Spies Education Pack - Theatre Alibi · Spies Education Pack Contents ... if they are well met, will make a rich piece of theatre, ... The novel is told in his voice,

Theatre Alibi & Oxford Playhouse Spies Education Pack

Contents Theatre Alibi’s style of work

Adapting the novel

A timeline of what happens when

Practitioner Fact Files:

The Actor, The Director, The Designer, The Composer , The Stage Manager

Solving a moment in Spies Maps made in rehearsal

Stagecraft

Exercises for Storytellers

A DVD of Spies (£25) is also available from mid-March. Production photographs can be downloaded from www.theatrealibi.co.uk from mid- March

Written by Daniel Jamieson THANKS TO MIKE ALFREDS, JAMES COTTERILL, ELAINE FAULKNER, THOMAS JOHNSON, NIKKI SVED & BENJAMIN WARREN

http://www.theatrealibi.co.uk

http://www.theatrealibi.co.uk/spieseducation.php

Theatre Alibi’s Style of Work Why tell stories? We think humans need to tell stories. More than that, we think this need to tell stories is part of what makes us human, part of the unique intelligence that makes us different from other animals. Telling stories, listening to them, watching them, talking about them, thinking about them… without necessarily realising it, we’re processing our experience in a very sophisticated way when we’re doing these things. When we imagine a story we rehearse our own urges and inclinations in hypothetical scenarios, like children unconsciously practising how to behave by playing games. By “playing out” stories, we expand our sense of who we are and what choices we have in facing the challenges of our lives. If we’re constantly using stories to get an angle on a chaotic world, then as the world changes, so must our angle. Theatre Alibi is always searching for the right stories to tell and the right way to tell them to question the world as it currently stands. The way we’ve chosen to tell stories is through theatre. The immediacy of it appeals to us. In theatre the actor is present in the same room with the audience. As a result, and this is absolutely unique to theatre, a split reality is presented to the audience in which the actor is both himself, here and now, and someone else in another time and place, a character in a fictional world. When we approach our work, we try to take advantage of this split reality. We often begin shows with the actors talking directly to the audience, beginning to tell a story and then slipping from describing a character into becoming them. So unlike many theatre companies we usually choose to reveal to our audience the moment when the actor takes on their role. Because reality and fiction are a hair’s breadth apart in theatre, it encourages the sense that fiction belongs to reality – it isn’t some sort of theme park where things happen that don’t relate to reality, it’s a gift we have to perceive the richness of real experience. The proximity of real and imaginary in theatre encourages us to relate one to the other. And because theatre admits “play” into the heart of real life it might, in some small way, refresh the playfulness of our lives. In keeping with these thoughts, here are some of the ways we choose to work:

We reveal transformations: actors leap from being themselves to being a character (or several) and back again before the eyes of the audience. Simple props and set are taken up by the actors and used to suggest places and things that weren’t there before (a duvet becomes a field of snow, a walking stick becomes the rail of an ocean liner).

We develop our actors’ resources to help them suggest other characters, things and places: their

voices, dance skills, puppetry skills etc.

We enjoy working in unconventional theatre space, where audiences are made especially aware of the “here and now”.

We incorporate other artforms into our theatre to make it more effective at whisking people from the

“here and now” to the realm of the imagination: music, sculpture, photography, film etc.

We work from stories rather than scripts. This helps us remember to ask certain questions such as why are we telling these stories, and how should we be telling them? This lets us experiment in rehearsal with how the actors can best bring the audience to the particular imaginary world in question.

Theatre Alibi & Oxford Playhouse Spies

Spies: Adapting the Novel Spies was a good choice for a novel to adapt. It has the two essential ingredients you need in a book to put it on the stage - a good story and good characters. But it also has another ingredient not necessarily essential, but a gift for the adaptor - cracking dialogue. The way characters talk to each other even in some good novels can sound stilted when you put it on stage. Not so with Spies. That Michael Frayn has spent much of his career as a playwright shows in the wit, economy and believability of the talk in his novels. But that doesn’t mean it was an easy book to adapt! There were particular challenges in writing the play and there will be more in the staging of it - exciting challenges that, if they are well met, will make a rich piece of theatre, but challenges nonetheless. There’s the obvious challenge of fitting a story told in a two hundred-page novel into a two-hour stage play. There’s that difficulty with any book, but it’s particularly hard with Spies because it’s a thriller of sorts. Thrillers are full of plot and every detail is there for a reason. Tamper with their inner workings at your peril - take out the wrong part and you might stop the whole thing working. You have to cut carefully but ruthlessly, separating what’s essential from what’s merely important to the story. Also, a novelist happily sends his characters through railway tunnels, into the heart of hedges, or out on pitch black nights without the faintest consideration for poor theatre makers who want to put these things on stage! As the adaptor, it’s part of my job to avoid some of these problems on behalf of the director. Some scenes can be cut and others can be re-set, but it’s also my job to meet some of these challenges head on with the director, designer and actors, and to imagine how to show a tunnel or the inside of a hedge on stage. These things are part of a vivid piece of theatre. However, the central choice for me in how to adapt Spies was in relation to Stefan, the seventy-four year-old man from whose memory the story springs. The novel is told in his voice, which allows him to remain in a disembodied way at the heart of the story throughout the book. But what to do in a stage adaptation? You could cut Stefan completely and write a fairly straight play about a 1940s schoolboy getting out of his depth, but that would seem a shame. Such a rich aspect of the novel is how an old man remembers his twelve-year old self. His fondness and regret move us. Stefan also acts as our guide in the foreign country of the past and his interpretation of the scene is invaluable. So we chose to keep Stefan on stage throughout, bodily inhabiting the world of his memory, unable to change anything but capable at last of understanding some things he never could have at the time. This choice seems particularly appropriate in relation to the way Theatre Alibi works. The company often puts storytellers in the frame because their voice seems central to the story they have to tell. Daniel Jamieson (Adaptor)


Spies

Timetable of events

The company discuss a variety of books to adapt for a new show and

choose Spies Autumn 2006

↓ Theatre Alibi acquires the stage rights to the novel and applies for a grant

from Arts Council England to tour the show nationally January 2007

↓ Arts Council award funding and adapting the novel begins

April 2007 ↓

Tour is booked Spring/Summer 2007

↓ RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Artistic team (director, writer, designer, actors and stage manager) spend a few days trying out ideas of how the show might be staged

October 2007 ↓

Publicity designed October 2007

↓ Main rehearsal period

7th January – 22nd February 2008 ↓

Production week – lighting and sound rigged and plotted, tech and dress rehearsals at the Oxford Playhouse

18th- 22nd February 2008 ↓

First public performance of Spies 22nd February 2008

↓ National tour

February – May 2008 ↓

Feedback meeting to discuss how everything went End of May 2008


Practitioner Fact File – THE ACTOR Name: Benjamin Warren Why did you choose to be an actor? As a child I never wanted to be an actor. In fact it wasn’t a profession I ever even thought about. When I was at school I wanted to be a gardener, that’s where I did my work experience and that’s where my focus was. We’d not had the opportunity of doing drama at school and I was a very shy kid. I also had quite a bad stammer. Communicating and expressing myself weren’t things that I was able to do very well. But I did have a vivid imagination and, like the boys in this play, it often got me into trouble. Then someone came into the village where I lived, put on a play and asked me to be in it. After it was over she told me I should apply to go to drama school. I thought about it for a while and, with her support, applied. How old were you? I was 17 when I auditioned and 18 when I started. Where did you train? I decided to train at East 15 Acting School. I was there for three years and graduated in 2002. The method of teaching really inspired me and sparked my imagination. I went there knowing nothing of technique and soaked it all up like a sponge. It offered a haven in which to experiment and stretch myself. Three years in which to learn about my body, my voice and what it could offer me. Then when you leave you begin to develop the language that you were taught. There are many routes into finding a character; you just have to keep hold of the techniques that work best for you. What’s your role in the process of making Spies? To provide an onstage presence that communicates the story. Vocally, physically and how I interact with the other actors, music and the set. You start with the script. Before you come into rehearsals you’ll do a bit of work on your own, gathering information about your role in the story, but far more importantly about the play as a whole - what it’s actually about. I find it helpful not to highlight my lines. I need to see the play on the page in its entirety and not just my lines. On the first day you’ll do a line reading. At this stage I haven’t decided how to play the character. I try not to make decisions about how a line or scene should be played until I am actually on my feet and working with the other actors and the director. Then when you come to rehearse you simply start to work moment by moment. In the Alibi rehearsal room everyone works together, overcoming obstacles, coming up with ideas about how a scene could be played. In a play like this, with lots of characters, it might be as technical as, “I’ve just come off as this character and now I’ve got to be someone else, so I need to come back on as a different colour, a different flavour”. You’re offering ideas to the director. Also, you need to be open, not be fixed about what you’re going to do. The director might point your character in a certain direction. You need to be able to envisage what they want and communicate that. You might not be able to do it straightaway. I often know what the director means, I just can’t get it to come out of my body how I want it early on. That’s the point of rehearsing though, it’s the reason


you do it – building up more layers and details and colours every time you do it. What particular challenges does this show present you as an actor? The challenge I have with this show, first and foremost, is that I’m playing someone who’s twelve. For me it’s getting the balance right. I find it helpful not to concentrate on being twelve but rather on being a boy who is at a crossroads in more ways than one - the adult world is unravelling in front of his eyes and he’s in the early stages of becoming a man. With this in mind I’ve tried to find moments when Stephen is definitely a boy, but also moments of early adolescence and flashes of him as a young man. At that age things are changing. You realise that things are not as black and white as you thought. It’s an age of transition, confusion and emotions that bring with them responsibility. As actors we’re helped by the company’s style and a script that’s quite filmic. The show doesn’t go from scene to scene like a traditional play might. We jump about, creating little worlds within worlds. You can use the audience’s imagination, be someone who’s a lot older or younger than you are. I might be playing Stephen, but I’m also an actor, a storyteller. My job isn’t to convince the audience that I’m twelve, it’s to convince them of a story and take them on a journey. We all know that we’re inside a theatre but we can spark our imaginations and use that to go on the journey together. The other major challenge with this play is the need to create different worlds on stage. There are about sixty changes of location in the script – you can go from being in a hedge to someone’s front room to an elaborate dream sequence within a few seconds. Imaginatively you need to go to all these very different places quickly without really moving physically very far at all. With the screens on our set it sometimes feels like we are turning the pages of a book, which is helpful. What is particular about working for Alibi? For me it’s two things. First, you’re never limited by anything. I worked on Caught (Alibi’s 2007 spring tour). When I read that script I knew a horse could walk on stage, or that within a few seconds we could go from a radio studio to a cave and that the audience would go there with us. Theatre Alibi are never limited by the natural confines of a stage. When you step into the theatre your imagination shouldn’t be limited, anything should be able to happen, and with Alibi, I really think it can. The second thing that’s particular is the use of music. For me it’s absolutely integral to the richness of the work. It’s a wonderful extra dimension for both actor and audience. Working with music that’s been composed straight after Tom (Composer & Musical Director) has watched and worked with those of us who are devising scenes is really important.


Practitioner Fact File – THE DIRECTOR Name: Nikki Sved Why did you choose to be a director? Initially I was more interested in being a performer. But at university everyone got a chance to direct and it was then that I discovered that I could do it and I liked it, and that my interest in performing informed my directing. I carried on performing when I left university, but I think the lifestyle of a director began to appeal to me more and more – having to sell yourself day to day as a performer didn’t appeal to me very much. I would have found it difficult. Also, it’s easier as a director to follow your own path artistically. I’m now Theatre Alibi’s Artistic Director. How old were you? I went to a drama group once a week from the age of seven to eighteen. I decided to be a performer then! It was at university when I was about twenty that the question of directing entered my head, although I was given a bit of Twelfth Night at school to direct when I was fifteen and I really enjoyed that. Where/how did you train? As I said, I belonged to a drama group, which was run by an inspirational woman. I was in school plays, did Drama O Level, Theatre Studies A level, and a degree in Drama at Exeter University. My training as a performer continued at Alibi – we got the opportunity to work with an inspirational Polish theatre company called Gardzienice, and I learnt on the job from Alibi’s then Artistic Directors, Alison Hodge and Tim Spicer. What’s your role in the process of making Spies? My initial part in making the show was talking to Dan, the adaptor. Because we were adapting a novel, we first discussed how it might move from Michael Frayn’s book into a piece of theatre. What were the key elements of the book we wanted to hang on to, and also why change it into a piece of theatre? What’s exciting about that? So very early on, for example, we were discussing a suggestion that Dan made about keeping older Stefan within the piece. We’re lucky as a company to have a few days that we can spend just trying out ideas a few months before we go into the main rehearsal process. And for this show we focussed very particularly on the design. We spent about three days with two of the actors (Derek Frood & Jordan Whyte), Dan the adaptor, James the designer, Elaine, the stage manager and me looking at ways in which we might put the show on its feet and what sort of environment might suit it. We spent a lot of time looking at possible hedges and tunnels. It was from there that we moved into creating the design. So within that research process I was deciding what we should look at next and exploring ideas. I’m the co-ordinator, listening to suggestions and respecting other people’s areas of knowledge – design, writing, acting. It’s great to hear the opinion of an actor who’s going to be working on that set and a designer with the visual expertise and a writer who knows the piece inside out. So I’m co-ordinating those ideas and throwing in a few of my own too. And then I work with the designer to put those ideas into practice. It’s helpful to have the designer on board from very early on in the process. Our particular style of work means that the action on stage is very integrated with the set. This requires close collaboration between the director and the designer. As a director, I have to think very practically about what has to happen on stage. That’s a good input to the design process. Before the main rehearsal process I also discuss things with the writer that came up in the R&D. With the rehearsal process itself, a lot of the things I do are the same as in the R&D. I’m selecting what to work on and when, making sure we get through the material in time.

Theatre Alibi & Oxford Playhouse Spies I’m co-ordinating and bringing together all the elements, keeping my eye on the whole picture. Although people are throwing in ideas all the time, it’s me who gets to say yes or no to them, because it’s helpful to have one person doing that. In the end I would probably never say no to an idea if lots of people were saying yes, because I trust the people that I work with. Also, it’s my job to put my own ideas in. The other thing that I do in rehearsals is to develop performances – I help the actors to access a performance, to find the ways that characters show how they are feeling, and to discover who the characters are. My job is also to stage the scenes, to work out how to show someone getting run down by a train, but also basic things, like how to get a chair off stage at the end of a scene. Toward the end of rehearsals you have the tech week when you add the technical elements to the show. I make decisions with the Lighting Designer and the Sound Designer about how sound and light will work from moment to moment. Because I’ve been in rehearsals with the actors I know and understand the scenes. The Lighting Designer will have a very particular skill in terms of, say, having a sense of colour on stage but he doesn’t know the show as well as I do. So, in the tech, we marry the two things together - it’s a very intense and hefty job. Once the show’s opened, my job is a matter of looking at how it works with the whole additional element of audience response. You learn a huge amount from having an audience there. Often they respond in an entirely different way to how you expect. I’m in the luxurious position of being able to watch the audience and the show. I’ll watch and make notes over several nights and then we give ourselves time to make some changes in response to those first few performances. After that, I’ll be a baby-sitter for the show – I’ll go out and see it several times on tour. Often shows get better and better as actors get to know it. It’s also possible for things to go off the boil. So I go out on the tour now and again and give notes to the actors, which helps keep the show alive for them. What particular challenges does this show present to you as a director? There are various challenges that are bowled by this piece. I loved the book, it’s fascinating, rich stuff, a great story to get one’s teeth into. You really want to know what happens next. So telling the story clearly and in a way that makes the audience want to know what happens next, that’s the first challenge. There are other really specific challenges with this show. One is having an older Stefan and a younger Stephen on stage together. That offers all sorts of opportunities as a director. You can show different layers and different approaches to the same moment. For example, when younger Stephen sees the little x’s in the diary he’s completely mystified but the older Stefan knows and understands much more. Playing with those layers, thinking about when an audience might want to know about both layers, or keying into one in particular, that’s the sort of thing. Also, you can allow the older Stefan just to support the story at times, so he’s not intruding on the story, so that the audience can take in the main narrative. That feels quite a particular and delicate operation. For example, thinking about where he might be placed on the set, inside the action or further to the edge, and whether he’s talking to us while he narrates, or whether he’s looking at his younger self. These things have been a particular focus in rehearsals. The rhythm of the show is interesting with Spies. Although we’re used to shifting location very fast, this show moves incredibly quickly from scene to scene. You rarely spend more than a page of the script in one place. Geography is quite important in the piece - being in the Close, moving off through the tunnel into the wilds beyond, being inside a house, following the very particular journeys Mrs Hayward makes between the Close and Peter’s hideout. So being clear with the location in a narrative sense is important. On the other hand we also have to keep a sense of the rhythm and not

Theatre Alibi & Oxford Playhouse Spies interrupt it too much, to make sure we’re using the shifts of location to power the show along. We’ve chosen to use moving screens through the show. That’s meant quite a major choreographic job. But it offers all sorts of opportunities in terms of the quality of shift from place to place. Whether you swing a screen round quickly or very slowly, or whether you need to move them at all - maybe you just turn an actor round and they’re in a new space. There are choices to be made about the rhythm of the piece on a very regular basis because the shifts of location are so frequent. That means you’re squeezed into being inventive, which is good. The other interesting thing about directing Spies is that it became apparent very quickly that there’s a whole other story, which isn’t being told directly. What exactly is happening underneath the surface activity? What exactly is Mrs Hayward up to at any given point? When does her relationship with Peter begin, how did he come to be where he is, how is it that Mrs Hayward is taking things down there and not Auntie Dee? There’s a very clear sub-narrative. For us, in the playing of it, it’s very important to know when things are happening and then there’s a decision to make as a director as to how much you reveal of the sub-narrative. In a book you can always flick back through and see where you think something was happening but in a play you can’t. It’s a subtle question as to when you reveal what you reveal. What is particular about working for Alibi? How the work is generated in the rehearsal room feels very particular. The storytelling is very particular too, if not unique. We try to make shows where we enjoy what live theatre can offer us. You often see images being constructed rather than it happening in secret. We never switch off the lights to change the set (which often makes life difficult!). We really enjoy revealing the transformations from actor to character and from location to location. We also draw on a particularly wide breadth of forms – music, film, puppetry and our set designs are often quite sculptural.


Practitioner Fact File – THE DESIGNER Name: James Cotterill Why did you choose to be a designer? I started off doing a technical theatre course. I knew I was interested in theatre but I didn’t necessarily know I wanted to be a designer to start with. After I did my ‘A’ levels I had a year out before I went into further education. Then I found out about the technical course at RADA, which is everything that isn’t acting about theatre – it’s a bit of sound, a bit of prop-making, set painting, construction, lighting, stage management, all those kinds of things. I spent two years there and learnt a bit more about what the different jobs involved. From that I discovered that I wanted to do design. Then I worked for a couple of years in television. I got a job working in a TV art department, which is not dissimilar to theatre design - a lot of the skills are transferable. And while I did that, I did more theatre work, assisting another designer. From there I found out about the Motley postgraduate course in Theatre Design, which was a year-long intensive course. The course is based in the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in Covent Garden, a little studio space at the back of the theatre. How old were you? Nineteen or twenty, I guess, when I’d been at RADA for a year and worked a bit in each of the departments. As a student there you have lectures in the day and in the evening you work on the third-year student shows. Sometimes you’d be flying scenery, sometimes you might be operating the sound. So you got a real feel for what each of the different jobs entailed. What’s your role in the process of making Spies? My job always starts with analysing the script, trying to work out what the needs of the production are. You don’t just work out the needs of a production from the script. There are so many other factors that influence your design. Spies tours for three months, so that has an instant impact on the choices you make. Things like budget play a role, also the length of rehearsals and the duration of the show. You have to take all these things into consideration, then throw them all up in the air and hope to catch them as you begin designing the show! I find the model really crucial. Some designers communicate very well with drawings, seeing what might work and what might not. I tend to get going with a 3D model as early as possible. That means finding out about the venue and building a model of it first. Then I start to block in shapes and possibilities with bits of card. While I’m doing that I take photos because sometimes you may do something and discard it, and then come back to it later. So it’s valuable roughly to document your ideas, the journey that you go on. At the same time it’s good to start doing relevant research depending on the piece. If you’re doing a naturalistic piece it’s good to start looking at period reference. Even when you’re designing in a more abstract way I always find it helpful to start with something real and then turn it into something theatrical, into something that can work for all the different requirements of the show.


What particular challenges does this piece present you as a designer? One challenge is the touring factor, because the sizes of the theatres vary. It’s not just a matter of designing something that looks good in one space, you have to design something that will look great in twelve spaces. No matter how much you fight it, it’s something that affects the design. Not in a bad way, in a good way but it has a very definite effect. Also, this piece is very multi-locational. It’s fairly filmic in its approach - it blends from scene to scene, into one constant scene almost, only punctuated by an interval. That’s a challenge with this show, how to move seamlessly between different times and locations. What is particular about working for Alibi? One thing is that the company aims to work on the set from the first week of rehearsals. I think this has many, many benefits but it makes my job slightly harder. Getting access to the set once rehearsals have started is more difficult than in a traditional set-up where the actors and the director are in a rehearsal room with a mock-up while the set is being made elsewhere, in a workshop. But you get a really good opportunity to problem solve over a much longer period than you normally would. With the majority of the other productions that I’ve worked on, the actors haven’t got the set until the technical week in the theatre. And then you’re really pressed for time, you’ve only got four days to solve all the problems, whereas in this case we’ve got five or six weeks. Ultimately that makes for a more cohesive production. Often it’s hard for actors if you chuck them on a set four days before you open, whereas with this, everyone’s had a good opportunity to try out the stairs, get used to the size of the doorways, get used to the moving elements of the set and really had time to practice.


Practitioner Fact File – THE COMPOSER / MUSICAL DIRECTOR Name: Thomas Johnson Why did you choose to be a composer/MD? I studied English Literature at university. I’d specialised in Drama, but completely from an academic point of view. And I hadn’t actually done any theatre at all prior to that. But I’ve been a musician since I was six years old. I came out of university thinking, “What the hell do I do now?” By pure chance my cousin was working with a touring circus that summer and he said, “Do you fancy just joining in for a laugh for the summer?” My cousin and I had been playing music together since we were children so I thought yeah, why not, it’ll be good fun to do that for a while after college. So I went and toured South West England with the circus, with my cousin, playing mad music. At the end of that summer it just came together in my mind that I’d been really interested in Drama from an academic perspective at University for three years and I’d been a musician since I was six, but doing music with this circus just made something happen in my brain. I thought, this is what I want to do - I want to do theatre in a practical sense but bring my musical skills and experience to bear. How old were you? I was twenty-four, something like that. Where did you train? I did English at Oxford University, but I had no formal music training as a composer. I started on the violin at the age of six. I went through the process of a classical training. Then, when I was twelve, I bought a guitar and taught myself how to play. Much later when I was 24 or so, I learnt the accordion for a theatre show, and I’ve ended up playing the accordion quite a lot since then. But fiddle is my first instrument still. What’s your role in the process of making Spies? The first thing I have to do is read the script. Not particularly carefully, just read it to get the general sense of it. Then I have to decide what musical instruments to use. That’s the very beginning of the job and in a way it’s harder than it sounds. Within that decision I start also to think about the style – whether or not there’s going to be period music, whether or not it’s going to be geographically specific to where the play is set, is it going to have a folky feel, a classical feel, a jazzy feel, talking very broadly. Then I have to find the musicians and employ them, which takes ages. This is all quite a long way ahead of time, before the production starts to rehearse. Then I’ll read the script again but this time, very much more thoroughly, so I really get the shape of it and the rhythm of it. I’m looking at this point for where the music should go in the play, picking moments where I think there’s a gear change in the dynamic of the play, the rhythm of it. I go all the way through the script marking where music goes and also what it might feel like. While I’m doing that I start to get a sense of different themes that build up throughout the whole show. And I’ll start to make those decisions when I read the script. I’m not particularly thinking what the music is at that point, more like titles. That’s all done before we start rehearsing. When we start rehearsing, I write the music. I don’t write any music until the first day of rehearsals because I want the music to be completely integral to the whole process. I don’t want to go off on a tangent that isn’t useful for the show, so I make sure I’m constantly writing music in response to what I’m seeing in rehearsals.


The writing of the music takes two and a half to three weeks normally, but in this case it’s taken five weeks! The writing process is a combination. First I’ll sit in rehearsals watching the actors work with the director, taking notes about how long scenes are lasting, the feel of the scenes and how the music might work. Then I’ll go away and write some music and teach it to the musicians and help them find the right interpretation. Then the musicians and I will go in to the rehearsals and place music into a particular scene. That happens back and forth through the whole rehearsal process. There comes a point when you’ve got to the end of the play when you go back to the beginning and tighten it all up. The director does that as well, but my job is to make all the music sound nice and make sure the actors and the musicians know how the music works with the text. Also, I tighten up all the cue points and make sure it’s all flowing with a really good rhythm. Then the show opens and my job after the show opens is to take thousands of notes. That’s to help the musicians and the actors know where they’re making mistakes, whether a particular piece of music could be louder or whether they could hold back the moment to start it, for example, lots of really detailed things. I’ll do that on the first and second night. Then I’ll come back half way through the tour and do another load of notes and then that’s the end of my job! What particular challenges does this show present to you as a composer/MD? A big challenge with this script has been that there are a lot of stage directions. The proportion between stage directions and dialogue is much more balanced towards stage directions than with most plays I’ve done. Normally when I’m scoring a scene, I can get a lot of clues from dialogue before I see it being rehearsed. Usually I already know more or less where I’m going with a particular piece of music when it’s set to a particular bit of text. But with this play I haven’t been able to second-guess the dynamic of the scene until I’ve actually seen it being done in the rehearsal room because so much of the play doesn’t have words. So much of it is about moving, going to the tunnel, going to The Barns and The Lanes, moving the hedge into position, stuff like that. So there have been a lot of timing issues with this show for me, knowing exactly how long it takes for particular things to happen. But that’s also exciting because it’s even more like writing music to a film than it usually is. Quite often films have comparatively little dialogue compared to what’s actually going on. So it’s given me a lot of opportunities to write music. Actually, I was looking yesterday and this show has got a record number of cues for me. I don’t think I’ve ever written as much music for any show as this one. Another related challenge is that the play cuts a lot between locations. The boys, Stephen and Keith, make lots of journeys from the Close to the tunnel to the Lanes and back again, and quite often there might be three changes of location on one page! I have to make it clear for the audience what locations we’re in very quickly. And at the same time I have to keep the music feeling like it’s got a rhythm, not chopped up and bitty, so it’s got a through-line even though it moves very fast through different locations. That’s probably the biggest challenge that this show’s given me. The moonlight scene when we meet Peter for the first time was particularly hard in that respect because I had to get Stefan and Stephen to the tunnel, I had to get the moon to come out, the moon to go in and then come out again and reveal Peter, and to create the exciting moment when they are aware that Peter’s behind them and then he runs away. It’s a really complicated cue. That took a long time for me to write because I had to make it one, whole piece of music, not itsy-bitsy but still reflecting all those changes.


What is particular about working for Alibi? It’s a lovely company to work with. Very friendly. Very organised. There’s a lot of technical support, a lot of people around to help you. Sometimes I’m working with a company and I feel in a bit of a vacuum. There might not be anyone who can go out and find me CDs or a piece of music I want to hear, for example. There’s a lot of support at Alibi. Stylistically, I suppose, Alibi is much more a storytelling company than most companies I’ve worked with. Which is interesting for me, because it’s subtly different to what I’m used to. I find that exciting.


Practitioner Fact File – THE STAGE MANAGER Name: Elaine Faulkner Why did you choose to be a stage manager? A few things happened around the same time when I was at school that led me to want to be a stage manager. I took part in the local, amateur pantomime because my granddad was involved with the sets. I got to go backstage and had a few jobs like putting Aladdin’s lamp on in the blackout. I really enjoyed doing that. At the same time, we were doing a school production of Oliver. I had a small part performing in it, which I enjoyed, but I always knew I wouldn’t want to act as a career. I also found myself helping backstage, because loads of the younger children were being the orphans, and I found myself saying, “I really like this!” to my drama teacher and said that I’d been helping at the pantomime as well. She sent off for a brochure for me about the stage management courses that Mountview offer. I remember reading it and thinking, “Wow, that sounds great but I’ll never get to do it.” We had “pastoral” time at school during which we spent half an hour in our so-called “careers library”. This was actually just a room full of folders with information in. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. The only idea I’d had was teaching so I went for the “Education” folder but it had gone and the one next to it was “Entertainment”. I thought, “I like drama, I’ll look at that.” In the Television and Theatre section, there was a paragraph on being a stage manager. I remember thinking how it brought together all the different areas that I liked to be involved in. How old were you? I think I was fifteen. Quite young really, to get such a specific idea of what I wanted to do. But it did just make a lot of sense. Where did you train? I did a BTEC at Exeter College in performing arts. Then I ended up going to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. I did their two-year Stage Management course. It was a really good place to go. They’re quite traditional in how they teach - it’s quite “back-to-basics”. Some people had more experience of lighting, which I didn’t know very much about, but they took everyone back to the same level and started from the beginning. The great thing about the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School is that you work to put on shows and there are two shows a term, quite big shows. These shows are entirely student produced, just with supervision from your tutors really. The student actors perform in the shows and they have student set designers and costume designers and makers, and student stage management. You all learn off each other. Because you’re being stretched to quite a high level, it makes the transition to working in the professional world surprisingly easy. What’s your role in the process of making Spies? During the rehearsal process a stage manager’s role is a lot about communication. Because the creative team is divided into lots of different departments - rehearsals and props and lighting and sound and costumes…


it’s very easy for them to carry on separately getting things done, but they all affect each other. So my job is making sure everyone knows what each other are doing. The department I’m probably most involved in is props. Whatever scale of theatre you’re working in, stage management is traditionally involved in props and furniture. But at Theatre Alibi, you’re very involved in everything. Then I need to be ready for the show to go from the rehearsal room into the theatre – I have to make sure the venues we’re going into know about the show, what we need, and what’s coming to them. And then once the show’s actually running, my job is more literally “managing the stage”, making sure the show runs smoothly, that the actors are on time and that they haven’t got any problems with their props, doing last minute mends if they break something two minutes before they go on or rip their costume. Then during the day on tour I have to do any longer term prop and costume maintenance, make sure the actors know where they’re supposed to be and when, make travel arrangements, make sure I’ve got all the accommodation information for everybody, phoning ahead if needs be. My job with other companies has been cueing the show but because of the way we’re working Marcus, the Technical Manager, will actually be cueing the show, or he’ll be cueing himself because he’ll be operating the show. Normally on a larger scale show you would have someone who works at the theatre, a local person, operating the lights and sound, and then you as the touring stage manager cue the show because you know it. Marcus will be doing the tech work and I’ll be on stage, on hand to help with smaller things, although we’ll still be in communication. The people out the front in the control box are much better eyes. When things are going wrong they can see it coming a bit sooner. It’s quite important to be able to talk to him. One of the big things to say about being a stage manager is that it’s a very flexible job, what you find yourself doing day to day can really vary. It’s very rarely what you planned at the start of the day. You do have to be able to adapt. What particular challenges does this show present you as a stage manager? The budget on this show is quite challenging because Alibi have been quite ambitious. Alibi is a small-scale company with a small-scale budget doing quite a decent sized, mid-scale show. So we have to get the most out of the budget to do what we want to do. That can be quite a big part of the job, managing the budget. Sometimes you feel like you’re saying no to people’s creativity and that’s the last thing you want to do. You can only do the job if you’re interested in theatre. I think you really need to care about a show and want to make it as good as it can be. For me personally this show is a challenge because although I’ve previously done a lot of bigger theatre, I’ve got more responsibility in this job than I’ve had before. So that’s a challenge. But any show is a challenge. It’d be boring if weren’t. What’s particular about working for Alibi? One of the main things about working for Alibi is that it’s a very friendly company. It’s obvious that they care about people. It makes a difference - you’d be surprised how badly some much bigger companies treat people. When I did my first show for Alibi, it was so nice, several weeks in advance, to get loads of information – the script, a schedule, a bit about Theatre Alibi. It


made me think, actually, I’ve never had that before! Sometimes I’ve had to get on the phone the week before saying, “Can I have a script before the read-through please?” One of the nice things about Alibi’s process is that it happens quite organically, for example the way that the design process and the rehearsal process happen alongside each other. Sometimes some elements take a bit of getting used to, like having to get the set in the rehearsal room from day one. That presents a whole host of challenges, like having to finish building the set in the rehearsal room, which is very unusual. With most other theatre companies, the actors and director don’t see the set until they walk into the technical rehearsal. Having the set earlier is better for the style of work Alibi do because actors manipulate the set.


SOLVING A MOMENT IN SPIES Towards the end of the novel, not only does young Stephen fail to get a basket of supplies from Mrs Hayward to the mysterious, ailing fugitive holed up on waste ground through the railway tunnel, he lets the basket fall into the hands of Mr Hayward. Even with his childish grasp of what’s going on, he realises he’s caused terrible harm. In bed that night his mind churns with anxiety. Everything’s getting more and more confused inside my head. I’m haunted by the dark figure who’s simultaneously falling through the moonless night and lying on the bare earth in a strange country, dying of cold and hunger… He was dying down there in the damp, subterranean gloom, and Keith’s mother was nursing him, her bright arms round the fading ghost, even as Keith and I were hammering on the corrugated iron above his head. Stephen is racked with guilt at not helping him and a sense of the airman’s impending death prompts in Stephen a terrible intimation of his own mortality for the first time in his life. The book captures perfectly the way in which, in a dream, a feeling can overtake you without any actual event occurring. But however true to life this feels, it isn’t very theatrical! Theatre needs something to happen for us to share it. So, in the rehearsal draft of the script I tried to convert these amorphous, night-time feelings into dream-like actions that would have more theatrical substance. I made Stephen get out of bed and look at Mrs Hayward nursing the airman in his underground shelter. When Mrs Hayward asks Stephen for help, he can’t deal with it and shuts them away under a piece of corrugated iron. As in the novel, the script has Stephen seeking comfort in his parents’ bed. But in the script, Stephen’s fear takes concrete shape in the form of the ghostly airman. He visits the bedroom, his face obscured by a sinister flying helmet and mask and closes Stephen in a grave made by his sleeping parents with the corrugated iron roof of his shelter. Then the airman hammers on the metal with an iron bar as Stephen and Keith did on his shelter. With this skull-like mask, the airman seemed the perfect figure of death. When we set about staging the moment in rehearsals, Stephen seeing Mrs Hayward and the airman in the pit and closing them away felt right, as did climbing into his parents’ bed. It’s such a universal memory, climbing in between your mum and dad after a nightmare. But in practice, the airman hammering on the corrugated iron felt too violent and antagonistic. Also, the face-mask seemed excessive and, worse, potentially funny! Previously, Stephen’s only glimpse of the airman has been on a dark night with a rough scarf over his head. So it seemed simpler and less confusing to have him appear in the dream dressed like that.


In the end we settled for a simple option. We’ve kept the nightmarish appearance of the airman in mum and dad’s bedroom and he still closes Stephen between his parents with a sheet of metal. This seems powerful enough without banging on it and reflects Stephen’s feeling of being closed in a grave from the book: Now the dying man’s not him but me. It comes to me with terrible force that one day I’m going to be lying in my coffin, deep in the earth. This very body of mine that’s lying here tormented in the darkness will become lifeless stuff, held tight between the narrow wooden walls on either side, trapped by the lid pressing down on my chest and face… I scream and scream but no sound emerges, because I’m dead and deep below the earth. For ever.


Maps Made in Rehearsals – Spies Because a sense of place is so important in the novel, and because Michael Frayn had obviously worked out the relative location of everything in the story with such precision, we found it hugely valuable in rehearsals to map out for ourselves the world of the story. Here are copies of the maps we made. The first is of The Close where Stephen lived. The second is a broader overview, showing the area beyond the tunnel, The Lanes and The Barns, as well as the little corner of suburbia where the Close is.situated.



SPIES: STAGECRAFT The action in the novel returns frequently to a few, significant places. Three of these are: Stephen and Keith’s lookout in Mrs Durrant’s overgrown privet hedge; the tunnel under the railway near Stephen’s house and the fugitive’s underground shelter. How is it possible to show these places on stage?

1. The Hedge Hedges are a recurring motif in the story of Spies. At the beginning, Stefan is disappointed to find they’ve all gone from the Close. He mourns their loss as guardians of some sort of old-fashioned gentility. It’s the memory of these lovely old hedges that propels Stefan into the heart of his past. One of these hedges, the overgrown privet outside an empty house gutted by an incendiary, was to be the lookout from which he and Keith spied on Keith’s mother. Then, later, this lookout became a haven in which several intimate, “privet” encounters took place. After much discussion with the set designer we’ve ended up with two, large folding screens that hinge out from the sides of the set to represent all our hedges. These screens have emblematic hedges painted on the front and one door and one large, folding flap in each. This allows the hedges to be completely folded away at the beginning and hidden from view. When Stefan is transported into the past the hedge/screens unfold in front of him and quickly move into a succession of configurations to be all his neighbours’ different hedges. Stephen and Keith’s lookout is made by pulling one or both of the hedge/screens across the stage and opening a flap. Then the boys sit behind it, peering out. They look as if they’re in a bunker or hide of some sort, which is entirely appropriate. Later, when the lookout becomes a haven for Stephen’s illicit meetings with Barbara Berrill and Mrs Hayward, the actors sit downstage, in front of the hedge/screens, peering through the flap upstage. Occasionally we glimpse the legs of significant passers-by. Finally, when Keith attacks Stephen with a bayonet it happens downstage of the screen with the flap shut, giving the hedge an enclosed, claustrophobic feeling. 2. The Tunnel In the book the tunnel leads through a railway embankment to a forgotten pocket of farmland and waste ground beyond. This tunnel is important as a gateway to a wilderness where all the darker, more mysterious events in the story take place. It also takes on metaphorical significance as a threshold beyond which the wilder reaches of human nature are explored. Originally we talked about the actors making the tunnel with mobile arches for either end. In this way you could enter the tunnel both ways, turn the tunnel sideways and reveal people travelling through it etc. Eventually, however, the designer incorporated a tunnel mouth into the set.


The tunnel itself is about eight feet deep with a backlit screen at the far end to represent the tunnel mouth at the other end. In the show, when coming from the Close, the characters always approach the tunnel from upstage, appearing in silhouette against the backlit screen, emerging downstage into “the wild side”. The stairs on either side of the tunnel mouth serve as the embankment in which the box is hidden and up which the boys climb to the railway line. 3. The Underground Shelter It’s important in the story that the shelter the fugitive has made for himself is underground. More and more it comes to feel like a living grave, which he has prematurely entered. But how do you make a hole in the stage?! The only useful enclosed space on stage is the tunnel. The designer suggested closing this space with doors to make it double up as a shelter. The doors are made from ingeniously perforated metal sheets. When they are lit from the outside they’re opaque, but when the area behind them is lit the doors magically become see-through. This allows us to glimpse the fugitive “underground” as if a huge cross-section has been cut through the earth. A hatch has been put in the roof of the tunnel, which allows Stephen to peer down into the shelter and lets light fall onto the fugitive as he lies at the bottom of the pit.

EXERCISES FOR STORYTELLERS The following series of exercises for storytellers is taken from a theatre paper written by Mike Alfreds in 1979 called A Shared Experience: The Actor as Storyteller, unfortunately now out of print. He has kindly allowed us to reproduce this excerpt for you. Theatre Alibi takes a great deal of inspiration from the ideas expressed in this document. We hope you get some inspiration from them too. Also, here is a list of fundamental questions about storytelling we ask people when we run workshops on the subject. These questions can be applied to individuals and to society at large:

• Why tell stories?

• When do we tell stories?

• Where do we tell stories?

• How do we tell stories?

• What stories do we tell?

FOR SOLO STORYTELLERS (Suitable for narrators, outside the action, of a story when the narrative is in the third person. Either with a text or improvised)

1. Tell a story, relying totally on vocal expressiveness. Decide on a clearly defined response you want to get from your audience; have a definite attitude to the story. Explore the vocal techniques, which will achieve your aims.

2. Tell a story using gesture. There seem to be four basic purposes for gesturing:

a) Illustrating b) Commenting c) Responding d) Contacting Illustrating – acting out or duplicating what is being said creates either an intensification of an image or a deliberately naïve, highly coloured one. The way in which the story-teller carries out his illustration may possibly give another texture or nuance to the verbal information. Commenting – implies strong attitudes and value judgments on the part of the story-teller to what he is narrating – gestures of approval, disapproval, made for an entirely didactic purpose. Responding – the other side of the coin to Commenting is the spontaneous reaction to the story he is telling with which he may identify or become subjectively involved. Contacting – gestures are those used to make sure the audience follows the story to the narrator’s satisfaction; also to emphasise details. Of course these techniques can overlap; for example, a gesture of illustrating which is also coloured by an emotional response. However, the point of the exercise is to isolate and work on one technical problem at a time. The same text or story should be used each time. IMPORTANT: gesturing is not confined to the hands and arms alone; search for all sorts of body and facial gestures. To clarify this, try telling stories with National stereotypes as your story – teller: Italian, American, Chinese…….

3. Tell a story using sound effects: a) made vocally and bodily

b) with objects available in the immediate vicinity e.g. the floor c) made with musical instruments.

EXERCISES FOR SOLO STORYTELLERS USING FIRST PERSON NARRATION

1. Tell a story, emotionally reliving the experience narrated. 2. Tell a story, emotionally responding to your past experience from the

vantage of the present

3. Try to tell the same story with a blend of these two emotional standpoints.

EXERCISES FOR SOLO STORYTELLERS USING THIRD – PERSON NARRATIVE BUT IN WHICH THEY WILL FUNCTION AS BOTH NARRATOR AND CHARACTERS

1. Tell a story, characterising the protagonists, whenever there is dialogue. The changes from narrative (as yourself) to dialogue and back should be sharply defined.

2. Do the same exercise, this time giving the narrative (from yourself) a very strong attitude, preferably conflicting with the characters’ views of themselves and their situations. Try to make your transitions between opposing or differing attitudes clear.

3. For emotional changes, see the trampoline exercises already described.

4. Describe a character, starting from the outside (from yourself quite objectively) but gradually, during the narrative, transform yourself into the character so that by the end of the description you are totally in character. It should be possible for an observer to pin-point the moment you stopped ‘being yourself’ and became the character. (Note: this is always using a third-person narrative)

5. To refine these exercises describe, as a narrator, the character critically – but as the character, sympathetically.

6. Both “show” a character while simultaneously “commenting” upon him. 7. Tell a story, suggesting the change of environment, mood or

atmosphere which occur as the story unfolds.

All these exercises are designed to create physical, vocal, mental and emotional flexibility as well as the ability to change focus. They should be done with the greatest economy possible. You should eventually find that the subtlest inner change (of attitude or emotion) should affect you physically and vocally. Always make sure you know what effect you want to have on your audience. Ultimately, as a story-teller or narrator, your focus must be on the audience and not on yourself. EXERCISES FOR NARRATORS OUTSIDE THE ACTION OF A STORY AND ACTORS CREATING CHARACTERS WITHIN A STORY Improvised Stories

1. Narrator initiates story which the actors take up and fulfil to the best of their imaginations, always keeping within the structure created by the narrator. There must be strong awareness between the actors and the narrator so that he allows them enough space to develop what he has given them and they, in turn, allow him to continue his function.

(Beginners tend to turn narrative into straight ‘dialogue’ scenes). Clarify the terms of the exercise before you start – for example, will the actors create their own dialogue or will they only repeat the dialogue provided by the narrator. The narrator must remember that he has a double focus: on the actors AND audience.

2. A variation of the above : the actors/ characters develop ideas and suggestions initiated by the narrator but can take them in directions of their own; the narrator improvises on their developments in order to keep the narrative flowing. Again, both narrator and actors must be very sensitive to each other and the logical flow of the story.

Improvised or using a text

3. A narrator decides to tell a story in particular style or manner; the actors – as the characters in the action – try to perform their roles in the manner which they think is implied. (There should be no discussion before the exercise begins; the actors only have to respond to the narrator). A second narrator then treats the same story in a totally different way. The actors must try to carry this out. And so on. A more difficult exercise than it may sound. It is imperative that the narrator knows exactly what he wants to achieve. (An interesting point; texts often offer themselves to more justifiable treatments than one might initially expect. For the sake of the exercise, the narrator can choose a ‘style’ which is clearly not suitable to the story).

EXERCISES FOR NARRATORS SHARING A STORY. The main point is to develop sensitivity between partners. It is also vital to clarify functions e.g.

a) The main narrator with an understanding supporter who eagerly adds details he feels have been understated or ignored.

b) two narrators with totally different viewpoints refute each other’s views: (sections of the narrative can be divided between them in advance or left to improvisation).

c) One narrator tells the story; the other provides all the sound-effects, illustrations, gestures etc.

An extension of these exercises are those for group narration. The sequence is improvised; each narrator wants to contribute but must not trample on the narrative of others.

a) group narration trying to help and support each other b) group narration trying to prevent each other from narrating But the narrative must never become confused or blurred.

POSSIBLE SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN STORYTELLERS AND AUDIENCE

1. Story-tellers tell a story in such a way that the audience is required to move: e.g. whispering so that they must move closer to hear; creating a story amongst them so that they must give up space.

2. They tell a story from a position which might create the maximum impact for that

particular story on the audience e.g. above the audience, below the audience, distant from the audience, very close to the audience, all around the audience, with the audience around them.

3. Storytellers use audience as part of their story: e.g. crowds in streets, courtiers.

4. Storytellers move freely amongst audience eliminating any established acting area while they tell story.

5. Several actors narrate story consecutively from different focal points around or within

the audience.

6. Several actors, individually and simultaneously, form clusters with audience to tell their own story; or different sections of the same story so that various parts of the audience learn the whole story in different sequences.

POSSIBLE NARRATOR/ CHARACTER RELATIONSHIPS 1. Narrator and characters have no contact.

2. Narrator comments on characters; points them out; walks amongst them

3. Narrator comments on characters; characters do not react; characters can comment

on “comments” of the narrator amongst themselves or to the audience, but do NOT relate to narrator.

4. Characters comment or relate to Narrator and his story about them and/or his

‘narrative technique’; narrator does NOT react; or he MAY react.

5. Narrator addresses characters directly at high moment, i.e. he gets caught up with them emotionally: “How brave you were!”

6. Characters react LIKE audience to the narrator and his story about them.

7. Characters, willingly or unwillingly, adjust to narrator’s emphases.

8. Narrator adjusts to character’s behaviour and attitudes, should it conflict with his.

Permission to reprint extract from Theatre Papers ed. Peter Hulton courtesy Dartington College of Arts & Mike Alfreds.

Documents

Spies Education Pack - Theatre Alibi · Spies Education Pack Contents ... if they are well met, will make a rich piece of theatre, ... The novel is told in his voice,