AND ANOTHER THING...
This is Irma Wood. She died in her sleep on Wednesday night at the age of 95. With her husband John she ran a small progressive school in Epsom in Surrey called New Sherwood – a sort of Summerhill in the South. I was sent there at the age of 8 after a year of deeply unhappy school refusal. The five years I spent there were probably the most important of my life. I owe Irma (& John, who died 7 years ago) more than I can ever express.
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Rehearsals for Ask for the Moon continue to make steady progress. My laceworker actors have become a tight-knit trio, utterly committed to their parts. I was ill last week & missed a scheduled rehearsal. They went ahead, blocked an entire scene & then sat down & devised detailed subtexts for each character. I might have expected this from my Theatre Studies students – two years older & well versed in Stanislavski’s System – but from three 16-year-olds with little more than enthusiasm & intuition behind them it was impressive.
Meanwhile their counterparts in the play, the sweatshop workers, are rehearsing with equal application. However, in some respects they have a tougher challenge. The laceworkers are aged between 18 & 24 so the girls are able to play from their own ages with no great difficulty. Three of the sweatshop workers are significantly older than the actors playing them. Carlie is a sardonic, worldy-wise 40-plus; Eugene, the factory owner, is in his late 30s; Lil, the central character of the play, is 74. Only Annoushka, the Croatian asylum seeker, is in her 20s.
Playing old age is difficult enough for an adult. The combination of observation, imagination & the application of learned technique would tax the resources of a trained actor. C. veers between creative self-doubt & thus reliance on her formidable intelligence to work out what to do & moments of real power when her voice hits a different register & Lil flickers into life. I’m in no doubt that C. can pull this off & I must continue to encourage her whilst leaving the responsibility for finding the way in up to her.
Playing Carlie, A. has a different sort of challenge before her. Because of the huge gulf in years between late teens & old age, the physicalisation & vocalisation demands are more clear-cut & thus open to those learned techniques. Middle age is for most teenagers a sort of dead zone within which the drives & passions that motivate them atrophy & fall away. It is, in most cases, the age-band occupied by their parents. So portraying middle age poses a number of perceptual problems, making it difficult for the adolescent actor to achieve the necessary objectivity & detachment. A. is doing remarkably well. She’s growing in confidence with each rehearsal.
J. playing Eugene struggles still with the pacing of the lines. Eugene panics constantly about work deadlines, his creditors, the bank & the increasing inability of Lil to do her job properly. J. is still either attacking the lines too hard & racing & thus losing clarity or downplaying them & losing depth & variety of feeling. But he’s determined & a hard worker & - as with all the others – the shortcomings will be remedied.
This is a powerfully motivated cast. They’re already acutely sensitive to potential audience reaction & that degree of awareness at this relatively early stage is a major positive factor that drives them in rehearsal. I’m enjoying this preparation process as much as anything I’ve been involved in during the past 28 years of working on productions with young people.
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It’s 11.55 PM. Reuben is snoring gently in the next room. My shift is about to come to an end. As I lift the double (triple?) Irish single malt clinking in one of my two crystal tumblers to my lips, an owl hoots from the big sycamore tree on the corner. G’night, John Boy…
1:09:57 AM 
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