The first read through of The Miser, our April Rockport Opera House show and first "Drama in Schools" project, was on Monday night. Even the cast laughed, quite a lot, which is always a good sign. And I have to admit that, being the "tradaptor" (that's my coinage for translator/adaptor), I have waited a long time to get a large enough group of people in the room and to hear the words that I worked on in early 2010 actually come to life.
It was a relief to have the work outed, and it doesn't matter how many people who've read it and have said it was good, with plays, even translations, you can't really tell until voices start to inhabit the words, and then characters start to inhabit the voices.
And at the first rehearsal on Tuesday, the latter had already started to happen.
When you hand something you've written over to a director, it's not like leaving your child with a babysitter, it's like having your child adopted, so you damn well have to trust that person. The intelligence shining through - and I've already told him this so hopefully he won't be too embarrassed - David Troup's every comment and decision during last night's rehearsal shows that I was right to trust him with it in the first place. And that I'm right to keep my mouth shut even when I'm bursting to say something.