Three

This weekend was the National Theatre Connections weekend which for me meant an intensive full day workshop in the company of many directors and the playwright of Three, our NTC play for this year.  It's always an important weekend for me - a chance to take stock of where I am as a director and practitioner and to be reminded of things that might have been forced to the back of my mind in the sometimes relentless pace of the Yew Tree/Osborne year.

In the spirit of the title of this year's play - and one of the exercises we did in the workshop - I'm going to focus on three of the most useful things I came away with from yesterday's activities, discussion and reflection:

One - sometimes we need to feel vulnerable and exposed to be liberated from the things that tie us down (or into knots) we need to jump off the metaphorical cliff to know that we can fly - even soar. My job is to create an environment in the rehearsal room where actors feel safe enough to make that leap and support them to keep challenging themselves to tackle greater and greater heights.

Two - that in order to succeed in the rehearsal process actors need to have an exceptional amount of openness, generosity and humility.  Although actors often think they have that sorted greater things can be achieved if they could truly allow those values and attributes to take their rightful place. Too often preconceptions, self service and ego have too much of a presence in the process of making work often entirely unconsciously.

Three - National Connections is such a unique and valuable experience for YTYT actors - it's an opportunity to be pushed further, learn more, fly higher...but it comes with a price (a price which this year I'm going to be a little more insistent upon) which begins with an actors willingness to dedicate themselves to the process of making quality theatre - to be prepared to jump off all of the cliffs that present themselves along the way - to be open, generous and humble - happily the reward for doing so will be a hundred times the investment. 

I for one can't wait to get cracking...