War of the Roses - Rehearsals

Trainee directors Claire Moyer and Deborah Hannan are currently assisting on The War of the Roses trilogy. Taking on everything from speech work to costume parades, physicalities to devising movement pieces, here are some details of their work so far.

Week 3 of rehearsals for the MACCT and Bard in the Botanics’ collaboration, The Wars of the Roses, has just finished and crunch time is upon us for this rather, well, epic project. With only another week of rehearsal before tech week, time is tight and we are at the peak of a rich and varied process for bringing this intense, complex trilogy to life. We’re taking Henry VI Parts 1, 2and 3 and Richard III and locating them in a 1940s/film noir/intrigue/Elizabethan warfare/politicized and violent world, mounting the productions in the Scottish Youth Theatre studio in the heart of the Merchant City, Glasgow, before transferring to actual “battlefields” in the city’s Botanic Gardens.

Taking on 3 shows at once is a massive challenge for the actors and directors involved, but try covering 75 years of turbulent British history through the eyes of the world’s greatest playwright and rehearsal exhaustion takes on a whole new meaning! 

Working in three different rehearsal rooms led by the Bard in the Botanics directing team, actors and assistant directors bounce back and forth from play, directing style, and era. More details on the nuances and working styles of each room will follow.

Significant points of development this week have included adding in movement sections and music to Part II.  While we have been laying the groundwork from day one, this week we lead two intensive sessions tackling how to represent war on the stage.  No mean feat!  As we can never approximate the atrocities of war onstage, or even in the way cinema does, our best option has been to make it as artistic and interpretive as possible.  Taking the framework of a rank and file band of soldiers, we then deconstructed the distinctly military image into a living breathing expressive response to modern warfare. 

Moving into our final week, we’re excited to see how things develop and solidify.  The pressure is high but the project is fun!

We’ll keep you posted with how things go, you can book tickets at the RSAMD box office and also check out more about our class at our own dedicated website!