Good to be back home
July 24, 2012
Our trilogy is back in Stratford. It's strange how the atmosphere in the company has immediately changed. There's a cheer and a camaraderie that was immediately apparent in rehearsal on our first day back.
Yes, another rehearsal! Each change of venue entails a technical rehearsal to ensure everything runs smoothly.
We are here without our partners and our families, but there is nevertheless a sense of the rightness in being a proper ensemble again, bumping into colleagues in corridors and Carluccio's, catching up with the Swan ensemble - back on campus, I suppose.
The move back from the Roundhouse has made it abundantly clear to me what a wonderful performance space the RST is.
The complete theatre that the company builds within the cavernous old Chalk Farm train shed is a bold and extraordinary achievement, but now we're back here, the way the stage is embraced by the audience is just so right.
Fitting the desired number of seats into the restrictive shell of the old Festival Theatre must have entailed some compromises but the utterly satisfying thing is that there is a real sense of the audience and actors being in the same room together.
The houses are good, the laughter is ready, the applause loud, the smiles wide.
by Nick Day
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