First Rehearsal - beginning the story

By Alastair Deacon

A wonderful first rehearsal of the City That Walks On Water at Leigh Community Centre!

Wow rehearsals are actually underway! Getting here has been a long process of story gathering, writing, more stories, changing writing, then onto scripts and now here we are in rehearsals!

The enthusiasm of the actors Anya, Daisy, Jenny, Olivia, David, Joh, Luke, Sebastian, and Todd was amazing, and the energy filled the room when the Director, Michael, led the 1st Cast Readthrough of the whole CTWOW Script. With little me at the side timing the scenes, and chipping in the odd explanation of where a line, concept, or historical detail came from.

Sunday morning was spent blocking the opening scene, with most of the Actors arriving before I managed to drag myself to the Leigh Community Centre, the feeling of excitement at being in fully into rehearsals was wonderful to experience again. Even if I was only the timekeeper 😊 seeing how involved the whole cast was in the process of building the theatrical experience under the guidance of our Director Michael.

An interesting conversation happened when Michael asked when the last time our local Actors were actually on the Pier – the answers varied from ‘last week!’ to ‘Oh about 20 years ago”. So after lunch a reccy visit to Southend Pier was swiftly organised. Of course this being Southend City Jam weekend, there was some amazing artwork to be seen along Southend Pier and all around the City, but spaces were gauged, timings were taken, and it was great that everyone now knows their stage a little better than before.

I look forward to seeing more later in the week when the other work that needs to be done before the City That Walks On Water comes to life - on Tuesday 19th September – gives me a minute or two break.