Sunday afternoon’s Pillowman rehearsal and we had a new girl in attendance who’d expressed interest in the group, come along to Wednesday’s reading and suggested that it would be interesting if she could come along to a rehearsal to see how things worked.

So along she came on Sunday. And we did the usual line run and then ran the first portion and the end portion with notes to each respective character in terms of their development.

We did a bit of work on the “violence” scene as the adjudicator had commented that this could be more violent yet. I had no ideas about how this might be done. (What a girl.) The boys had many. So we ran that a few times and got it looking a bit more violent to my delicate girly eyes.

And then we finished and I pleasantly said what did new girl think? And she pleasantly said would we mind if she made one small observation? And we must have sucked our collective teeth as I have come to dread the incomer out of context comment. Though I’m sure that just makes me insecure.

But we sucked our teeth and said yes, please, feel free. And she said suddenly and surprisingly, it’s just the thing is I do karate and I was in the army for several years so I know violence and I wondered if you might etc etc. And made some very good suggestions about how it could all look a little bit more real. It was a brilliant moment. Thanks, Heather!