My Master Builder– Week One

Associate Director Bethany West provides a week-by-week account of rehearsals for My Master Builder.

My Master Builder rehearsals begin in early March 2025 with a ‘Meet and Greet’ on the top floor of Soho Place. Those of us who will be in the rehearsal room for the next five weeks are joined this morning by the producers, the creative, production and marketing teams and our four ‘covers’ (understudies), who will be back in week three. After helping ourselves to coffee, tea and pastries in the green room, we make our way to the rehearsal space to mingle a little before forming a huge circle and introducing ourselves and our roles – there’s a lot of brilliant people who will contribute to making this show a success. Our director, Michael Grandage, is the last to introduce himself before giving a brief talk about his enthusiasm for the project and outlining the structure of the next few weeks. There’s a real tingle of excitement in the air as we plunge into this collective endeavour. 

It’s now over to our Set and Costume Designer, Richard Kent, to present his model-box and inspiration for the production design. This is the first time the cast have seen the space they will be performing in and you can sense everyone’s excitement for the modernist architectural aesthetic, with a backdrop of sea and sky, providing the glorious light that the Hamptons is renowned for in the middle of summer.  

With Richard’s presentation complete, the producers, production and marketing teams head off to get on with their work elsewhere for the day. This leaves the cast and the Creative Team with Michael and our playwright, Lila Raicek. Michael introduces Sound Designer and Composer, Adam Cork, Lighting Designer, Paule Constable and Movement and Intimacy Coordinator, Ben Wright, all of whom he has worked with many times before. He then hands over to Lila to tell us more about her inspiration for writing the play and gives the main cast a chance to ask any initial questions.  

Over lunch our three-strong Stage Management Team – made up of a Company Stage Manager, a Deputy Stage Manager and an Assistant Stage Manager – mark-up the rehearsal room to the dimensions of Richard’s design. They position some stand-in furniture so that we can begin working within the configurations of the stage. This is the space we will encounter at the start of technical rehearsals at the theatre in five weeks’ time, when Richard’s model-box will have become life-size!  

Michael doesn’t tend to do ‘table work’, and he held a readthrough on Zoom with the cast and Lila last week. Instead, he likes to jump straight in to rehearsing the show on its feet. Since he has asked everyone to be largely ‘off book’ for the start of rehearsals, we can work quickly, in broad brush strokes, aiming to complete our first draft of the play by the end of this week.  

Lila is over from New York for the whole of our first week and joins us every day. This gives the cast the opportunity to ask her any burning questions about character or timeline as they crop up. We can also begin to notice any bumps in the script and now she is hearing her words in the mouths of the actors, Lila can make minor edits and cuts following conversations with Michael at the end of each rehearsal day. At the end of this week we will aim to ‘lock’ the script, which means we won’t make any more cuts or edits until we open the show for previews.  

Adam Cork is also with us for a couple of days, beginning to get a feel for the tones and textures of the play, which will inform his sound design and score.  

By the end of play Thursday, we are ahead of schedule and have sketched our way through all 110 pages of the play, meaning we now have a rough physical shape of each scene. This will certainly alter once we begin to dig deeper in the coming weeks, but it’s really reassuring to have a first draft to sculpt from.  

On Friday morning there’s a social-media call, where the cast record some footage from the rehearsal room, while Lila is interviewed in the green room. In the afternoon, Michael gets ahead and jumps back into Act One, Scene One for the second time, leaving us in a really solid place to begin week two.