Elsewhere – director’s blog 3

The lights were turned off in the library, it got dark, our company wandered, sang, told secrets to walls, wrote what should have been written, travelled without being seen…and read. I would happily watch people just walking, playing and discovering things in a space such as Explore York. At the start they are uncertain; what to do, how to do it and questioning ‘What’s the point?’. Sometimes you just have to go with it, immerse yourself and play. Discoveries are best found whilst playing. This can be within a strong structure and this is where we find ourselves now. Unfortunately its not enough to just let people wander and to find, we need to fit a theatrical blanket around it all to make it feel snug and a good (or at least interesting) place to be.

The time spent in the library with nobody there brought up lots of possibilities, wonderful images and moments but not all of these can work and fit within the context of the piece that we have created for the company. As I was sitting planning this morning I had a sudden panic that we weren’t using the space as theatrically as perhaps we could be. But I think partly you have to consider what the heart of your piece is – is it dressing, aesthetics and atmosphere? Character and context? I’m not saying they have to be mutually exclusive but the themes we have chosen draws us closer to character and context. Who inhabits or who we imagine inhabits this space has been what has led us predominantly through this process. Ultimately it will be a character driven piece that I think will give the piece a real soul. So expect no smoke and mirrors…

Since our visit we’ve spent a long time on developing character, numerous exercises to enable the company to find their character physically and to build up a convincing back story. Alex asked them to make numerous lists, which were time limited but force instant decisions and to work instinctively. The final point was reaching a list of wants and a list of motivations and the choosing of three which were the most important. All of us have an inner conflict, something which stops or can potentially stop us getting what we want. These can be self-imposed blocks, others are put in front of us and it is how we deal with them that tells us about ourselves. Our characters are all connected by a central premise, they are all driven to the library for essentially the same reason but ultimately for very different personal reasons within that wider context. The revelation of these reasons is what we hope will drive the piece, create intrigue for our audiences. How will the audience find this ‘in’ to the characters? This is something we’re currently approaching and finding out, as we don’t want them to work completely in isolation, there needs to be some form of connection…from where we begin tonight.

Elsewhere – director’s blog 1

Elsewhere is a first collaboration between Belt Up Theatre and York Theatre Royal’s Young Actors Company (YAC). We were asked to collaborate to make a piece for the TakeOver10 festival – this was in about May-ish time…the brief was to do a site-specific piece…and that was pretty much it. So in mid-September having found a company of 10 to work with and somewhere for them to perform it in we are in full rehearsal swing and venturing into the depths of Elsewhere.

The title was deliberately ambiguous, as we had to come up with it before we a) had a venue and b) had an idea of what it might be about. Once we secured York Explore, which is the new name for York central library as our venue we then started to think how that title and vague imagery might fit into a piece in that space. The library has undergone an extensive facelift, not on outside appearances but inside is wealth of space and light. Our task is to see how we can respond to the current nature of this space and find a theatrically exciting ‘in’ for our audience.  

Alex, one of Belt Up’s artistic director’s is co-directing with me (I’m too possessive to share my YAC artistic title) so we’ve been co-leading the sessions up to this point, introducing our different ideas to the group and drawing the group to some common ground from which to work from. Storytelling, use of space/audience and character have been our prevalent concerns, dripping in how the form of the show will work as Belt Up work in an ‘immersive’ world, where audience are placed at the centre of action. Our actors must feel comfortable in facilitating and maintaining this evolving world as there will be freedom for the audience to direct the action, which they must be adaptable to and face the unexpected.  

It’s been fun up to this point and the haze of themes and narratives are just starting to clear a little and we will begin our construction of the ‘world’ proper over the next week. It’s not a play, it’s a world…if that doesn’t sound too poncy…I’m not sure about how much I’ll reveal about the nature of the piece, partly because, yes, I don’t know yet but we want there to be a real sense of unknowing when you step into a space elsewhere. But it will be a journey, and one you’ll have to work for.

Lorca is Dead – Rehearsal Video 1

Director’s Blog – Part Three

 

Cigarettes & Chocolate

Three weeks to go.  I need to apply some urgent thought to technicalities – which sections of the Mathew Passion work best and where, if there are any costume props I’ve missed that might help inform the action, and decide (if that’s possible) on scene transitions.  So it’s over to Hannah (who’s playing Lorna) who can share her thoughts on the process so far…

“I love the challenge of cracking open the soul of a new character. For me the first step in this process lies in the words on the page, which I read over and over again as soon as I get my script. Often out loud. Often in the kitchen for some reason. Often to the utter bewilderment of my family members who call through ‘What? Are you talking to me? What was that?’ and then they tut and roll their eyes when they realise I’m pretending to be someone else again. 

I’m starting to find parts of my character, Lorna, now. In one of our early workshops we were experimenting with walks and rhythms and this is something which I think is essential. Our bodies say so much about us, each muscle holds a memory, a story. Our postures reflect our inner worlds and hold clues about how we feel about the outer world, so finding a way to move can really help to unlock a character. One of Lorna’s lines in the play tells us she believes she has an ‘incapacity to love’ and I took this as a starting point for her physicality. In order to physicalise this statement, I experimented with the notion that Lorna had some kind of freeze or blockage around her chest/heart area. Using this as a starting point I came up with a way of moving which kept her centre of gravity very high in her body, and which had a slight stiffness in her left arm. This subtly altered the way I held myself and gave me a visceral experience of  how it might feel to move within this woman’s body. I was left with a feeling that Lorna was always trying to rise above her emotions and her arm was always poised defensively lest they should try and suddenly overwhelm her.

 With scraps of Lorna’s words ringing round my head (and house) and an overall gesture which I felt captured the essence of her I went back to the text in earnest. I made a list of all the things Lorna said about herself and of all the things that other characters say about her in the play. Although time consuming, and a little bit like doing homework, this is always a great way to mine information and it often throws up tiny details that can be crucial to character development. This groundwork provided me with lots of questions about this woman. I’m becoming very intrigued about her and her life. Some of these curiosities can be answered by other information offered in the script, but a lot is left unsaid or unspecific so now I am moving into the next stage of character work: creating the imaginative world that surrounds my character, the details of her daily routine, what she might wear, her likes and dislikes, her hopes and fears, the dynamics of her intimate relationships, the different personas and versions of herself that she inhabits. All this work helps to flesh out the words on the page. I have started to carry Lorna around in my head as a sub version of myself. She goes through my day with me and I spend time with her in the quiet gaps. I ask myself what she’d do if she were me? What would frustrate her about my life? What would excite her? At night before going to sleep I close my eyes and conjure her up and watch her move about her business. I spy on her. In a good way.

 When working on a character I look to the text for the moments of choice and the moments of change and the moments where they realise something about themselves for the first time. These are the special moments that I want to underline for my audience. Perhaps most importantly though I focus on what my character does. Why are my characters actions important to the story of the play? The old phrase actions speak louder than words is crucial to character development. What are we really, if not a sum of our actions?

 Finally, in response to Paul’s request that we all find a song that sums up our characters, I have been trawling through 80s pop music. I wanted to find something that not only would Lorna enjoy listening to, but something which reflects something of her being too. I have finally settled on a Cyndi Lauper song, as I feel it perfectly captures the way Lorna is stuck in a cycle of destructiveness of her own making, and beautifully portrays the acute pain that sits right at the core of her being. I haven’t sung it for the rest of the cast yet, but I am sure this is something that Paul will pull out of us all at some point.

 All I need to do now is find her voice. Oh and learn the lines… I better get back to ranting in the kitchen!”  (Hannah Dee)

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!