommy's teenage years!!!!!!!!

Our share of tomorrow 6th June 09

Another long session but things are really moving along. The sensorial hand improvisation is a really fast way of connecting with the imagined experience. Certainly when improvising childhood memories the effect is exactly as in real childhood memories in that they are snapshots and sense based. So now I have a Mum and Dad who are very clear (as are my grandparents and school). The improvisation around loosing Annie's mum was quite startling in that I was able to experience the loss very quickly and in an extremely intensely within a few seconds and the reverberations were huge. I think if we had been in studio rather than a coffee shop I would have sobbed as I described it. What it has done is provided me with some really big clues as to how this imaginary person may evolve...we shall see! Teenage anxt next...