Fascinating Progress

I will confess to having been a tad disillusioned after Friday's final text analysis rehearsal. We only had just over an hour to work and, despite succeeding in getting the lines divided up, I wasn't adequately prepared for how this would work out with a group of people who were still working from a 'blank' script. Consequently it felt messy and rushed to me, even though a hasty staging of Scene 11 produced some very encouraging and entertaining results. I'm sure I'm being over-sensitive - as we are having to approach a text in an unfamiliar way and I can't provide the cast yet with such crucial things as lines and roles, I am feeling very conscious of whether people feel adequate progress is being made. I worry that if there is a sense that things aren't moving swiftly enough, the ensemble will grow restless and concerned that maybe I don't have a strong enough handle on things. Already, the implications of what I have taken on are striking me.

However, I feel totally different after today's rehearsal. The focus was on identifying and creating characters that might find their way into the performance, and I was astounded and delighted by the directions the work took us, particularly as my plan was not derived from any tried and tested method but rather from a couple of exercises that I hoped might be a bit useful.

I had decided to give the rehearsal a specific context, that of an investigation into the disappearance of Anne (I wanted to treat her as a single, real entity for the purposes of today's work). I had identified that there were ten distinct voices that leave messages for Anne in Scene 1, and so decided to give each actor one of these messages. Having been told that they were the person who left the message, each actor then had to enact a police interview in which more details would be established. I took notes on key points that were mentioned, and some really interesting ideas emerged very swiftly. Suddenly Anne had associates, enemies, friends, lovers, she had agendas, past experiences, snippets of a life story. Intriguingly, a picture started to emerge of a woman who had stumbled into a dangerous world of undefined criminality for which she seemed to be paying a price. She was, variously, an exploited lover, a criminal fence with violent tendencies, a member of a religious cult.

This exercise seemed to reveal more about Anne than it did about the characters we encountered, which I had vaguely anticipated. So the next stage was to employ the objects that I had asked each actor to bring in, objects which they felt defined them. The objects offered up were:

• An original Gameboy
• MP3 player
• a blank audio cassette
• a purse,
• a cuddly Care Bear
• a green scarf
• a dog
• a hair clip
• a small sculpture of a woman protecting a child.

I wasn't interested in how these objects reflected the people who brought them in, I was more keen to see how they might be given significance to the characters in the play. So the actors were given the following instructions:

Each person is to select an object that is someone else's. During the police investigation, Anne's address book was discovered by the police, who raided the homes of each of you, identified these objects as previously being in Anne's possession, and brought you in for questioning.

You will need to decide whether you are now playing the same character who was interviewed or if this is a new person

Guidance:

• How long have you had the object? Did you acquire it recently or have you had it for some time? Did you acquire it after Anne disappeared?

• Think about whether Anne knows you have it. Did you take it, borrow it, steal it or did Anne give it to you.

• Don't assume that the object is actually Anne's.

• How does your possession of the object define your relationship with Anne?

• Does the object trigger a shared memory between you and Anne?

We started this off in a brief, talking-heads way, each actor recounting how they came to be in possession of the object and what it means. Some fantastic ideas started to emerge: Sarah's character was given to her by Anne with the instruction that she give it to Anne's parents at Christmas; The Care Bear was part of a terrifying story of Anne and her mother being hunted down by the police and their dogs, the dog became a substitute for Anne's child that had been "taken away" after birth; the sculpture was a small memento from one of Anne's earlier art exhibitions on Hadrian's wall; the purse was hastily given to a random stranger in the street by Anne. These are just some of the outcomes, and as we pursued the ideas further through questioning the individuals, some compelling links and patterns began to emerge. Anne was apparently raped, gave birth to a child that she 'lost' and created an art piece on the theme Mother & Child. She had a relationship with a man who turned out to be gay, but he remained friends with her, but at the same time was not aware that she had attempted suicide five times. She studied Law at University but dropped out mysteriously and was never seen by her room-mate again.

It would simply take too long here to give a detailed account of all the nuances, characters and situations that grew out of today's work. Suffice to say that I found it very exciting that so much could be developed from so little, and I have a feeling that we have found a number of characters that we will see in the play itself. The cast have been charged now with writing a brief biography of their character, and considering which scenes in the play their character might be in.

I'm delighted with the openness and creativity that the ensemble demonstrated today. Everyone has made a significant contribution to the shape of this production, and I look forward to tomorrow's rehearsal, the final one of the year, to see how we can take this work further.

Finding the shape

The first two textual analysis rehearsals threw up some interesting ideas and observations. The final one is this evening, before we start looking in more detail at characters and context. So, ahead of tonight's somewhat condensed 90 minute rehearsal, I thought it expedient to have a go at dividing up the dialogue in the seventeen scenes into individual voices and speakers. I'm not thinking much about who the speakers are at this stage, I simply want to look for patterns in the arguments, referring to the notes taken at the read-throughs as a guide. We established that some scenes are obviously monologues, whereas some are suited to larger numbers (whole ensemble in some cases) and some voices work better with specific genders.
Variation in the numbers is important to an extent, but I'm trying to avoid variation for the sake of it. It has been a fairly mechanical exercise, but it has been interesting thinking in a little more detail about when an existing voice carries on a particular thought or line of argument, and when it seems that a new speaker has stepped in. In some cases I think I have been fairly accurate and deliberate, in others freer and more arbitrary.
So the plan for tonight is to test out these first attempts (pun not intended) with the various voices at the rehearsal, and make any changes that the cast feel are required. Hopefully three additional actors are joining us for the first time tonight, bringing the total up to 10, although Sarah can't make tonight but 9 will allow for a pretty strong consensus. So tonight's work will be useful for bringing the new actors up to speed with the play, having not read it before, and I hope their slightly fresher eyes and ears will be able to inject some new energy and ideas into what we have already brought together.
Meanwhile, a clear contextual concept or holding form is beginning to take shape in my mind. Blogging about it will help bring the ideas together, but I think it's a subject for a new post over the weekend, once tonight's work has been completed.

First Rehearsal

We assembled for the first time on a wet and blowy Sunday afternoon and huddled around some tables to trawl through the script looking for clues. Having warned the cast that my most common answer to any questions was likely to be "I don't know," I was encouraged by the collective feeling of cooperation that seemed to already run through the group, with many people chipping in with their responses to the scenes we looked at, leading to some interesting ideas. With the designers and producer also present and contributing to the discussions, I think we started to decipher some of the enigma. This is exactly what I hoped would happen, with all parties working together to find the answers.

We read through the first nine scenes, playing around with the number of speakers, taking each scene on its own merits and trying to identify characters and context. One of the most exciting things I noticed is the sheer variety of vocal textures this cast offers, with lots of different sounds. Our Swedish cast member, Emelie, really helped us to appreciate what the various languages in the play will bring to the production, and people were getting to grips with the overlapping dialogue written into the script, and when it worked this sounded absolutely compelling.

In terms of themes, there are still some points for debate. Jacquie is convinced that the play is political, which is pretty obvious as every play is political, but her point was that it is making some quite specific political points. My concern with this is that to focus only on the politics will reduce the play to a polemic, and also it deals with so many different issues that this doesn't really help achieve the coherence that I think is essential. I think we have settled on a key decision, that of Anne's identity, and this seems to be pushing me towards a useful holding form for the production. We are agreed that Anne exists, or at least did exist. But we also concluded that Anne isn't in fact a single person, rather she is the Everywoman, the archetype that crosses cultural and geographical boundaries. There is an Anne everywhere and anywhere in the world. She isn't the same person, but she is recognisable to everyone and anyone. We resolved that it wasn't necessary to find a catch-all identity for the whole play, but it is crucial that for the characters (and therefore the actors) that describe and know her, she is real and specific. I feel strongly that the performances and emotions in the performance must be rooted in truth, and this will mean making to specific and concrete decisions about who she each for each person in the play. I am keen to avoid placing any one identity on her, and this means that Anne will never been "seen" in her entirety in the play, something which echoes the poster design.

I think what we are leaning towards in terms of a cohesive concept is a situation in which Anne is a notable yet disappeared figure, and there are two key people who are trying to piece together her identity from the evidence she leaves behind. The second scene sounds like a couple of film execs pitching a film about Anne, and as we read through the scenes we noticed that these characters possibly pop up in later scenes, and so the context of a film about her is emerging. This brings in many of the ideas that were covered over the afternoon, that of an identity being imposed on an individual by others, of a person being packaged up and commoditised for general public consumption, which flies in the face of the contradictions inherent in all of us. It also lends itself to the multimedia style of presentation we are aiming for.

We will finish our initial exploration of the play tomorrow, when hopefully we will find our ideas becoming crystallised rather than contradicted. All in all, exciting stuff.