Barabas is coming...
Screw your courage to the sticking post, and we’ll not fail.
I’ve just had a week off, making the most of the fabulous summer weather (well you have to think positive). It was good, despite the Rain (capital R), to recharge my batteries a bit, have some time away from the busy roads, and a bit of space to see loved ones and walk on the beach and up the hills with the dogs (in the rain, again, and again).
It’s almost impossible to keep your mind off the job in hard, though; it’s like an itch. During the course of the week I read Charles Nicholls’s excellent account of Marlowe’s death, THE RECKNONING (Joe said ‘when you finish it you’ll feel you’ve really achieved something’ and he was right) and thought about things a bit, and translated some lyrics, and stuff. But I woke upon Sunday, the last day of my holiday, to pouring rain and an attack of nerves so bad that I was hardly able to move. This lasted throughout the day and was only alleviated – and for that, in short bursts - by frequent pacing along the beach and some morale-boosting chats to family and friends.
It is weird. Your mind freezes. Your mouth freezes. Your heart seems to stop. You can’t eat, sleep, walk, talk. You are convinced that you are useless, worthless, a rubbish director, have done no preparation whatsoever and must be completely mad to find yourself in this situation. In the words of will Shakespeare, ‘horrible horrible most horrible’.
But in the words of Kit Marlowe (quoting Machiavelli) ‘nothing violent can be permanent’. I tossed and turned most of the night and returned to the theatre on Monday, and sure enough, after a few hours of the hurly burly of life at Hall for Cornwall, a good laugh with our Head of Finance (who always cheers me up), and a read of some wonderful, energising, positive quotations from our cast about their excitement for the project I felt a lot better.
Fear is a great motivator; it’s something to do with anticipation. I know that if we started rehearsals tomorrow we’d be ready, but fear makes you work harder and it makes you be better at what you do. Before my last production a wise director friend said ‘terror is a good thing’. You’re on a kind of knife-edge, and it spurs you on to make sure you’ve covered every corner.
I was also boosted to find that Phil had a similar experience last summer, about to launch into writing music for an important show and ‘convinced that I couldn’t compose a note’.
So Thank the Lord - it’s not just me. It’s natural. I don’t know a single director (and I know some very good ones) who doesn’t suffer from nervousness before a big project starts. It’s paralysing and terrifying and ultimately pointless but you get through it. I’ve just had another restless night fretting and fussing and wondering what the hell I’ve got us all into, but everybody has this and everybody has a different way of dealing with it.
It’s that feeling that you must get when facing the execution block, going ‘over the top’. I hate it; it wastes time and achieves nothing. That fear of fear itself when, with a play like this, you must be totally fearless, like the best sportsmen, and brave, and (in the words of another director who I trust) ‘JUST DO IT’. Lady Macbeth had something going for her when she suggested the ‘sticking post’: these feelings can be channelled to an advantage if you know how.
Rufus Norris talks eloquently on this point: ‘every day I feel I’m not cut out for the job I’m doing...I’m nowhere near robust enough...you have to spend 10 hours a day standing up in front of 40, 45 people telling them what to do...you have to be quite driven to do this job...’
It was encouraging to know that somebody right at the top of his tree could feel just the same as little me, and I’ve kept that article pinned up above my desk ever since it came out. Thank you, Rufus – you’re a gent.
But now ‘the fear’, as an old friend calls it, has subsided I’m back to work with a vengeance, drafting next week’s call-sheets and marking up my script for the onset of rehearsals. Back at home, that paralysing feeling is as if it never happened. But despite the pain, I’m glad it did. If we were going into this rehearsal period without it, I know we’d be doing it all wrong.
It’s almost impossible to keep your mind off the job in hard, though; it’s like an itch. During the course of the week I read Charles Nicholls’s excellent account of Marlowe’s death, THE RECKNONING (Joe said ‘when you finish it you’ll feel you’ve really achieved something’ and he was right) and thought about things a bit, and translated some lyrics, and stuff. But I woke upon Sunday, the last day of my holiday, to pouring rain and an attack of nerves so bad that I was hardly able to move. This lasted throughout the day and was only alleviated – and for that, in short bursts - by frequent pacing along the beach and some morale-boosting chats to family and friends.
It is weird. Your mind freezes. Your mouth freezes. Your heart seems to stop. You can’t eat, sleep, walk, talk. You are convinced that you are useless, worthless, a rubbish director, have done no preparation whatsoever and must be completely mad to find yourself in this situation. In the words of will Shakespeare, ‘horrible horrible most horrible’.
But in the words of Kit Marlowe (quoting Machiavelli) ‘nothing violent can be permanent’. I tossed and turned most of the night and returned to the theatre on Monday, and sure enough, after a few hours of the hurly burly of life at Hall for Cornwall, a good laugh with our Head of Finance (who always cheers me up), and a read of some wonderful, energising, positive quotations from our cast about their excitement for the project I felt a lot better.
Fear is a great motivator; it’s something to do with anticipation. I know that if we started rehearsals tomorrow we’d be ready, but fear makes you work harder and it makes you be better at what you do. Before my last production a wise director friend said ‘terror is a good thing’. You’re on a kind of knife-edge, and it spurs you on to make sure you’ve covered every corner.
I was also boosted to find that Phil had a similar experience last summer, about to launch into writing music for an important show and ‘convinced that I couldn’t compose a note’.
So Thank the Lord - it’s not just me. It’s natural. I don’t know a single director (and I know some very good ones) who doesn’t suffer from nervousness before a big project starts. It’s paralysing and terrifying and ultimately pointless but you get through it. I’ve just had another restless night fretting and fussing and wondering what the hell I’ve got us all into, but everybody has this and everybody has a different way of dealing with it.
It’s that feeling that you must get when facing the execution block, going ‘over the top’. I hate it; it wastes time and achieves nothing. That fear of fear itself when, with a play like this, you must be totally fearless, like the best sportsmen, and brave, and (in the words of another director who I trust) ‘JUST DO IT’. Lady Macbeth had something going for her when she suggested the ‘sticking post’: these feelings can be channelled to an advantage if you know how.
Rufus Norris talks eloquently on this point: ‘every day I feel I’m not cut out for the job I’m doing...I’m nowhere near robust enough...you have to spend 10 hours a day standing up in front of 40, 45 people telling them what to do...you have to be quite driven to do this job...’
It was encouraging to know that somebody right at the top of his tree could feel just the same as little me, and I’ve kept that article pinned up above my desk ever since it came out. Thank you, Rufus – you’re a gent.
But now ‘the fear’, as an old friend calls it, has subsided I’m back to work with a vengeance, drafting next week’s call-sheets and marking up my script for the onset of rehearsals. Back at home, that paralysing feeling is as if it never happened. But despite the pain, I’m glad it did. If we were going into this rehearsal period without it, I know we’d be doing it all wrong.
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