12.3 last double before the hols

Can't think of a word to describe today. It was sort of exciting, sort of intellectual, sort of artistic, sort of analytical, sort of practical....

We compared the nostalgic, post-modern self-awareness of Kneehigh's Brief Encounter with the emotive sentimental impact of The Notebook. We feel certain that the original audiences of David Lean's film would have reveled in the agony of Alec's final goodbye just as we melt at the end of The Notebook. Perhaps future audiences of The Notebook would also see it as something "of its time" rather than finding its sentiment directly appealing. Later audiences always have that detached insight. We often watch something and say "it's very 80s, isn't it?" - and we don't just mean the clothes or the music - it is also about the way people move; speak; relate to each other.

It would seem that B. E. (especially in the Kneehigh version) is about others looking on and the social expectations placed on Alec and Laura - and perhaps this is part of what makes it so worthy of a modern reworking . One group member argued that The Notebook, too, has something to say: this time about Alzheimers - but I do not know the book or the film well enough to judge if this is the case. I suspect it does have something to say about it but from a personal perspective rather than a social or philosophical one.


I then asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine journeying to London to see a live production of The Notebook. I had a suspicion we would all imagine end-on proscenium stages. There were great images of light and colour-filled stages creating the fairground and images of the nursing home. It was all end-on stages, however. We then repeated the exercise, but this time as I got to the point in the visualisation where we took our seats, I revealed that the stage form was in the round and the stage floor looked like a circus ring. Metal guy ropes, exposed scaffold, trapeeze apparatus, even sawdust on the floor.

We discussed the imagined openings and tried to think how they might be interpreted. From these seeds we hypothesised our imaginary production to be a bit like this:

The stage is a circus. The circus replaces the fairground of the film. The audience sees the play from Alli's perspective. Due to her illness, the moments are presented as jumbled up and fragmented. There are nurses who appear and are very nice but make no sense and sometimes they are actually frightening, asking us to take our clothes off and telling us to get back to bed and sometimes they appear funny. A sad clown keeps coming out, trying to tell a story, wiping his makeup off .... and asking us to dance.

A young man leaps out of the auditorium, dragging his date with him. She is laughing. Both of them are behaving as if they are the only people to exist in the world - he is threatening to climb an elephant and ride off with her and she is helpless with nerves and laughter.

As the play continues, the scenes start to repeat themselves and start to fall into place. It is clear that the clown is telling his story to the girl and she begins to remember... and they dance...

We watched the Kneehigh videos and looked at the elements of fun and "circus" in them. While a circus first seemed a disappointing start for the project, I think the release of the imagination that the exercise gave was very useful.

Next we got a hold of the script of the film and explored the last few lines as an actors' workshop. The last moment of the film is unbearably romantic. I was impressed with everyone's efforts. It takes a lot for young performers to get comfortable enough to say "I love you" with any conviction. We broke down the words until they lost their ability to make us tense and then played Billie Holiday and relaxed. I got the group engaged in some activities designed to break boundaries, like being in a pair and tracing the outline of the other's hands with their finger tips; whispering the lines, gradually building eye contact, etc.

I left for my Y7 lesson reminded that Theatre is crazy - one minute it is about fiddling with leads and connectors, trying to get an mp3 playing out of the PA system and in the next minute it is about the human psyche. Perhaps a bit grand a claim - but those who were there know what I mean.