Paranoid Choruses

in situ: The Winter's Tale - week 8

Two weeks out and I'm itching to get back, which perhaps prompts me to return a little too early. Tonight we work on the "paranoid choruses", taking the text originally spoken by one character and attempting to present it in different way.

I foolishly agree to speak Leontes's lines (because I'm a boy - not exactly breaking the mold there) in "Too hot! Too hot!" while Rachael and Tanya interject while stood facing each other in front of me and cutting off my contact with the audience. It seems to work well from early on, though I'm starting to cough within 15 minutes and begin to lose my voice by the time we come to perform the "finished" piece. I'm relieved when we break and sit down to discuss what we'll be performing in two weeks for the work in progress showing.

The Bohemian section we did before has been extended with more introductory dialogue included, but I'm not Florizel this time around. The perils of being ill. Instead I will be Leontes in the opening section, something we haven't worked on before. This will mean reading the dialogue from books, something we haven't done before in performance.

As usual the picture isn't entirely clear what will happen in two weeks' time, but these things have a habit of being worked out satisfactorily over the weekend prior.