Equus – director’s blog 6

Work has progressed significantly since my last blog and we have worked through the whole play and have staggered through both acts. There is always a minute sense of achievement and relief having got through the whole play and mapped the journeys through for the actors. There is much need for tweaking over the following weeks with my theatrical spanner but the nuts, bolts and rivets are now mostly in place. Over the past two Sundays we have been experimenting with our sound designer Dean St. John on the ‘Equus noise’ as Shaffer calls it, which represents the presence of Equus the God. We began by thinking about and isolating what noises a horse makes and divided into pairs and worked on stamping, breathing, gasping…Dean then recorded these and brought them back the following week mixed together and asked us what mood and images they evoked. We worked on reproducing these sounds live and whether this will be possible, as some sounds will need to be pre-recorded and some will be solely recorded as we are using elements of this ‘sound’ for transitions between scenes. The mixes were very evocative and brought a tangible sense of discomfort and disturbance, which will underlie and perpetuate the inexorable journey towards the reliving of Alan’s crime.  Music is a key strand to theatre work but should only act, in my opinion as a support to the action, and should not lead and be a driver of the action. Some theatre pieces I have seen are very filmic in that they appear underscored throughout and are a constant soundtrack. I am suspicious of this as I feel theatre needs to breath more than that and have moments of silence and contemplation, allowing the narrative and voices of the actors to be heard. So I have been selective with my choice of where we use music and where I believe the play could use some support to enhance the story.

Costume fittings are now complete, there are still some adjustments to be made with the masks and we are still waiting for the hooves but we are going to start using these pieces in rehearsals, for reasons that I have previously explained. I feel as though the layers of our production are starting to come together and everybody is off book now, which is a tremendous help to a director but also to the actor themselves as it frees them physically. There is only a certain point you can get to with a script in your hand because as people we are so gestural and our use and direction of eye contact is fundamental to who we are. I am beginning to see this freeing up and we can begin to work on the nuances of focus and body language that will take our production to another level.

We have gone back to the start of the play and are working our way back through it, attempting to work in vague notes written down out of the corner of your eye in the stagger through whilst getting the actors to talk us through their 6 W’s and objectives set. We are getting through the scenes quicker, which is to be expected and is necessary to allow the actors to pick up the rhythms and continuity of the scenes. Paul, who plays Dysart has an unenviable task with this as he is present in all 35 scenes of the play! He has to find his journey through this mentally but also physically as it would be easy to jump forward in the story so we need to make sure those transitions are clear for him and he is clear and present in his characters journey and is constantly listening and staying active in the story as that will always root him in where he is and what he should be doing.

EQUUS – director’s blog 5

Reduced numbers Sunday allowed us to do some intensive character work with those present. This involved doing some work on tempo-rhythm, which is a technique phrased by Stanislavski, who was the forefather of actor training. He was the first person who wrote down and acknowledged a system for actor training in realism. I have found his ideas to be incredibly useful, not as an exhaustive handbook but rather as a toolkit to pick and choose as the situation demands. As ultimately he used to rehearse for months and years so had time to work through the complete system, where we have about 70 hours in total! Tempo-rhythm asks the actors to think about the tempo, the basic beat at which they do activities and think and the rhythm, the type of movement within that basic pulse. In everyday life we move and act at very different paces, dependent often on your age, physical dexterity and crucially for us the situation you are in and how you feel about being in that situation. Somebody getting dressed to meet a lover in an expensive restaurant will dress at a different T-R to when they are late for work in the morning. Then there is internal T-R. A character may internally be feeling really nervous but externally they appear serene and unperturbed but there are often small ticks that reveal their true feelings; a rubbing of the hands, persistent tapping on the foot… Our characters are often seen in situations of great stress and anxiety but they try to appear unflustered. Frank and Dora at home when Dysart visits, for example. Our work then is to understand firstly, what this T-R is then how we can make this observable for our audience.

Fittings started last week, which will continue this week as we want to get them sorted asap as I want the company to wear parts of it in rehearsal. Clothes are extremely important generally to people – what we choose to wear tells much about ourselves. It becomes a shield, a way of expression and ultimately a huge part of who we are and how we feel about ourselves. A number of the company wear suit jackets, which particularly need getting used to as it affects what you do with your hands and the way it is buttoned or not informs us of the mood or situation they may be in. We have started to use the heads although most of them need adapting and all need a new way of securing them but we will hopefully solve this issue this week. The hooves are yet to reach us so although we worked extensively on the horse movements on Sunday, the effect of the raised hooves will change that significantly, especially on our raked stage!

On Thursday we did a stagger through of act 1, which I wouldn’t normally do as I’d prefer to have gone through the whole play first. However, the first act is quite long (worked out 1hr 35 mins) so I felt we needed to keep what we had done in the previous three weeks fresh in our minds. It is always with some apprehension that you do this as most of the scenes we’ve only been through once but as the play is episodic running it is important to get a sense of the journey of the characters through the space and through the narrative. I have to say I was pleased with how well they did, firstly with the lines but mostly with the engagement with the decisions we have made and the purpose towards achieving and undertaking them. I have deliberately kept the staging simple, partly for pace purposes as with so many scenes the transitions need to be quick and economical but also to allow for maximum focus onto our actors and the story. I don’t believe in cluttering up the stage too much, especially with a script that is this strong and I was happy with the smoothness and efficiency between scenes. Most of the characters are firmly in place and there is a nice depth coming to the majority, not all but that’s too be expected at this point. Exciting times ahead as today (Sunday 6^th) we are starting on the ‘Equus noise’, which is the sound heard whenever the presence of Equus is felt. We are working with musician and sound designer Dean St. John, who I have worked with before and who I know will do a fantastic job for us.

Equus – director’s blog 4

Our visit to Bleach Farm last Sunday proved a useful trip as it allowed us to get up close and personal with the horses. The company has a mix of experience with horses, from competent riders to complete novices. The chorus of horses in the play are predominantly in standing positions, they enter and walk a short distance but their standing head and body movements were of particular interest for us in our observations. As with humans no horse is the same and each has its own personality and comfort with being around people but there are nuances of flicks, turns and shapes made by their heads which we need to capture. We were taken through the grooming or strapping routine with the horses, and use of tools, a routine which Alan is taught in the play. For Freddie, who plays Alan, this was very much the first time he’s been near a horse, which mirrors Alan’s experience when he first starts work at the stables. So these moments for him are incredibly useful. The horses in the play are represented in a stylised way, only the mask represents the size and actual shape of a horse and our hooves give us the height required. However, the movements our actors make need to mimic those of a real horse and we allow our audience to fill in the reality in their imaginations. Our first rehearsal with the masks will be this Sunday so until that point we don’t know whether these creatures will truly live, but design wise they are beautiful so we must do them, justice.

We’ve had to scenically jump about a bit this week because of cast absences to maximise the usefulness of the cast time. Unfortunately this is a reality of not working professionally and not having everybody’s dedicated time, people work and are at the behest of managers desire to make them work when they’ve asked for time off etc etc. But we deal with it…I have a moan to my partner and colleagues and we move on. We’ve had an opportunity to delve into the relationship between Hesther (the magistrate who brought Alan to him) and Dysart and its become clear how these interactions provide the conduit for Dysart’s digression into his own psyche and present condition. Hesther becomes a sounding board for Dysart, someone who he can discuss his dreams and personal feelings towards the case with, safe in the knowledge that she will listen and understand sufficiently for a conversation to take place. However, as the play progresses, and Dysart delves deeper into Alan’s psyche, the parallel process happens with himself. He begins to question himself; why he does the work he does, what good is he actually doing for these children and the ultimate realisation of how worshipless and loveless his own life is. Hesther, however, has come to hear about Alan and subsequently gets drawn into the psychiatrists role herself. She can’t understand how he can be questioning the work he does, because for her Alan is in pain and returning him to a ‘normal’ life is the simple and only aim. So each scene and interaction they have together we see Dysart falling deeper and deeper into himself and his doubts and an increasingly exasperated Hesther trying to focus him onto the boy and essentially getting him to do his job.

It really dawned on me this week how rich and dense this text is. For me as a director it is by far the densest and most literary of texts I’ve worked on and there isn’t a moment where you can relax and just let lines float by. The challenge for a director is multi faceted, on the basic level you need to come to an understanding of what the characters are talking about, which can demand research of the subject they discuss such as the Book of Job passage referred to by Dora from The Bible. This can also mean understanding of their intentions, wants and references to subjects possibly mentioned earlier in the text or of action unmentioned which you need formulate in your mind, for example, Frank refers to ‘bad sex’ which he blames for ‘everything. Everything Dora’. So there is clearly a large and significant issue here in their relationship which needs to be addressed and decisions made about. Once you have formulated these assumptions and thoughts in your mind, done partly in conversation and in rehearsal with the cast you need to find methods of articulating your ideas to your cast. There is often the desire to speak a line for them, in a ‘say it like this…’ approach but this for me is to avoided at all costs. Finding the words to describe what you mean is a constant battle and ultimately you want the actors to articulate that themselves through a question that you’ve asked of them or a scenario that you’ve suggested. This is married to their movement through the space, which you want to be as fluid, natural and justified as possible. I try hard not to say ‘sit now’, ‘stand there’ as I hope it evolves naturally from the characters wants and reactions to one another but sometimes as the outside eye you need to see the space opened up or the dialogue directed out to the audience a little more. As ultimately this is a piece of theatre and the audience are watching from only one side so that is a constant nagging consideration for a director. All these elements provide significant challenges but when they feel right its an amazing and rewarding feeling.