Three weeks into rehearsal and I am now well into the pattern so familiar from film shoots. At the end of an impossibly long day, my mind is churning to try and digest and evaluate what has happened and simultaneously think and plan ahead for the following day (and weeks).
A mix of obsession with detail (shoes for the performers, the colour of a chair, the precise turn of a head, the disturbingly sour expression on someone's face) combines with immersion in the grand scheme (the arc of the story, the roots of the opera, the themes of jealousy and death, nostalgia and premonition) and is then joined, after a few hours fitful sleep, by jolting waves of doubt.
How can I pull it off? How can I help the huge number of performers (10 soloists 10 dancers, 56 chorus, 22 children) - so disparate in their needs, problems and experience - reach a coherent, unified and vital presence? How can I divest the production of cliché? How can I manage to get through each rehearsal session with even the minimal goal of a clear shape to it that satisfies me musically and visually?
A couple of nights ago I gave up trying to sleep at 4am, got up, made this little self-portrait and then got on with the business of planning the scene I was to rehearse that morning with the entire chorus – a fight scene.
Comments
ah, the inescapable price to be paid by directors of such feats as this. a painful growing pain in the centermost of the creator, yet fundamental in the transcendental sense. this self-portrait video is simply beautiful in its vulnerability, a recognizeable human moment for a woman viewed by many as the immortal director, and no doubt with such empyrean pressures. I am traveling to London just to see the magic of this adversity! can't wait.
This is very very bad, how can you think clearly when tired out ?
Get some assistants, learn to chill, remember mahler and his composing huts, oddly enough,someone I know has written about this recently.
http://www.mahlersheavenlyretreats.com/index.html
tut tut, learn from composers taking those country walks and chilling out etc. etc.
jason
Seeing your surroundings through your eyes and literally, visually looking through your eyes to see them, summons tangibly the process into which you, wakeful, apply your mind, your senses as you seek out that arc between self and creation at the border where other and projected self spark. The extent to which you are sharing the presence (the ethics of your presence) you bring to your process is becoming, for me, the art of your production. Sadly I am unlikely to make it to London to see your Carmen, but I find myself happily becoming increasingly absorbed in the ways you are enacting the process of creating it here.
I wholeheartedly agree. Trust your instincts and have faith. It will be wonderful.
I believe you are missing film to be making this little creation in the middle of the night, yes? A touchstone perhaps with your favorite medium? The camera, which you can point and control where the audience looks.
Daring to take on a new form, Sally. BRAVO! Fear not, it will be bold, fresh... you.