Backstairs Billy– Week One

Associate Director Sophie Drake provides a week-by-week account of rehearsals for Backstairs Billy

We start our Backstairs Billy rehearsals with a ‘Meet and Greet’. This takes place in the morning with cast, creatives, production and marketing teams in attendance. It’s great to meet the vast group of people working to make this show happen and do some initial introductions. There’s a lovely ebullience in the room as we all gear up to embark on this new journey together. 

After some general chatter, we form a circle and introduce ourselves by name, role and preferred pronouns. Director Michael Grandage talks about his excitement to work on this production and outlines what the next few weeks will look like. We then all gather around a model-box as he and Christopher Oram, Set and Costume Designer, show us the set. The Stage Management team has helpfully marked the room up with our stage dimensions and furniture so that we can begin working within the configurations of furniture and space, which replicates what we will have in the theatre in six weeks’ time. 

Instead of a readthrough or ‘table work’, Michael likes to jump straight into working with the actors on their feet, so we roughly start sketching our way through the play from the top. This week we have our playwright Marcelo Dos Santos and Composer and Sound Designer Adam Cork in the room with us, which is a great joy and means we can start troubleshooting and navigating any script ‘bumps’ or musical ideas with their input. 

Michael likes to work quickly in the first week, with the aim of sketching through the entire show. We have some general discussion about accents, plot and period but, largely, Michael encourages the actors to find the shape of scenes and then roughly edits, knowing we have the next four weeks to layer details and sculpt. The play is around 110 pages long and by Wednesday we’re ahead of schedule and have sketched the entire show, which means the actors have a rough physical shape to play with when we revisit each scene. On Thursday we’re able to start from the top of the play again, this time adding more detail and asking further questions about the script, working through moment-by-moment.  

On Friday Michael is unfortunately feeling unwell, so I run the planned morning rehearsal with the actors before breaking for the weekend. As we’ve worked so quickly this week, we’re still in a good place. I look forward to seeing how our template for the play evolves next week as we continue to make discoveries.