A few weeks have now passed and we have had several run throughs of the whole play which gives a much greater ‘feel’ for how it all hangs together. It is now all about the hard slog of learning lines and getting ‘off book’.
The recent Reindeer Parade seemed to go quite well with lots of people turning out in miserable weather. Dressed up and made up we all quickly got into character and I was pleasantly suprised that the audience recognised us immediately, despite my own ‘temporary’ costume suggesting more chav bear than Pooh bear. The large number of younger children seemed particularly over-awed by our characters and the general vibe from adults was very positive (a number of whom wanted photos with the cast).
Christmas fast approaches and we all know that the deadline for knowing our parts will soon be with us. Then the fun of the final run in can begin and we can all look forward to the terror of opening night.
My first ever story book was a copy of the collected adventures of this little bear and his friends; with some of the illustrations being in colour it seemed to me quite magical. The chance to be part of a stage production was too good to miss. Imagine my delight to be cast in the title role.
The rehearsals have been going for a while now and we have had several goes at working through the whole play, so the next big thing is getting ‘off book’. I have always struggled with lines, finding rote learning rather tedious. I have used a memory route method to learn other scripts, particularly useful is involved in a dialogue with short speeches.
However, the role of Pooh has parts with several characters talking together, large gaps between lines and a number of large speeches. Dialogue tends to be easiest to learn because often what is said is a response, so the previous lines act as good cues. But remembering ad hoc interjections, or the course of a long speech, which in the case of Pooh often make quite big conceptual leaps, is proving rather tricky. I’m aways interested to find out how other actors learn their lines and whilst I have some memory techniques, I’m also interested in learning new ones.
Well, I have to go and learn a few more pages, but if anyone has any advice or suggestions I’d be really interested to hear.
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