The beat goes on...

I hadn’t had a chance to look for my phone before it was brought back to me in the rehearsal room. I told you so. By then we had already got the 8.00 producer’s meeting part 2 meeting out of the way, and Judy and I had shared a sneaky coffee on the way to rehearsals. This turned out to be a good move, because by the time I got there, Mijeong had reworked the whole grandmother’s story scene very effectively. Minato is now working hard with Ayako on the music, and every day while he is here the actors are doing a couple of hours of music work. His work since Birmingham has really paid off, and the music should end up as a well integrated and effective element in the play. Ayako gains in confidence every day, and also grows her pile of instruments. Minato wants to go shopping in the morning for more. Already we are stretching the credibility of her role as a travelling street musician, unless she is travelling with a horse and cart. But there is a real dividend in the range and interest of the music itself.

In the afternoon we worked on the ending scene, leaving some key decisions for a while, because it seems best to make them when we have pieced together the whole play and can get a stronger sense of exactly what the ending needs.

At lunchtime, I had a nice meeting with someone Byung Ho has lined up to take on the Playstation project, which I have been working on in Reaside School. This involves a group of Year 6 pupils who have created a level for the game Little Big Planet, which will be published online, and can then be played in Korea, and Japan, as well as everywhere else in the world. It was a little hard to explain what we wanted form him, but I am hoping that his role will be to involve children here in playing the game, and then communicating with those in Birmingham who have made it up, alongside seeing the play, and comparing notes.

At the end of rehearsals, So Young arrived with a costume update, and she had a long conversation with Judy in Italian, as if things weren’t complicated enough in terms of language. The costume is proving quite a complex process, because perceptions of the clothes of young people is so different across our nations, as well as attitudes to young people’s theatre. I feel some sympathy for So Young trying to find her way through the range of ideas being thrown at her. I feel guilty for not somehow being as decisive as is expected of a director in these parts, but everyone in the team knows by now that our route will be a long and slow one of talking things through until we achieve something which we can agree on from at least three perspectives. We will meet her again tomorrow, because she needs to bring some clothes to dress the actors for a photocall, creating an image for Mr Shimoyama’s brochure.