As predicted in my first blog post, I have fallen behind. Directing plays takes up more time than I remember. We are now in the last week before the play opens, and we’re beginning to see it take shape more and more. Stitching the individual scenes together, we can start to break the play down into three or four bigger sections rather than twenty-nine different scenes.

Music has become a bigger and bigger part of the play. In the complete published journals, Rachel is constantly talking about the music that she enjoys, and she often mentions what music she is listening to as she writes. The more you read into her writing, the more you realise how big a part of her life music is. As a result, we spent hours and hours trawling through her diary listening to all the songs that she listened to and finding ways of incorporating them into the production. This seems to give the show an extra layer of authenticity – the verbatim seems to be coming not just through the words she spoke, but also by the music that she listened to. Most of the tracks used in the play are ones that she would have listened to and enjoyed.

Following this, we realised that to establish an authentic Palestinian setting, we should incorporate some Palestinian music to both juxtapose and complement Corrie’s music. The transition between America and Palestine is partially marked by the change in music – America ends with a track by The Velvet Underground, and Palestine begins with a Palestinian piece, and the effect is intentionally jarring and surprising. The Palestinian pieces played in the second part of the play are taken from an album protesting against the Intifada, and the lyrics (though in Arabic) are highly political. Again, we felt the authenticity coming through with this. Through music, we feel there is an extra level of depth to both Rachel Corrie’s character and the Palestinian setting – they are not gimmicky pieces to make a scene more interesting, but carefully chosen tracks that are authentic and have multiple meanings.

On Saturday, we had our first run-through. First run-throughs are traditionally terrible – riddled with errors, missed lines and general mess. Fortunately, our first run-through wasn’t like this, probably because it is a one-person show! It was, however, a very important process, as I could clearly see which parts dragged and which parts were especially good. One thing in particular that I picked out was that often the same movements and physical actions were repeated, and there was sometimes a lack of variety. As the set comprised of a mirror and a chair, there weren’t very many options for Ella. This was a very daunting moment – what other actions could she do?

Fortunately, a meeting with my set designer cleared this up. After detailed discussion, we decided to incorporate a bed on one side of the stage, and a pile of boxes on the other. This was a big breakthrough, as the bed on its own gave Ella many more options. She could sit in numerous different positions, lie down, stand on it and even bounce on it! Perhaps one of the most important things it did was give the stage an extra level, so she could physicalise moments of happiness, sadness or anger using different levels, rather than just the flat of the stage. Another development was switching the simple chair in the middle of the stage into a spinning office chair. This allowed her the freedom to slide around the stage, as well as to turn to each section of the audience individually. Suddenly, by tweaking the set, the play had so much more variety, and the slow parts were instantly being brought to life.

The other important development this week was that I managed to acquire an Assistant Director. After sending out a CamDram advert for a Stage Manager, we received a reply from Faye Guy, who was also keen on getting involved in directing. This seemed to me an excellent opportunity to get some fresh eyes on the play and get an outside opinion. Not only have her views been highly valuable, and new ideas have been brought in, but I have also viewed the play in a different light. When watching it with someone else, I immediately become more conscious of the flaws and the less interesting parts. Having someone else watching adds that pressure which is invaluable. I have admittedly worked on most of my previous shows without an AD with the view that I’d find them irritating and overpowering, but I can now see just how wrong I was.

Anyway, I must get back to trawling through the script for tomorrow’s rehearsal! There’s plenty still to be done, and lots of creases to iron out, even this close to the show. Although I’ve never felt this chilled about a show before, that doesn’t mean that it’s perfect… yet.

My Name is Rachel Corrie runs from Tuesday 27th - Thursday 29th October at the Corpus Playroom, 9.30pm.