Director’s Blog – Part Two

 

Cigarettes & Chocolate

Rehearsals are at that funny stage now before lines are learned.  At the moment, I feel the priority is to assess the potential and work out which buttons I might be able to press down the line.

This week we concentrated on voice work.  It is amazing the difference a good vocal warm up makes (thank you Susan) and straightaway you notice a subtle increase in actors’ vocal range.  If they’re relaxed and breathing in an unforced way, the nuances of characters and their thoughts begin to shine through and illuminate the scenes.  Each of the plays demand lots of stillness, and because of that, everyone is instinctively beginning to flex their voices to compensate.  At this stage, I think the big challenge of presenting Minghella’s work is to rein in the vocal and physical movement, and let the words speak for themselves.  We’ll see.

We have been breaking down the longer monologues, looking for the changes in thought, identifying the key images, agreeing the climactic moments, and all the time prising out the meaning.  The latter isn’t easy with so much buried beneath the surface.  The digging requires questions of actors, suggestions, opposing points of view, and sometimes finding the raw nerve.  As the actors explore, the pressure of time means that you have to step in quickly when you think you’ve seen a blind alley.   With six weeks to rehearse, the advantage we have over a professional company is that actors have a longer period to absorb their roles, but with less time together, there is pressure to make decisions quickly.  It’s all a bit like being a teacher at times – planning lessons, setting homework and ending the playtime.

Sarah Jane Dickenson, a lecturer in Drama at the University of Hull, generously shared her experience of interviewing Anthony Minghella.  Reflecting on our phone conversation in lieu of a discussion at rehearsal (her car was stuck in the East Yorkshire snow at the time), Minghella told her that Cigarettes and Chocolate was the piece of work he most wanted to be remembered by.  His writing was absolutely influenced by his childhood – the large vociferous Italian family in which he grew up meant that you struggled to make yourself heard – so his writing is all about giving voice to the silent and repressed.   He was fascinated by Beckett, who of course was fascinated by silence.  When the character of Gemma says ‘but the silence, listen, how rich it is, how pregnant, how full…’ you know exactly where it’s coming from.

 Anyway that’s what I think.   Jon is my assistant and will be designing an audio landscape for the plays.  He’s been listening to Bach’s Mathew passion (which is incredibly long) and is planning to import suitable noise and effects from North London.  I asked him to emerge from his cocoon…

 ‘Just back from the second rehearsal after the Christmas break. It’s very interesting, as I’m getting to see each scene leap off the page. I’ve read these scenes a number of times of course, and we’ve discussed each one in some detail as a company, but when you see individual actors inhabit their parts, suddenly the text comes alive in a way that you can’t possibly imagine on your own.  You imagine something, but it’s not the actual reality of the play performed with these particular actors. Each individual actor brings himself to the text, and so the text comes alive in a unique way. It’s a privileged position to be assistant director, as you get to observe this process, to watch actors in the early stages struggle to make sense of the text. I’ve also been getting lots of ideas for sound. Watching each scene being built from the bottom up means you get lots of time to think and listen. You can watch the scene being run two or three times, and every time, you imagine the sound, and so though this process you are planning and testing out ideas. I guess it’s the same process as sitting with the text and planning it out, but you have the actors in front of you realizing the text, which is a much more interesting and inspiring experience.’ (Jon Hughes) 

Maybe I’ll let one of the actors have a go at this blogging lark.

Paul Osborne

Director’s Blog – Part One

 

Cigarettes & Chocolate

I felt quite shaken when they announced that Anthony Minghella had died.  I’m not sure why – I’d never met him, I knew some of his plays, I’d seen The English Patient which I remembered as long and too drawn out and I had enjoyed the epic journey of Cold Mountain.  When I glanced back through some of his early plays it became clearer.  There were words here that resonated, phrases and statements that seem deeper now.   As I read more about him, I understand why he was such a highly respected talent, a man who could write, direct and could explain the art of creativity better than anyone.  If you want to know more about writing and the craft of filmmaking I highly recommend Faber’s collection of interviews – ‘Minghella on Minghella’.

            Two years on from his death, our company is about to embark on a performance of three of his best, but lesser known plays.  The themes of love, passion, protest and miscommunication are just as relevant as when the plays were written in the 1980’s.  The attraction for me is the range of the subject matter, the common hopes and disappointments of characters at different stages in their lives, and the chance to combine scenes, monologues and dance in particular, in one sitting.  His witty, naturalistic dialogue is a pig for actors to learn but with careful attention, it should be captivating to perform.  The real challenge will be to find the action in the text, much of which represent thoughts, stories and conversations which say one thing but mean completely the opposite.  And for us to find the rich quality of the silences.

            Of course the Studio will assist in this.  The limitation of space is also the impetus for intimacy in performance, simple but effective staging and detailed use of sound; in this case Bach’s Mathew Passion (explicit in the script), location effects and the cadence of Minghella’s natural currency – his words.

            We’ve had a couple of rehearsals to root out the mood and ideas of each play.  Actors were on their feet and exploring their characters’ walks and gestures before the Christmas break.  It always helps to find the rhythm of your part before you memorise the lines and movement is the best place to start.  We’ve planned the set and have basic lighting and sound ideas in place.  We’ll kick off the New Year with a read through, an opportunity to step back and listen to the words without worrying about when to move or which line comes next.  I’m lucky to have the support of a voice coach, Susan Stern, who will help give focus to the sound and meaning of the play.  And I’ve invited someone who interviewed Minghella and has studied his adaptations.  In my experience, the more you know about the author, the quicker it is to reach the heart of their work.

Paul Osborne

Shore of the Wide World – Director’s Notes – Part 2

“What’s Stockport like?  It’s f**kin’ great, there’s no better place.” said the one in the middle.  Thanks lads, you might just be right there!

We met them outside the abandoned Bluebell Hotel – it’s named in the play and we found it!  Then we saw Terry Christian getting into a taxi outside the station before dining out on a hot pork sandwich with the Saturday shoppers in the Merseyway Centre.  Overhead, a jumbo walloped its way down towards the airport.  Two hundred yards from our bench, constant traffic grumbled along the M60 sticking two fingers up at the arches under the West Coast mainline.  Then someone on a BMX nearly ran over my foot.    It was uncanny – we were on the Stockport shoreline looking out at a grey world passing by.  And believe it or not, at that moment, it was just the place to be.

            There’s a lot of transport in this play and now I know why.  There’s also a lot of wishing you were somewhere else.  At rehearsals we’ve knuckled down to discussing each scene, asking what’s gone immediately before, checking who just said what and why, and clarifying the time that’s passed between each of the 40 odd scenes.  We’ve worked hard on finding a character’s walk and gesture – in my mind the key to leaving your own world behind when you start work on a play – and we’ve enacted scenes without words, forcing the cast to find a physical language and explore the importance of silence.  We’ve tried to find the small places on our stage where intimate conversations should happen, and where they shouldn’t, conscious all the time of an audience that will lean into the scene from three sides.  We’ve talked a lot too, which now feels like time well spent.  I had wanted to nail down three ideas around which we should focus each character’s story but so far I’ve only got it down to eight.  Which either means this play is much richer than I thought or that I’m suffering from indecision – I’ll get back to you on that one!

            Right now I feel lucky.  A wonderful play filled with tactile words which keep coming back at you, a talented group of people, an available slot in a busy theatre schedule, all converging with events in my own life and forming – as one of the characters in the play says – an experience ‘latent with potential’.  Of course it’s daunting too… that constant sense of being looked to…  for a decision, praise, a sharp word, a tea break…the lack of time to weigh up the infinite alternatives, and of course coping with everyone’s (quiet) insecurities.

            I’m taking a break for a few days.  Next it will be scripts down – the treacly bit of the process.

Shore of the Wide World – Director’s Notes

As we start rehearsals proper I’m reflecting on the groundwork we’ve done so far… Choosing a cast back in November seems an age ago already – the Sunday afternoon read through in the Black Swan, the acting workshop for some of the young actors I didn’t know, subsequent interviews around the kitchen table, and the carefully worded emails… have all passed.  For several months I have had an Amy McDonald track echoing in my head – a persistent anthem for the play and all it stands for.  I recall my meeting with Simon Stephens in a café in the West End, who despite his ‘man-flu’ and hectic bike journey, seemed genuinely pleased to meet me.  His recollections of the first production in Manchester and rich nuggets of advice are now prominent in the rehearsal file.  There has been the decision too, to focus on sound rather than set to create the many scene changes which are required.  I’ve taken myself on an imaginary journey through the soundscape of the play, guessing what Stockport might have to offer and now have to brief Jon, the Sound Designer, before we take a weekend charabanc across the Pennines.  And the conversations with Sam, bless him, who created the striking poster of the dude on the beach – hell I know it’s not Stockport but surely you can’t quote Keats (the title of the play is taken from his sonnet When I have fears that I may cease to be) across the arches of the town’s famous Victorian railway viaduct.  But then again…

And before all that, there was the decision to choose this play.  Last summer I read Harriet Devine’s absorbing interviews with playwrights from the Royal Court.  The most interesting were those of the new generation of writers, including Simon Stephens.  I didn’t know his work but I liked what he said and I decided to read some of his work.  When I got to On the Shore, I couldn’t put it down.  At the end it was like that moment when you finish the last chapter, in the final book of a series by your favourite author.  You need to know what happens next, but there is no more.  You feel bereft… shaken… but eventually satisfied.  The technical challenges also appealed – a cast spanning three generations, teenage actors working closely with older adults, a play with musicality, northern soul and language which quietly reveals the utter depths and complexities of life.

Hey ho… better get back to planning the road trip.  Maybe we should squeeze in a visit to watch Stockport County?