My role as Assistant Director

Last term I was privileged to be given the role, after applying in September, of Assistant Director for the two Shakespeare plays Macbeth and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the year 7-10 SES production that took place in December.

In the first few weeks of rehearsals we ran through the blocking of scenes in both plays. During this I made notes of where actors would enter and exit the stage, where and how they stood on stage and any other key information that would come in useful later on. I also looked out for anything that didn’t look right from an audience’s point of view, as Mr Rushton was hands on, on the stage with the actors. If there was anything, I would let him know and see what he thought and if it needed changing, we would change it.

 

Later on after all the blocking was complete I had the role of going off with groups, after talking to Mr Rushton about what had to be done and what to focus on, to run specific scenes that needed work. I worked closely with the witches from Macbeth, fairies from Dream and sometimes the mechanicals from Dream. We worked together on multiple things including how the witches moved about the stage and how they interacted with each other. Working in small groups like that gave Mr Rushton time with a group that he wanted to work with and me with a group that I could help or improve on. It allowed more time with people who needed it and needed work while less time with people or groups that were where they should be. After having some time, we would then perform it and hopefully Mr Rushton liked it! I thought this worked really well and certainly got us where we needed to be in time.

Overall I really enjoyed the whole experience. It was brilliant to see a different side to creating a show and I would certainly like to it again and even look at it as a career in the future. It was also amazing to work along side Mr Rushton as he is such a brilliant and experienced actor and has so many ideas as a director. He has definitely inspired me and has been an amazing role model not just to me but to the whole cast and crew seeing him act, direct and lead us to create a performance that will stay with us forever. I would recommend this job to anyone wanting to do this in the future as it has definitely changed my view on theatre in the best way possible.

Jacob Young (year 10)