6 - Rehearsal Room Ethos

Summary

My role as an assistant director in the 2008 production of Tirso de Molina's El burlador de Sevilla, directed by Dan Jemmett, allowed me to witness the entire rehearsal process, and the following discussion pinpoints the features germane to this analysis. This account presents the rehearsal process as I perceived it, employing the terminology applied by the creative team at the time. In the next chapter a more analytical approach is used to draw conclusions from this specific rehearsal process.

First a note on the text used for El burlador de Sevilla: given the significant cuts and alterations in sequences indicated by Jemmett, together with the small modifications and consistency of the verse structure penned by Alberto Castrillo-Ferrer, a whole new text was typed out and used throughout rehearsals. The complete version of the text relied on for reference was Alberto Rodríguez López-Vázquez's Cátedra Letras Hispánicas edition (2005), and all subsequent references to the text itself will refer to this edition, although Ignacio Arellano's Austral edition (2007) was also used as a contrast.

Dan Jemmett is a British director who has worked extensively internationally, principally in Paris but with connections to London and Pittsburgh. He began creating work in London, forming the company Primitive Science with Marc von Henning. In 1998 he moved to Paris and created two shows that would be seen at the Abadía in the Festival de Otoño: Shake (2003) and Dogface (2005). Later works saw him adapt Michael Ondaatje's The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (2007) and Les précieuses ridicules (2007) at the Comédie Française, thus becoming the first British director to work on a Molière play at this venue.