Force Majeure's Not In A Million Years

Week Five: Caroline Baum’s rehearsal room notes

Like any group of people who work closely together, there are days when everyone dresses in the same colour. This week there’s a collective red day, followed by maroon.

This week, costume gets added to the mix. Alice (Hinde, costume assistant) comes and goes with a selection of shoes, T shirts and pants – some are quickly rejected: too tight on the thighs, too girly, or too subdued for the lighting. Some things will need to be made, others will need to be dyed. Elizabeth likes the shoes she’s got (‘much nicer than those nurses shoes I had for The Age I’m In’) which makes me wonder what it would be like to perform in clothes you just hate. Most of us take it for granted that we get to choose what we wear to work. Not these guys.

It’s the pointy end of things now, refining, editing, cutting, tightening.  Max is selecting explosions and composing a waltz for the final sequence on an upright piano that’s been wheeled into the corner. His is a tough job: by now, the performers have got used to the lyrical guide track they’ve used to rehearse with over and over, a gentle melody with a hook by Bernard Herman used as part of the score for Tom Ford’s film A Single Man.  He has to come up with something that will make them forget its lilting tune and the lush string quartet orchestration. And he has nineteen other musical sequences to put together. By next week. No pressure.

Sarah Jayne makes sucking, mewing sounds to help her encode what comes next in the danced finale. A move where all four performers seem about to tumble forward is called ‘ohmigod’. Another move, where they all point there finger, leaning forward is called ‘public transport’ (Because it looks like hailing a bus, says Kate, but I’ve never seen anyone do it that discreetly). One elbow bend proves hard to synchronise. There’s collective laughter when SJ forgets what comes next, looks over her shoulder to copy the others and discovers they are all taking their cue from her.  Oops!

Kate and Roz watch from different angles, pruning out gestural clichés, checking head angles and eye lines. This final sequence relies on being tight and precise and with only four performers; it is more exposed, leaving no margin for error. When there are fifty swans in tutus on stage, one can afford to beat her wings a second late, but not here.

Caroline Baum

Have you booked your tickets yet? Not in A Million Years is at CarriageWorks 17 - 27 November.  Click here to book online.