Just occasionally, the chance to do something a little unusual comes up. At Donna and Phil’s wedding earlier this month I got chatting with a guest by the name of Martin Nigel Davey, a writer, producer and actor who required someone to photograph the rehearsals of a play he was co-producing. The play was called “Survivorship – To Cancer & Beyond”, written by playwright Monica Price about five real-life survivors of cancer who’s stories are replayed in monologue.
The cast consisted of five actresses, Jean Boht (most famous for the TV series ‘Bread’), Hannah Waterman (Eastenders and various stage roles), Sarah Manners (Casualty, Doctors), Maggie Service (Edinburgh Fringe) and Finn Atkins (Casualty, Eastenders, Once Upon A Time In The Midlands). The play also included songs performed by the Malvern St James Singers.
So where did I fit into all this? Well, photos of the rehearsals were required for promotional use by Macmillan Cancer Support – the charity for which the play had been produced. It was my job to try to record the various goings-on of the rehearsal day and also the performances of the actresses as they settled into their roles. Normally plays have extended rehearsal schedules but Survivorship had only two rehearsal days before the first night, so everyone was on edge!
The day began meeting with the producers, writer and director and of course the actresses themselves. I was then left pretty much to my own devices to document the day as discreetly as possible.
It was fascinating to watch the goings-on of a busy theatre and witness all the hard work that goes into putting on a play. Everyone involved was really dedicated to getting the show up and running and to be ready for the first performance that same evening, which both Sarah and I attended.
From a photographic point of view the strong directional stage lighting was really fun to try and capture, but in many ways photographing the performances was a bit like documenting the speeches at a wedding. You try to capture hand gestures, facial expressions – just generally a bit of emotion that makes the photo into an image of a performance instead of just someone up on stage. The big difference here was that the stage lighting produces a very dramatic effect – giving everything a strong three-dimensional appearance in the photos. If only all wedding venues had decent lighting!
So here’s some of the pictures I took during the day.
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