Photos From Tech Rehearsal Before Opening Night

A few More Rehearsal Photos taken by Lisa Blair. The Secret Garden is now showing and the rehearsals are truly over. Click here to book tickets now -

https://www.wyp.purchase-tickets-online.co.uk/public/show_events_list.asp

Behind The Scenes Of The Secret Garden Extract From Lisa Blair Assistant Director 'The Secret Garden'

25.11.09

It's the third day of the technical rehearsals and everything has been going really well. We have been working fantastically well together and it is making the process a very enjoyable experience!
A lot of the garden scenes in the second half of the play have been worked on and they are looking utterly magical. The lighting designer has been using lots of colours and even templates (trees, leaves, patterns etc) to create a very special secret garden.

The actors are having a brilliant time on stage and are getting used to the two different revolve mechanisms that make up the stage. These revolves are fantastically imaginative and have allowed the whole company to work in wonderfully new and exciting ways. We are really making sure that the revolve moves are timed perfectly so that the scenes can flow easily into one another – just like the four seasons we have in the play.

On the musical side of things, the sound is being perfected by the fantastic sound department – all the actors are wearing radio mics which means that they can be heard really easily throughout the whole of the auditorium. It also means that their singing is heard crystal clear too. Steve Ridley, the Music Director is looking forward to tomorrow (along with everyone else!), because the orchestra/band are in rehearsals. This will be super exciting because it will be the second time that the actors have rehearsed their songs with the band and it will be the first time that they have rehearsed on stage, with the musicians and the light… So, it will certainly be a big day!!

Behind The Scenes Of The Secret Garden Extract From Lisa Blair Assistant Director 'The Secret Garden'

Today was a really great day! Mervyn, the puppeteer, was in rehearsals to ensure that the ensemble was performing well with their puppets (especially the Robin who is very important in The Secret Garden!). He made sure that they were moving the puppets in the right way, and even making the right sound. He is very hands on and it was fascinating to watch how he works. He gave a lot of really useful notes to the ensemble and they immediately put it all into practise. Mervyn thinks that it is very important that there is a connection between the actor operating the puppet and the puppet itself. A lot of the energy and focus of the actor goes to the animal puppet so that the audience’s attention is drawn only to the puppet. It is a very interesting process and one that works with brilliant success. The ensemble are doing a great job and are practising really hard… With fantastic results!!

Image Gallery : Behind the Scenes of The Secret Garden Extract from Lisa Blair Assistant Director ‘The Secret Garden’

Control desk 'The Secret Garden'














The Lighting rig having a great effect on the beautiful set.














Tech Rehersals - close to the finished performance.














Wide shot of the stage, Tech Rehersals.

Pictures from The Costume Department Busily Working to get ready for Secret Garden and Cinderella

The stage is set the rehersals are going on - but the as the work has just begun for the production team and actors our very own costume department is still beavering away producing the beautiful costumes that will grace the stage. Here are some images of them hard at work!



























Busily cutting - a real production line going on!



























Some finished costumes racked and ready to go.














Tools of the trade - a compendium of zips, buttons and material of every size. Realism is key.

Adapting a Classic For WYP : An Interview With Garry Lyons

Garry Lyons, who adapted The Secret Garden especially for West Yorkshire Playhouse, talks to Stuart Leeks about Frances Hodgson Burnett, the themes of the Classic Novel, and the process of adapting it for the stage.

STUART LEEKS: Frances Hodgson Burnett was ahead of her time. I wonder how far we can go in thinking about her as a 'green' writer? The healing power of nature to help the humans, and the importance of taking care of the natural world are good ideas aren't they?

GARRY LYONS:

I think we can say that she was an environmentalist before that word was even invented. One of the things that draws me to The Secret Garden is the fact that Mary grows up in India. Gardens as we know them started in Persia, and this was imported to Europe from there.

I love the way in which the book appears to pick up on that. In the very first chapter we find Mary trying to plant a garden in the heat of India. There's a theme there of the East and Eastern thinking. A world that's very different to the industrial North of England, or the North East of the United States that Frances knew.

STUART LEEKS:

The Secret Garden is one of those books that I think children and adults and particularly parents appreciate in different ways. Parents that aren’t there are strong parts of the story and the differences between the coldness of Misselthwaite Manor and the warmth of the Sowerby household are brought into the spotlight. This big empty house with a hundred rooms most of which are shut up, and this tiny cottage with a dozen children rampaging about it. But even in the cottage, there's no mention of a father. It’

s an environment where mothers are the parents. And in the end it's the children who redeem the adults.

GARRY LYONS:

Yes, and it's also the poorer classes who make their masters look good. The whole of the Sowerby family are a force of nature. They embody in human terms what the garden does in natural terms. They bring the spirit of the moor into this great house which is in the vice-like grip of a curse. It's the Sowerby family who release the house, but it takes Mary's arrival to allow their power to come into play. And that's the radical part of the story I think. This obnoxious little girl turns out to be the saviour of them all. As I've worked on the adaptation I've found that there's a tension between two genres in the book. I think you have to embrace the idea that a magical force is at work that is released by the children, and you have to take that at face value.

STUART LEEKS:

One final thing. Are you worried that the lives of the children portrayed in The Secret Garden might seem very remote from those of an audience coming to the play today, whether it's because of the distance in time, or whether it's because of their class or background? Or do you think that for most children those things just don't occur because they enter imaginatively into the world of the story?

GARY LYONS:

It's one of the reasons Ian and I took a while to decide that we would do it. Ultimately, I think the story transcends those considerations because it's about displaced children, and that's something anyone can relate to. The fact that Mary Lennox is so cantankerous when we first meet her makes her so real and individual that she isn't just a product of her class. Yes, she's very dislikeable, but we eventually find out why. Tragically, we're so used to stories of abuse and deprivation that we can understand the ways that Mary and Colin behave. they are emotionally deprived children.

I was talking to one of the Arts Development team at the Playhouse, who has been distributing the script to various people for comment, and one person said that he'd been brought up in care, and that The Secret Garden had been one of his favourite stories as a child simply because he identified so strongly with Colin. So I think that we can all relate to the underlying experiences of Mary and Colin.

Behind the Scenes of The Secret Garden Extract from Lisa Blair Assistant Director ‘The Secret Garden’

The Secret Garden has been a truly exciting rehearsal process! I feel very lucky to have worked on this brand new British musical at West Yorkshire Playhouse. It has definitely been the highlight of my year!

Rehearsals have been going really well. The actors work fantastically as an ensemble and they all share in telling the story of The Secret Garden. It is a brilliant book and the playwright, Garry Lyons and the composer, Tim Sutton, have brought it to life.

I am sure that when people have seen the musical, they won't be able to help but sing lots of songs they have heard! I definitely have a few favourites. I think people should watch out for 'Little Laura' - the skipping song and 'Cabbages'. They are definately my favourites!

We have been rehearsing for approximately four weeks now - and we will go into 'tech week' on Monday 23rd November 2009. During 'tech week' we will be making sure that all the 'blocking' (entrances and exits and where actors stand on stage) we have done in rehersals works well on the actual set.

We will also be creating the lighting for the show and adding the sound effects. This week involves alot of hard work from everyone involved. Not many people will be getting much sleep next week!

I really hope that everyone enjoys this magical show as much as I have enjoyed working on it!

Secret Garden Actors Launch Marks and Spencer's Penny Bazaar

Secret Graden Actors Giles Taylor and Josie Walker launched Marks and Spencer's Penny Bazaar on Friday 13th November. Cutting the Ribbon on a wet evening the crowds that had gathered were not dampened by a great atmosphere.