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.

EQUUS – Director’s blog 3

21/08/09.

Three weeks into rehearsals, which when I write it down sounds a lot but is actually only 15 hours worth of rehearsal time. We had an enlightening session on Wednesday with the visit of Chris Powell, who is a group analyst from The Tukes Centre, in York. Chris deals partly with out patients who have left psychiatric hospital so has a knowledge of that environment and the techniques psychiatrists use in dealing with patients. I felt some professional input into the processes of psychiatry was important, partly to enable us to validate the action but also to deepen our understanding of Alan’s condition and how the circumstances leading up to the crime will have impacted upon that event. Chris described Alan as potentially having a personality disorder, which is usually founded on traumatic events in their past. He described how a psychiatrist, as Dysart does would look to uncover these events and to revisit them to allow the patient to try to start comprehending them and working on the reasons why they happened. We spoke about post-traumatic disorder, where the patients ability to communicate breaks down and it is through trust, the feeling of safety and of being listened to that allows those memories to be dealt with and addressed. Chris highlighted that this relationship between patient and psychiatrist is crucial, both to our production but for any form of non-medicinal psychiatry to work.

 We spoke about Alan’s attachment to horses and the reasons why he comes to idolise and worship horses and more generally about attachments; how we develop them and whether we ourselves feel as though we need to have attachments. The play builds this picture up for us, we get glimpses of why he feels attached to horses above humans – they don’t judge him and give him unequivocal love and affection. Alan may receive love from his parents, but it comes with caveats and inherent judgments. Dysart is chosen to be Alan’s therapist as he is perceived by Hesther to be open and non-judgmental enough to be able to see beyond the crime and Chris described him as being both a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Meaning he is interested is studying and revealing the reasoning in his unconscious but also in then treating and ‘curing’ his disorder. It was a fascinating discussion and incredibly useful for the whole company in validating and understanding the process and it left us with much to think about and consume.

 I feel as though we are starting to get beneath the skin of our characters now, as we have now met all of them, having been introduced to Jill (the girl who Alan meets at the stables) during last nights rehearsal. You have to get a certain way through a text before the layers of your character start to join up and make sense, they need to be experienced in different settings and through interactions with different people to discover more about them. They never reveal everything when they are around certain people, for instance, Frank cannot talk about when he witnessed Alan flagellating himself in front of Dora as he doesn’t have the capacity to communicate that incident to her. However, he can to Dysart. The exploratory process of this play is fascinating, as the narratives strands are deeply interwoven and there are crucial decisions that need to be made to justify the way we are choosing to play the roles. For instance, we need to decide whether there has ever been any physical or sexual connection between Dysart and Hesther. If there has it could affect the reason why he chooses to take Alan on and accept her request. We have chosen to say there hasn’t been, but instead there is a mutual respect and perhaps an underlying wish or desire on Dysart’s part, but one that he has never mentioned or even hinted. I feel as though we are engaging deeply with the play and treating it with the respect it deserves, which I hope will ultimately serve the story for our audience. As in the end of the day that’s what it’s all about, telling this brilliant story.

 We are off to Bleach Farm stables on Sunday, for a bit of horsey observation and interaction. More on that next week and perhaps a few photos!

EQUUS – director’s blog 2

Just finished our first ‘proper’ week of rehearsals, meaning we’ve got the text up and moving and began to set some movements and make some decisions. I’m always reluctant to use the word ‘blocking’, when describing setting the actors movements in the space as it feels very rigid and unimaginative – like directing by numbers. There is certainly a good percentage of the play which is mapped out in my head, which is inevitably dictated by the design decisions I made with Lydia a few weeks ago. For example, you can’t get around the set so once you’re off on one side, that’s it you’ve got to enter from that side again so I have the entrances and exits pretty much mapped out already. However, subtleties within scenes, when characters sit, move and stand, can’t be dictated beforehand as those decisions need to be made with the actors, in discussion and with everything justified. I spoke early on about about ‘wants’, which essentially in theatre terminology are objectives. What your character wants leads to actions, how does your character go about achieving that want? The way you go about that action leads to an emotion, which is affected by the circumstances of the scene. For example, if your objective is to find your friend and at the moment they’re not late and you have time to make the show you’ve booked for you’re probably not that bothered but 20 minutes later and you’re going to be late, you may now be anxious and annoyed and probably looking frenetically for them. So we are working on finding the characters wants and letting that lead us movement wise.

EQUUS is a fantastic play for discoveries and for highlighting contradictions in people, which is important to remember, that people are essentially contradictory, we may believe one thing but we may also believe in something else that seems a binary opposite to the earlier belief. Dora, Alan’s mother is a case in point – on one hand she is a deeply religious lady, who believes in the judgment of God but she is also deceptive to her husband, buying a TV behind his back and allowing Alan to previously go and watch TV next door without her husband’s knowledge and knowing he doesn’t approve. So then we need to look at the ‘whys’, why does she feel the need to be deceptive? Each rehearsal we build up a casebook of these characters, which hopefully enables us to be rigorous and truthful in our work and to communicate the realism of the piece and to essentially I suppose allow us to understand how all this has affected and been a cause of Alan’s condition and subsequently his crime.

We are working chronologically through the play and I am trying to work swiftly whilst allowing time for decisions to be made and discussions to be had. Everyone seems to be happy and on board and my shameless introduction of the rehearsal biscuit barrel seems to be doing the trick…hey whatever works! Next week we have a group analyst coming in to talk with us, who is much like a psychiatrist so we hope he can provide useful insights into the workings of a psychiatric hospital and the condition which Alan is suffering from. And we’re also going to visit some horses!

Equus – director’s blog 1

Rehearsals are now underway for our 2 month rehearsal period for Equus. The production is the third show under my guidance as artistic director of York Theatre Royal’s Young Actors Company, which was created to provide performance opportunities for 18-25 yr olds. The production is being directed by myself, assistant directed by Oliver O’Shea and designed by Lydia Denno. As a new venture for the company we are working with one older actor, Paul Stonehouse, who will play the part of the psychiatrist, Martin Dysart. The other parts are all played by young people, who are from various places and do various things: study, work, full time parenting…My reasoning for casting an older actor in the part is for a few reasons but principally the part is a monster, both in terms of lines but more crucially in terms of breadth and depth. I felt it needed someone with both significant stage and life experience who could bring those layers of understanding to the part and not be overwhelmed by the pivotal nature of the part (no pressure then Paul…) Ultimately I’d like the company to work alongside professional actors in production and I hope this is a step towards that ideal.

Equus is a play that has always fascinated me from the time my drama teacher said we were going to do it for our final A-Level production. Looking back 12 years later at the text (please don’t feel as though you need to mask the surprise at my youthful looks…) I think we barely understood the play and the complexities held within it but we did understand the basics of desire, entrapment and the conflict between societies ideals and our own. Playing Alan myself I felt a tangible sense it was a play centred around me but now I see it almost wholly as a play about Dysart. Alan’s story is a conduit for Dysart’s own narrative providing him with the outlet to express his suppressed feelings about his own repressed and worship-less life. The tale is not a happy one and Shaffer deals head on with the conflict between social norms and free-thought. Each character has a tangible sense of being trapped: by work, expectation, society, one another, themselves…

So far we have read through the play together and done some work as an ensemble so we are yet to get the play up on its feet. I feel its important to build up a working relationship and dynamic with a cast and I believe movement is the best way to achieve this. An actor needs to be physically free, unblocked and open when rehearsing. We enter rehearsals filled with the blocks of the day, crouching over a dusty keyboard or the fixed smile when greeting the 100^th person of the day. The primary task then is to rid ourselves of these blocks and refresh our minds and bodies. There are various exercises I do which require the actors to move and interact in the space, affectionately known as ‘walking’ exercises – I like my actors to walk! There is an added reason to work on movement because of the chorus of horses, which everyone except Alan and Dysart play. We are going to visit a stables next week which I hope will assist this process as it is important that this aspect of the production is lucid and dynamic. The horses’ heads are being made as we speak and until we get them there is little point starting this work, along with the hooves as these costume pieces will inform so much of what can be achieved. The start of rehearsals are exciting but daunting times, you can do all the research you like but the time comes when you’ve got to get them up on their feet and that time is Wednesday!

Julian Ollive