Rehearsing The Winter's Tale: Week 2

ENO Harewood Artist Samantha Price discusses her second week of creating the role of Perdita in a world premiere from ENO’s composer-in-residence Ryan Wigglesworth, The Winter‘s Tale.

Olivier-Award winning actor Rory Kinnear makes his directorial debut with this compelling new interpretation of Shakespeare’s tale of love, loss and reconciliation.

See The Winter’s Tale at the London Coliseum from 27 February – 14 March 2017

Here, Sam discusses her second week of rehearsals for the world premiere of The Winter’s Tale, featuring the model box presentation, a movement session and a costume fitting!

‘In the opera world, day one of production nearly always starts with a presentation of the model box. Everyone came together – all the singers, actors, dancers… the rep, the conductor, the designer, people from costume department, lighting, stage management, people from the company – so there were quite a lot of people squeezed into the studio, all there to see Rory present the model box!’

‘The model box is essentially a miniature version of what the set is going to look like for this particular production which is always really exciting. It’s your first chance to see what type of stage it will be… It’s your first insight into the adventures you’re going to have on set!’

‘I had a lovely session with Imogen Knight who is our movement director. Myself and Anthony Gregory who is playing Florizel, had a session with Imogen to explore different options we might like to use in the show. I discovered muscles I didn’t realise I had! It’s all top secret until opening night…’

‘I also had a costume fitting – I’ve done a few shows with ENO already so they already had all my measurements on record, but if you haven’t, at some point when you first work in the company they like to take a full body measurement – the circumference of your head, the lengths of all your limbs, shoe size… all sorts of measurements going on!’