“Wall” is about Hare’s own experiences with the Middle Eastern conflict between Israel and Palestine, and is being presented as a companion piece to “Berlin”. I think it may be a testament to the fact that I’ll never be a true theatre-type that when people start talking about the walls we build around ourselves, I’m more likely to think about Pink Floyd than the Pyramus and Thisbe reference  that followed last night.

Nonetheless, amongst several astounding pieces of commentary last night from both the subjective and objective viewpoint, I feel compelled to share the following paragraph – a quote from the reading last night:

I don’t entirely understand this. People always ask: how do you choose the subjects you write about? I have a glib answer. Why did Bacon paint popes? Meaning: the artist doesn’t choose the subject, the subject chooses the artist. ‘Go to Rwanda,’ said my American agent, when ten years ago I first proposed a play about Israel/Palestine. ‘Better still, go to Kashmir. Now there’s a dispute nobody understands. Throw some light on Kashmir.’ But unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Recently, I found myself writing about Berlin because I don’t understand it. Now I want to write about Israel/Palestine because I do. No, hold on, let me rephrase, that’s a preposterous claim, nobody understands the Middle East – but put it this way: I recognise it. It answers to something in me.

I found editing whilst on a degree course which had absolutely nothing to do with media at all. I joined the student television station and tried all sorts of roles – camera, floor managing, sound mixing, vision mixing, co-producing… but when I got my first chance to creatively put something together at my first year – a trailer out of an evening’s recorded event at the university – something was answered in me. From that point on, I knew I never wanted to do anything else. And with each project that I look at – some will inevitably stir more passion than others, and those are the ones which will really work.

Editing can often be seen as a technical vocation by the people who don’t understand it – but it’s truly anything but.

As we were running late, I had to go to pick up one of the actors from reception whilst another was finishing up in the recording booth. I saw him, went over, said his name…. and then realised that there was absolutely no reason in the world why he’d know who I was. I may have been editing material with him in it for the past month, but he’s never seen me before in his life.

I’d read about this aspect of editing before in books, but had always assumed it to be along the lines of seeing a well-known TV or film personality walking down the street. We may watch them weekly on television, but we never think that we know them.

Except from a certain aspect, we do know the people who we’ve edited. We’ve actively studied their physical and facial reactions on several different takes in an attempt to judge one the ‘best’ or ‘most apt’ for the surrounding scene and performances. We’ve berated them (sometimes loudly in the direction of the computer monitor without acknowledgement of the futility of such an action) for an utter lack of consideration to continuity between different slates. We’ve interpreted their intentions and characterisations – and when hard decisions have been made on the subjects we’ve made them with the actor because of what they’ve given us to work with. We’ve made cuts and decisions alongside their performance - to enhance one character trait whilst diminishing another, to engage the audience as if they were there in the room when the scene was being filmed (or even within the mindset and context of the drama they’re watching, as appropriate).

It just seems a little harsh at times, when part of the job description involves getting involved to some extent in the emotional journey of the characters that you’ve been watching on screen for weeks or even months. The lack of acknowledgement can sometimes feel total. They’ll likely never know just how much we study them and feel that we know them and/or their character. But it’s probably for the best. A self-conscious actor is usually the last thing you want when they’re doing their close-ups, and so long as the finished product looks great then everyone’s done their job well.