It’s been another productive yet gruelling week for all involved in the production of Orange Polar Bear. The set has been built, the lights are now up, various props are being delivered every day and the actors are working amongst the icy expanse on stage. This week seems to have been full of opinions, and everyone has time to give one, but while Peter is listening to the avalanche of opinions we’re running out of time to do anything about them.
The week started off by showing scenes 1 and 3 to students from all over Korea, who’s opinions you can listen to in the previous blog post ‘Constructive feedback creates constructive changes’. This was a very useful exercise as receiving feedback from them, gave us an idea of what they’d understood and related to. This gave us an insight into what we needed to adapt or cut in order to tailor the production towards our target audience.
Later in the week, before Peter had much time to make these changes it was time to show the whole production (after only a 10 minutes rehearsals on the final scenes) to all the important people working for NTCK, including the artistic director, Kim Yun-Cheol. It was interesting to watch the production in such a raw form, with the acting sometimes a little rough around the edges plus the lack of aesthetics, sound and lighting. But while we found it interesting, (because we’d been in the rehearsal room and had seen the full potential of each scene separately) this run through was ‘worrying’ from an outsiders’ point of view. This lead to long meetings full of critique and adaptions. For some directors this may have been disheartening and frustrating, but it was refreshing to watch Peter take everyone’s opinions on board and reassure them politely and respectfully that with the rehearsal time available they would be able to achieve the production quality they were hoping for.
But before rehearsals could begin again, it was time to move into the theatre, where the production team had been working away to make walls of ice, which cascade into an avalanche of ice blocks that create the set. The cast were excited to begin working on the stage and get used to the unpredictable nature in which the ice blocks will fall creating their working set. A long process of lighting mark ups and other technical aspects followed, with Shin Dong taking the lead (leaving Peter some time to breathe and think about everyone’s feedback).
Finally, today Friday 26th August 2016, 6 days before opening night, Peter is able to work on the production undisturbed, and hopefully make some constructive changes from the constructive feedback received throughout the week.
If you don’t work in the theatre it’s easy to forget how many people are involved within creating a production like this one. After this week we’ll certainly remember this is no small feat. But with the help of everyone involved, Orange Polar Bear is well on its way to being a dynamic, organic performance.