R&D Project in Manchester - Day 3

David here, on Day 3 of our R&D project at Z-arts, the first day without any school visits. We split up in the morning with Joseph taking some time to do some writing and myself and Renata going through the songs that had been written so far to fine tune all the lyrics and nail the phrasing, so that when the performers arrive next week, we’re really confident what it is they’re going to be learning.

After lunch (courtesy of the excellent Z-arts cafe team), we worked on the writing that Joe had produced in the morning, which was centred round the ‘fairy tale’ that Luna and her Dad read together. In the picture book, this is presented as a ‘book within a book’ and stylistically, feels and looks very different from the rest of the story. We all agreed that this moment in the show should also feel very different, almost like the book has come to life on stage and the audience have been transported. On the whole we want to use as much live music as possible, but for this section, we experimented with underscoring to create a soundscape that created the sense of stepping into a fairy tale.

Tomorrow we take a day off for other projects or, for the lucky ones, a bit of sight seeing in Manchester. Then Friday we regroup to make a plan for next week when we’re joined by three brilliant performers!

P.s - today was less successful in terms of remembering to take photos so here’s a picture of the cat I’m sharing my theatre digs with.