National Theatre

Some days it feels like we have been in Rehearsal Room 1 for twelve months. We were certainly here twelve months ago, surrounded by the same tools and objects - buckets and shovels, the plough and guns, and of course, nine magnificent horse puppets.

We haven't of course. Some things are different. There's been some small refurbishment: there's a drinking fountain instead of a water butt; and of course there's the memory of a hundred-odd performances of War Horse that we gave between October 2007 and February 2008.

The creative team are all here for this new rehearsal period. Both directors: Tom Morris and Marianne Elliott; both puppetry directors, Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones from Handspring Puppet Company, and our movement director Toby Sedgwick. Most of the team who operate the puppets and create the ensemble of the show are back for more. But there are many different faces too. Different actors playing many of the major roles in the show and so where we might otherwise have seen repetition, we get variation and development.

Handspring have come back from South Africa (and a successful run and tour of one of their most celebrated productions, Woyzeck on the Highveldt) with what are effectively new horses. Both Joey and Topthorn arrived for this new rehearsal period with new (and slightly different) heads, a spare head and neck each, and a spare for each front and rear leg, all time-consumingly handmade in Cape Town. The result will be a transformation of the situation when the puppets get damaged. As audiences of War Horse will know, the horses take quite a beating as they run, twist, rear and crash through the war. The inevitable result is wear on the wooden joints of the puppets, and battering of their cane frames. Each horse is unique - there's no understudy for the puppet. During the 2007-8 run, there were running repairs on the puppets between performances - and frequently even during shows, puppeteers and prop-makers rushing to mix up glue in the darkness backstage. Now, we'll be able to run a pit-stop system: swap in a replacement leg and have the damaged part of the puppet taken downstairs to be given attention in a well-lit workshop with tools and time to hand.

And with smartened horses and bright new company members, there's fresh energy throughout the room. While nearly half the company have spoken and heard these lines and situations dozens of times, there are plenty more who are reading and interrogating them for the first time. Their ideas about the lines and thoughts of the characters are reinvigorating the story, and the returning cast members are enjoying seeing scenes given a different emphasis. Adjustments to Nick Stafford's script mean that Elliott and Morris are able to reinforce aspects of the story that they most want the audience to register. These two aren't returning to the project just to restage their success - they're determined to improve on last year's production and challenge their own preconceptions at each stage of the story, often finding new ways to stage or understand a story ‘beat' or the relationship between characters.

Looking forward to these rehearsals, it seemed generous of the NT to allow us another full six weeks to rehearse a show which is already successful. Even before those six weeks start, there's a fortnight of training for both the new and old puppeteers to get to grips with the horses. But as we start to take on the material, it's easy to see that it would take this amount of time even to simply revive a production as epic as this. It's not just creating the background for the village characters, practising our harmony singing or learning our infantry drill. Co-ordinating the details of acting and puppetry in large scenes where the stage is covered with people takes up time; and reinventing the key character relationships with new perspectives from new actors needs to be handled with patience. Add in the technically complex set-pieces with guns, carts, tanks and multiple horses, and the weeks have been flying by - to the extent that the nerves are coming back.

It's a great advantage to us that so many of the puppeteers have returned. As one of the cast observed, for a puppeteer, there's no other job like this in the world: a show on the main stage of a very major theatre where the technique of the puppeteering is given equal time and focus to lead the emotional story as the work of the actors. Part of the thrill of working puppets in War Horse is that they are not just a special effect. And coming back to the horses after a few months break (and looking forward to working them for another sustained run), there's a real appetite to improve on what we managed last year. Finn Caldwell and Tommy Luther, the ‘heart' manipulators of Topthorn and Joey, are particularly keen to work out new moves to fit into their sequences. This enthusiasm is further fuelled by a day's visit from Monty Roberts, the influential horse-whisperer. Monty, one of the experts whose books and videos we used in the development of our horse language, saw the very last performance of War Horse we performed in February, and was intrigued and inspired by the way the puppeteers were trying so hard to make our figures behave like real horses. He's in the UK again and our time spent with him is a remarkable day - both groups fascinated by the expertise of the other. And it's unforgettable for the detailed insights and observations about horse behaviour he's able to offer us.

We're anxious as we head into the last few weeks of rehearsal: there seems so much more to learn to make the show as good as we know it might be. We're feeling the lift of anticipation that we'll be putting it all together soon - and the changes mean that even those of us who are returning know that we have new and exciting things to share with the audiences. With that comes the uneasy combination of hope and fear that we'll manage to make that connection with the audience that enthuses them about what we're doing. When it happens in the Olivier it's a very exciting room to be in. Here's hoping.

Mervyn Millar appears in War Horse, previewing from 10 September in the Olivier.

Buy Mervyn Millar's The Horse's Mouth: Staging Morpurgo's War Horse

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