Five hours of half-hour interviews with the principals. Each actor was posed (at least) the following questions: So who is this character, and what do we learn about him/her from the text? What is his/her greatest strength? Greatest weakness? How does s/he feel about the other characters? And some silly questions: if s/he were an animal, what would s/he be? If dropped into the 20th century, what would s/he make of him/herself?
Lots of interesting stuff to play with as a result. Of course, we still haven't gotten to the two kings yet -- they're scheduled for one-hour sessions on Saturday. (N.B. Should have scheduled an hour for Hermione!) The one problem with this process is that by the time you've finished with nine cast members, the tenth arrives and is promptly deluged with four-and-a-half hours' worth of other ideas. (Sorry, Jeff! :->) A good thing each of the kings has an hour -- it might take half an hour just to explain what else we've talked about.
Hesitate to spell out too much of what we've talked about, since that might imply a sort of "writing in stone" which we are strenuously trying to avoid at this point. Suffice to say that it sounds like people have been thinking pretty thoroughly about their characters. A very clear picture is developing of the Paulina-Antigonus marriage: a May-December marriage that is nonetheless perfectly matched; also some ideas about the family of Shepherd, Clown, and Perdita and the relationship between Perdita and Florizel.