Guns, Cats and Ants

Walking through the Stage Door of the National Theatre of Macedonia, Bitola there are lots of these "no gun" stickers:

At first I was slightly alarmed… just how dangerous is it to make theatre in Macedonia? However rather than being a clue that the seemingly friendly cast are secretly gun-toting maniacs, instead it turns out to be a leftover from a national anti-gun campaign of many years ago. Now I read the stickers as a little poetic reminder that perhaps creating art should always have an element of danger, though checking unnecessary weaponry at the door can’t be a bad idea.

To the left of this Stage Door are the administration offices, to the right is a small cinema kitted out with a piano on a stage. Our rehearsal room is down a couple of levels, and from here the labyrinth really begins. It feels like everyday I discover a new props room or costume storage space, even a whole stage I didn’t know about - all foreign fantasy lands whispering stories of past productions to me. Slightly bizarrely, I am also now living upstairs in a converted dressing room, repelete with stage relay tannoy in one corner. Colin jokes that living there makes me the theatre cat. I like this idea: padding about the corridors with whiskers aquiver, a quiet and curious witness to backstage goings-on.

The theatre is housed in the Centre for Culture complex which was built in the 1980s after the town decided to demolish the old theatre building (where I am told Sarah Bernhardt once played). Outside the theatre currently hang posters for BitFest 08, Bitola’s annual cultural festival, which ‘Alcmaeon in Corinth’ is part of. There are also posters from recent productions, and their titles suggest to me a preference for some pretty serious theatre: ‘Drums in the Night’ (Brecht), ‘The Vagina Monologues’ (Ensler) and ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ (Shakespeare). So, no light’n’fluffy ‘High School Musical’ here in Bitola. I guess the long-standing government support of the theatre company means the programming choices can be more courageous and less commercially pressured than a relatively-sized theatre in Britain. What’s interesting is that there’s also an ingrained cultural expectation that theatre should naturally be bold and internationally-minded.

The company structure of an ensemble of actors in constant full employment makes a stark contrast to the experience of most British actors. I’ll report in more detail when I have a chance to interview the actors, but it’s an extraordinary experience to watch actors who have worked their whole careers in the one company. For some there’s an established rhythm to the way that they’re used to working, though this has been disrupted to some extent by this rehearsal process. On one level this is reflected in the schedule of the working day. So far rehearsal days here have followed the traditional Continental repertory pattern. This accounts for performing a show in the evening, splitting the day into a morning session of 10am-2pm, returning for 7-10pm for rehearsal or a performance. Another reason for this schedule is apparently the intense summer heat outside, although it doesn’t really affect us in the rehearsal room as it’s quite cool there. For those used to “British rehearsal times” (10am-6pm with an hour lunch break) this takes some adjusting.

As it turns out that as none of the company members are currently performing in the evenings, some say the split day is less convenient for them anyway. By Saturday of the second week Colin proposes the remaining two weeks in the rehearsal room observe “the British way”, sensitively putting this idea to a show of hands for or against to decide. Whilst it’s clearly not unanimously agreed to, there’s an interesting flicker of resistance to the process of voting, and it is said that those who’ve objected will compromise anyway. I wonder if this hints at the history of how decisions are made within the company, or perhaps to on a different scale to the experience of democracy here. (Maybe I am reading too much into it? I can’t be sure.)

On the voting theme, it transpires that the recent national elections have a considerable impact upon the construction of the set. As I understand it, the government elect doesn’t have the power to sign cheques, therefore the theatre can’t access their budget from the Ministry of Culture. This means the materials to make the set can’t be paid for, and against the countdown to opening night this is a real concern. Even the delay in the working with the scenography causes problems: how can the action be blocked in rehearsal properly without the set? Heck, will we even ever get the set? What about the rest of the production budget? Needless to say, this causes the creative team real headaches.

That said, you’d never know in the rehearsal room that such stresses were occurring outside. It’s been week of hard work rewarded with many important discoveries. Keri and the chorus have developed movements that range from some slinky music-video choreography for the bordello scenes, to twitchy and ant-like for the prologue (trust me here - the ants are important). Building on the first week, the presence of Hera (the presiding goddess of this play, played by Kristina Hristova Nikolova) is now integrated into many of the scenes as a silent but very active character. Petar Gorko’s characterisation of aging rockstar Alcmaeon is drawing inspiration from the swagger of Lou Reed, and the publicity images for the show will reflect this. At a very rough run-through on Saturday there’s the chance to stand back and see what has been achieved over this past two weeks. The emerging playing styles borrow from or reference seemingly random pages of the catalogue of theatre history, but it’s careful and truthful work. Somehow it all makes sense. As for understanding the ants – well, you’ll have to wait till my next blog entry.