Dr Hills Casebook - blog 16

The sixteenth instalment of Robert Fairclough’s blog about the Change Minds project which unites history, mental health, creative writing and theatre.

It’s been a busy few weeks, with two Zoom meetings and, inbetween, rehearsals and filming of the play. In short, it’s been a helluva trip, creatively and emotionally.

I’ve often said that the Zoom meetings have become a supportive safe space. In the Zoom session on May 5, we felt comfortable enough to start talking about the life journeys that had brought us all to Dr. Hills’ Casebook. Tess had grown up in a small town in South Africa, then moved to a city and “partied my tits off”. Fast forward, and her and Tess have lived quietly in Diss for 19 years. Chief archivist Richard Johnson came to Norfolk in 1989 after leaving the army, touchingly acknowledging it as “one of the best places I’ve ever lived.” Facilitator Darren France has been living in Norfolk for 24 years, and we all agreed that such a generally serene place has had a positive mental and emotional effect on all of us.

With that in mind, I was armed with a sense that everyone in the Dr. Hills’ Casebook project was in tune with each other when I attended the resumed rehearsals for the play at The Cut, Halesworth, on Wednesday 11 and Thursday 12 May. That collaborative attitude was evident straightaway, when I saw how democratically the actors discussed whether it was right for the scene they were rehearsing to have Russell singing in it or not.

I hadn’t seen them practicing the songs and choreography before. That cast were pitch perfect and the staging made incredibly effective use of the whole stage area – a reassuring sign, with filming due to start in two days’ time. It’s amazing to think that the total rehearsal time these actors have had is, really, two weeks. The heightened sense of creative urgency was clearly making the cast excitable: Clare declared after one particularly successful scene, “Oh, f**k yeah!”

I had a sense of urgency of my own, as my camera packed up halfway through Wednesday’s rehearsals and I had to travel to Norwich, via returning to Lowestoft, to sort it out: in the end, I upgraded to a Nikon D3t500. It was a wise move: with an increased shutter speed and increased sensitivity to low levels of light, the subsequent pictures I took of the dress rehearsal on Thursday did even more justice to the production.

There was a palpable air of expectation on Thursday morning before the dress rehearsal began. Ben Elder who, out of all the actors, is required to be the most mobile on stage, joked “one of my challenges today is to see how many 360 degree turns I can do.” Looking around, I saw an example of the attention to detail that’s become hallmark of ‘Dr. Hills’ Casebook’: costume designer Charlotte Bird suggested that Evie had her collar fastened when playing a hospital orderly, and undone when she took on the character of Chloe, one of the patients. Just before the run through of the whole play started, the director Laila encouraged the actors to “Have fun” – a plea which stumbled slightly when, with the lights down an the cast poised to take their places, a laptop crashed so the voiceovers recorded that morning as an introduction didn’t work.

You needn’t worry: that was the only slip up. ‘Dr. Hills’ Casebook’, for all the stress, production problems – primarily making the play an ‘as live’ production through filming it – and COVID-19 limitations, is a bit of a masterpiece.

Screenings commence from 17 June. BOOK YOUR TICKETS AT: Dr Hills' Casebook Film Screening Tickets, Thu 17 Jun 2021 at 19:30 | Eventbrite

'Robert Fairclough writes on a variety of subjects, including mental health and popular culture (sometimes both at once). He has written six books, contributes to magazines and websites, and writes regular blogs for The Restoration Trust. He can be contacted on robmay1964@outlook.com, and his website can be viewed at www.robfairclough.co.uk ‘