Private Rehearsals - Emi Del Bene
About a month after I’d joined Fabula Collective as Head of Marketing, we hosted a public work-in-progress Zoom reading of Private Rehearsals on 3 September 2020. Private Rehearsals is a new play adapted by UK-based Oladipo Agboluaje, from an original by Japanese playwright Tetsu Taoshita and directed by emerging director Hannah Calascione. It was a thrilling first project with Fabula for me - a chance to reach a new audience with a play, after many successful dance-based projects, working with the incredible creative team and an amazing cast - Alexandra Gilbreath, Abdul Salis and Joji Otani-Hansen.
I adored the play from the moment I read the work-in-progress draft - from a marketing standpoint, the challenge was to convey the beauty of this work to our audiences without having the ability to go into the studio and take pictures of rehearsals, as the whole project took place remotely due to Covid-19 restrictions. I really didn’t feel that yet another Zoom grid screenshot adequately captured the magic of this moving new play!
In the weeks leading up to the sharing, we created material including a photoset of inspirational objects from actor Joji Otani-Hansen, a programme with a beautiful image by artist Patrick Gonzales which the director Hannah Calascione felt captured the mood of the play, and even a teaser trailer made up of historical footage based on moodboards created by the creative team.
The event, in partnership with Japan Foundation, was a definite success. Despite this being Fabula’s first virtual event, the sharing went very smoothly, thanks in no small part to our incredible “Zoom stage manager”, Georgia Bird, who took care of all the complicated muting and unmuting, bringing in characters at the right time and managing slides. I even got to play a small part by reading the stage directions, which was just a little nerve-wracking!
The feedback from our audiences was amazing, and I can’t wait for the next stages of this project in 2021!
- Emi Del Bene, Head of Marketing