Not Magic but Work

Gay McAuley is Honorary Professor in the Department of Performance Studies at the University of Sydney

• AcknowledgementsWriting About Rehearsal – Some Preliminary ObservationsPart One: The Toy Symphony RehearsalsCompany List The Starting Point – Michael’s TextThe First DayEstablishing the Chronology (Day 2)Stop/Start Reading (Days 2-4)Scene Work (Days 4-14)The Sign Systems Come Together (Days 15-19)Runs and Notes (Days 20-27)Creating The PlayTechnical Production – a Parallel UniverseIn the Theatre At Last (Days 28-35)Part Two: Reflections After the Event Fact and Fiction and the Space BetweenNeil’s Play, Michael’s Play and Richard’s PlayThe Director’s ProcessRehearsal and Interaction RitualWorks Cited

'A welcome contribution to the field'P. Solomon Lennox, Studies in Theatre and Performance, 2013|Gay McAuley’s modest summary of her project as ‘an attempt to describe a single rehearsal process’ (p. 2) does not do justice to the significance of this volume in furthering our understanding of ‘how a group of artists with very different skills, working in a range of different media, come together for an intensive period and produce a single work of art’ (p. 4), and in exemplifying the value of rehearsal observation in revealing the ‘profoundly collaborative nature of theatrical creation’ (p. 4). As a forensic account of Belvoir Street Theatre’s staging of Michael Gow’s Toy Symphony (2007), this study affirms the international significance of this theatre company to a readership outside of Australia., Alex Mermikides, Kingston University, Contemporary Theatre Review, 30 April 2015