Diary: Layering

The rehearsals have continued the layering process in which the director and actors add more and more detail and depth to the tales, changing them in the process from stories into dramas. For example, much work has been done this week on 'The North Wind'. Four characters are mentioned in the story: Kari, her mother, the North Wind, and the Troll, but this being an ensemble production, all eight actors are involved in the dramatisation. At the beginning of the story, whilst Zara (the mother) and Vineeta (Kari) act out the mother-daughter relationship, in the background and visible to the audience are Bill, Howard, and Elliot, using some of Terje's musical sticks and assorted lengths of plastic tubing to make the sound of the wind. Jack is there too, working an ancient theatrical wind machine, a wooden contraption on which is mounted a wheel turned by a handle. As it moves, it brushes against a taut length of canvas; the friction produces a hissing sound that can be accelerated by increasing the energy required to turn the handle. When the wind picks up strength, causing Kari to lose her precious flour, the actors leave their instruments and rush down stage, twisting and turning around Kari as a visual representation of the power of the wind.

The episodes at the Inn are given much more attention in the performance than they are in the story. There it is just the Troll whom Kari encounters, but the Director uses Bill, Elliot, and Jack to play guests of the Troll (played by Howard). So, when Kari first arrives, she has an audience who watch in astonishment as she demonstrates the magic power of the tablecloth and then immediately eat eagerly from the magic spread set before them. The three additional actors in this episode, although they have no lines, give added interest by their reactions to the 'miracle' and to its provider. When Kari returns for a second visit with the goat (played by Kelly), the inhabitants of the Inn are now padded out, demonstrably better off because of their new and unlimited source of food. The seizure of the goat will give them unlimited wealth too, and so when Kari returns for a third and final time, it is to a group of men who are even fatter and now make a conspicuous and gross display of their new illicit wealth: the actors are wearing large gold rings, watches, and one a gold necklace. Jack has a ghetto blaster on his shoulder, and Elliot sports a fat cigar. When the Troll's final attempt to take what doesn't belong to her backfires, and the stick begins to beat her, it doesn't spare the other habitués of the Inn, all of whom share the guilt of stealing and are chased about the stage in their futile attempt to avoid retribution.

The detail added by the Director may sound modest, but in performance it adds considerably to the tale; not just in terms of opportunities for humour (the reactions of the Inn's guests to the sudden appearance of food and gold is hilarious), but also in grounding the story in a recognisable social context, reminding the audience that these tales, although dealing in archetypes and overlaid with magic, are about the experiences of real people attempting to live their lives in difficult circumstances.