byDaniel Jamieson

Education Pack

From left: Musician Finn Beames, Jordon Whyte as Gwyneth, Michael Wagg as Goucher. Photo of man with amphibian breathing apparatus © The National Archives

ContentsTheatre Alibi’s Style of Work .............................................................................. 3Ideas behind the Show by the Writer .................................................................. 4The Research & Development Process .................................................................. 6A Conversation with Director Nikki Sved ............................................................ 7Inhabiting Goucher An interview with Michael Wagg .......................................... 8The Design An interview with Trina Bramman .................................................... 11The Music An interview with Thomas Johnson .................................................... 13The Animation An interview with Tim Britton .................................................. 14Solving a Moment ............................................................................................ 16Practitioner Fact Files:

The Composer .................................................................................................... 17The Designer ...................................................................................................... 18The Director .................................................................................................... 20Exercises for Storytellers .................................................................................... 22

Written & compiled by Daniel JamiesonPhotos by Steve TannerThanks to Trina Bramman, Tim Britton, Thomas Johnson, Nikki Sved & Michael Wagg Cover image: Photograph of Michael Wagg by Marcus Ginns Image & Design: Joe Pieczenko www.pieczenko.com

A DVD is available from Theatre Alibi at £18 + vatThe script and production photographs can be downloaded from www.theatrealibi.co.uk

Exercises for Storytellers: Extract from Theatre Papers ed. Peter Hulton courtesy of Dartington College of Arts & Mike Alfreds.Images and pages taken from the Descriptive Catalogue of Special Devices and Supplies compiled & issued by The War Office 1944,reprinted as: The Secret Agent’s Handbook. Images courtesy of The National Archives

Theatre Alibi, Emmanuel Hall, Emmanuel Road, Exeter EX4 1EJ +fax 01392 217315 info@theatrealibi.co.uk www.theatrealibi.co.uk

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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 verysophisticated way when we’re doing these things. When we imagine a story we rehearse our own urges and inclinationsin 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 usingstories to get an angle on achaotic world, then as theworld changes, so mustour angle. Theatre Alibi isalways searching for theright stories to tell and theright way to tell them toquestion the world as itcurrently stands.

The way we’ve chosen totell stories is throughtheatre. The immediacy ofit appeals to us. In theatrethe actor is present in thesame room with theaudience. As a result, andthis is absolutely unique totheatre, a split reality is presented to the audience in which the actor is both himself, here and now, and someone else inanother time and place, a character in a fictional world. When we approach our work, we try to take advantage of thissplit reality. We often begin shows with the actors talking directly to the audience, beginning to tell a story and then slippingfrom describing a character into becoming them. So unlike many theatre companies we usually choose to reveal to ouraudience 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. Fictionisn’t some sort of theme park where things happen that don’t relate to reality – it’s a gift we have to perceive the richnessof real experience. And because theatre admits “play” into the heart of real life it might, in some small way, refresh theplayfulness 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 beforethe eyes of the audience. Simple props and set are taken up by the actors and used to suggest places and things thatweren’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 incorporate other art forms into our theatre to make it more effective at whisking people from the “here andnow” to the realm of the imagination: music, sculpture, photography, film etc.

© 2009 Anglo-German Historical Trust

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Ideas Behind the Showby Daniel Jamieson

Theatre Alibi had commissioned me to come up with a bundle of suggestionsfor what their next show could be about. I had nearly finished but wanted onelast idea so I was browsing the History shelves in the Library for inspirationwhen I came across a book about the Special Operations Executive duringthe Second World War. SOE was a secret organisation set up to helpresistance movements all over Nazi-occupied Europe by providing supportand equipment. It would parachute special agents behind enemy lines withequipment for sabotage and espionage. The agents would then help resistancemovements to aggravate the Nazis with carefully planned mayhem.

The book that I had found was an edited highlights of SOE’s “DescriptiveCatalogue of Special Devices and Supplies”, their summary of all the secretequipment they’d developed. As I flicked through it, I couldn’t believe it wasn’t a work of fiction. It reminded me ofthe part in every James Bond film when Q shows Bond the latest extraordinary gadgets he’s developed in his lab.Here were detailed descriptions and pictures of exploding torches, bicycle pumps, books, cigarettes, Chianti bottles,dead rats and cowpats. There was super-strength itching powder, cream to mist glass permanently, inflatable armchairsin which to hide secret radios, bars of soap and shaving brushes that would burst into flames on use and much, muchmore.

I was fascinated by the imagination shown in these gadgets. The thinking behind them seemed not only wildly inventivebut also to show a distinctly absurd sense of humour. They reminded me of the inventions in the drawings of thecartoonist Heath Robinson. And yet the humorous flavour of the gadgets seemed grossly at odds with their lethalintentions and the indiscriminate way that some of them might take effect. How could it be certain that an explodingbicycle pump would find itself in the hands of a German soldier and not those of a French child?

Much of this equipment was developed at a secret research establishment in a former hotel called The Frythe inHertfordshire. SOE took it over and called it Station IX, and crammed it with scientists and technicians. People whoworked there described its uniquely creative atmosphere:

“You had an awful lot of people there, civilians as well as service people,who were incredibly brainy and they were all working on differentaspects of various things. Extraordinary characters, who strutted aboutwith books in their hands and pencils in their pockets and wouldn’t talkto you, all with their funny ideas of how things should be done.” SUB-

LIEUTENANT HARVEY BENNETTE, TEST SUBMARINER

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The Writer Daniel Jamieson

The technical skill with which these devices were realised is awe-inspiring, but I couldn’t help wondering how theywere coming up with the ideas in the first place. Surely the type of intelligence that dreams up an exploding cowpatis not the same as that which can make one work. Who was coming up with these gloriously hair-brained notions? Inactual fact, it seems many of the ideas were suggested by agents and resistance fighters, but there were certainlymany creative people, such as Ian Fleming, who were commissioned by the War Office to dream up ingeniousundercover operations. I started to imagine that there might have been a specific person at The Frythe whose soletask it was to imagine crazy new ways of sabotaging the Nazis, someone with an imagination like Heath Robinson’s.This person would be the central character of our story. I pictured this person as rather an innocent soul, possessedof a mischievous sense of humour but a bit naïve about the use to which his ideas might be put. I imagined him as theReverend Donald Goucher, a country priest and children’s author who comes to the attention of SOE because of his

books about a fiendishly intelligent pig called Hiawyn.

To make Goucher a priest seemed useful. In our story, whenhe discovers that his ideas are going to be used to developbooby traps that will maim or kill whoever comes acrossthem, he is tormented with moral confusion. This reflects thedoubts that some people who actually worked at The Frythefelt at the time:

“Some of the things we did could be termedatrocities. They couldn’t be termed warfare – notblowing up people with torches. I didn’t lose muchsleep about it but to my mind we were maimingpeople, we were taking away their hands or theirarms, their means of sustenance. Quite honestly thissort of thing was in my mind in those days… I stillremember being in this shed, doing these jobs…knowing what was likely to happen as a result andnot quite liking it.” JACK KNOCK, SOE TECHNICIAN

The Church only sanctions the resort to war if it satisfies certain moral conditions. One is that innocent people andnon-combatants should not be harmed. Another is that only an appropriate sort of force be used. During the SecondWorld War, much to Churchill’s annoyance, Bishop Bell famously questioned in the Lords the moral validity ofindiscriminate bombing of German cities area by area, whether they contained military targets or not:

“Why is there this inability to reckon with the moral and spiritual facts? Why is there this forgetfulness of theideals by which our cause is inspired? How can the War Cabinet fail to see that this progressive devastation ofcities is threatening the roots of civilisation? How can they be blind to the harvest of even fiercer warring anddesolation…?” BISHOP BELL OF CHICHESTER

To have our man Goucher share this sense of moral questioning seemed very important to me.

However, what SOE got up to during the war seemed fascinating subject matter for a play to me precisely becauseit wasn’t morally straightforward. SOE was set up because Britain felt their backs were against the wall and thatdesperate measures were called for. Moral qualms can be argued to be a luxury of peacetime. The grisly task ofimagining new ways to strike at the enemy can hardly have been undertaken lightly:

“The whole reason for us being there was to be creative and to protect the people who were doing the awfulstuff, trying to get at the enemy.” MARJORIE HINDLEY, SOE TECHNICIAN

The retort at the time to Bishop Bell’s passionate speech in the Lords was that, brutal as such a tactic of area bombingseemed, its avowed aim was to end the war as soon as possible, and by so doing, to reduce the ultimate toll ofsuffering for the people of Europe.

There is undeniable weight to that argument. When one is attacked, one looks for the quickest way to end the fight.But it seems that war is a dirty business, however legitimate its aims. All involved are drawn into a cycle of brutalityfrom which no-one escapes with their sense of moral certainty intact. Reading about the ingenious anti-personnelweapons developed by SOE, I couldn’t avoid the feeling that the human imagination is somehow corrupted when co-opted to dreaming up such things. Surely it must be the lowest use to which the human mind can be put, toimagine new ways to destroy other human beings.

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The Research and Development ProcessMonths before rehearsals for a show begin Theatre Alibi have a period of research and development to kick off thebusiness of turning a script into a living, breathing piece of theatre. We get together as many of the people who willbe working on a show – the writer, director, musical director, designer, lighting designer, sound designer and actors– to try things out in a creative and playful atmosphere, away from the pressures of production.

What’s the R&D for?

* To discuss the meaning and flavour of the story so everyone has a shared sense of what it’s about

* To discover any bits of the script that need further development

* To have a go at staging some of the more challenging moments in the story

* To give the director, designer, musical director and lighting designer an overall flavour of the show and to indicateany specific jobs the set, music and lights need to do to tell the story

* To gain a better understanding of the technical aspects of the show for example, lighting and projection

What happens in the R&D?1 At the beginning there is a “read-through” of the script. Everyone sits round in a big circle and reads the

play out loud without doing any of the action.

2 Discussion. For a good chunk of the first day, everyone talks about the story. This discussion is oftenstructured in the following way: First everyone splits into four or five groups and each group writes downall the things they think the story is about on a large piece of paper. Then everyone gets back togetherand compares notes. Next, each group draws a “graph” of the story. First they think what over-riding,yes-or-no question the story is asking the audience. For example, will Donald Goucher find happiness, orwill he do the right thing, or will Hiawyn triumph etc? Then, on a large piece of paper, they draw adiagram with the events of the story along a horizontal axis and “yes” at the top and “no” at the bottomof a vertical axis. On this diagram they plot a graph, deciding how close to yes or no the answer to thequestion is at each moment of the story. This gives a pictorial sense of the highs and lows and the ups anddowns of the show.

3 For the rest of the week the director works with the actors, playing with different ways of staging thetrickier moments in the show. These moments might be when what happens in the script can’t literallybe shown on stage. For example, when Dot ignites some metallic sodium, or when Goucher looks atDot’s burnt body, or when he breaks a special agent’s neck with his bare hands. Or they might bemoments when we want to show something physically that is invisible or intangible in real life. Forexample, a glimpse of someone’simagination working, or anightmare unfolding, or the feel of the pages of history turning.

The aim of the R&D week isn’t to solvecompletely all the difficult moments in a show,but to get a rough sense of the right approach.From these rough solutions everyone can geta sense of the emerging style of the show thatwill be developed during the main rehearsalprocess a few months later.

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Jordan Whyte as Dot

A Conversation with Director Nikki Sved

Why tell this story?There are a raft of reasons. One is that the historical material on which thestory is based is terribly engaging in itself. The sort of things that SOE got up toduring the war almost beggar belief. On one hand the level of ingenuity isastounding – the degree of peculiar invention that has gone into the variousdevices that are being used, from exploding books to shaving brushes that burstinto flames on contact with water. But on the other hand it’s horrifying thatthese things that seem to belong in a joke shop are actually being used to killand maim people. So, simply introducing people to the idea that these thingstook place is one reason to tell the story.

Also, something we’ve found fascinating is how much SOE’s work to develop strategy and gadgets for sabotage perverselyseems to mirror the act of making theatre. Throughout rehearsals we’ve been struck by how similar our representationon stage of SOE’s research establishment, Station IX, is to the design workshop where we’re making the props andcostumes for the show.

It feels important to acknowledge, particularly at a time when money is draining away from the arts, that the imaginationis a powerful, valuable thing that has to be used with great responsibility. It doesn’t just belong in some internal world, itcan and does have concrete effects in the real world.

Obviously, another reason for telling this story is that it asks universal questions about the morality of war. Cancircumstances ever justify the kind of tactics SOE introduced, underhand trickery some might say. That’s the conundrumwith which Goucher grapples.

What is the theatrical flavour of the show?I think we’re quite clear that while we are reflecting the spirit of the events we’re not making a history documentary.Again and again in our theatre-making we kept being inspired by the slightly ramshackle creative flavour of SOE’soperations, a peculiarly English, eccentric quality of inventiveness. It’s reflected in the set for example, which has the feelof a Heath Robinson contraption with its collection of wheels and gadgets. It is also reflected in the use of the thereminin the show, an extraordinary electronic musical instrument that wouldn’t have looked out of place at Station IX. I thinkit’s also reflected in the characterisation – the people we meet are all larger than life. Also, I’m really looking forward todoing the lighting because the use of very colourful, directional light feels absolutely appropriate to the world of the story.

However, we’ve also tried to allow an audience to remember that this story is partly based on real life. We don’t wantthem to go so far off into an imaginary world that they forget some of these things actually happened. That’s been doneby including in the show real photographs and actual pictures of the devices that were used from SOE’s “DescriptiveCatalogue” of equipment.

How is animation used to help tell the story?On a broader level I’d say we’re really keen as theatre makers to incorporate all the means at our fingertips to tell a story.But whatever we do with elements like music and design, we’re always determined to use them to tell the story in themost effective way we can. That applies to film as well.

From the start we discussed using animation to open a window in Goucher’s head to see what was going on in hisimagination and, as Goucher is a children’s author, we wondered if the animation could have the flavour of illustrationsfrom an eccentric children’s book. It felt like the perfect way to give an audience direct access to Goucher’s imaginativeworld. Then Dan (the writer) and I got very excited about the idea of working with Tim Britton from Forkbeard Fantasywhose animations are extremely funny, characterful, ingenious, and entirely appropriate to the flavour of Goucher’simagination. One of the things that’s very helpful about having animation is that it helps you follow Goucher’s emotionalpath through the show. You can see how his thoughts become darker and less within his control. At the beginning Goucheris reading from one of his books to a group of children and is quite in control of the situation. He seamlessly provides thevoices for all the characters as well as telling the story. But later in the show, when he’s swept up in a creative frenzy, heresponds to the film more impulsively, throwing in character voices and bits of storytelling as he feels the need. Pynchonand Dot begin to pitch in with voices too as they take ownership of Goucher’s ideas. We’ve tried to connect animationand live action very carefully so they work together seamlessly.

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The Director Nikki Sved

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Inhabiting Donald Goucherby Michael Wagg

Who is Donald Goucher?He’s an Anglican vicar working in a parish called Abinger Hammer in the North Downs of England, in the Surreycountryside. He also writes children’s books, and his stories about a mischievous pig called Hiawyn are very popular,bestsellers. He’s often asked to read from his books and when we first meet him he’s reading his latest Hiawyn story, thestory of Farmer Pickles and the ‘Pork-o-Matic’, to a group of local school children. He’s married to Vivian. They haven’tgot any children but they are trying for one. He’s a fairly gentle man, a bit silly, a bit eccentric even, and isn’t your usualvicar. It feels like he’s shaken things up a bit in Abinger Hammer. He’s in his late 30s/early 40s and has probably movedaround the country quite a bit during the past few years since training. He and Viv like to do crosswords together andDonald is pretty good at them. The country’s at war and Goucher would like to do more to help.

What happens to him?A Colonel at the Inter-Services Research Bureau, Colonel Pynchon, calls Goucher in for an interview. Then he’s called upto report for duty at a place called The Hough in Hertfordshire. The Hough is a crazy place full of brainy scientists workingon inventive ways to sabotage the enemy. Pynchon asks him to write some new stories in which Hiawyn the pig mightmake life difficult for the Germans. The scientists are running out of ideas and the naughty pig, Pynchon hopes, will providea bit of inspiration. Goucher sets to. He’s having a whale of a time. Pynchon asks him to turn up the heat a bit and imagineHiawyn causing even more mayhem, and injury. Goucher keeps going with the stories but begins to feel that somethingstrange is happening to him. The pig seems somehow to be taking over. He also learns that many of the inventions fromthe Hiawyn stories are actually being made by the scientists at The Hough for use in the field – an exploding shaving brush,a souvenir made of high explosives – things that could do lot of damage to people. He struggles with how to reconcilehimself and his faith with what he’s being asked to imagine - and with the direct effect of these inventions on individuals,soldiers and civilians. He has very bad dreams. He meets a scientist at The Hough called Dot and is unfaithful to Vivian.Dot dies in an accident involving one of the weapons Goucher has imagined. He goes AWOL and during the chase kills aman with his bare hands. He works out the rest of the war as a special agent and returns home changed. He’s lost his faith- in everything.

How did you build his character?Just reading through the scenes with the other actors, and with the director and writer, you start to get a sense of whohe might be, about how he phrases things, how easily conversation comes, or about how at ease he might feel in a particularplace. Then very soon you’re on your feet and you have to move. Soon I think I started to notice little ways in which I wasmoving around the space which were not the way I, Michael, would move. They’re only little things – because actually Idon’t think Goucher’s rhythm and pace is that different from my own – but it’s these little differences which start to helpyou build the character. Sort of, ah, that gesture, that’s not me, that’s Goucher. And so I guess I just kept an eye out forthose differences and worked physically from there. The film was also a big help. We see a lot of the inside of Goucher’shead, from the stories he creates, projected onto screens, and I think that trying to imagine that stuff coming out of himgave me a big clue as to what sort of a man he might be. He thinks quickly and freely. Then I had to try and imagine himin situations where he’s not so comfortable and where pressures are bearing down. He becomes quite a different manand does things during the play which he would never have imagined himself doing, so I guess I tried to allow space forthat to happen as we worked through it.

I also found it useful early on to think about other people – people I know personally or not – who might have similarqualities to Goucher, or seem to have a similar energy or outlook. We talked a lot in rehearsals about the artist andillustrator Heath Robinson, about the intricate and absurd machines he imagined, so those images were helpful as well astrying to imagine what the maker of them might have been like. We also talked about a really interesting wartimedocumentary filmmaker called Humphrey Jennings, who was also a surrealist, so I went and looked into him a bit. AndI’m fascinated by the Dadaists, a group of young, loud and inventive artists who felt compelled to protest against war inthe early part of the 20th Century, so I looked at lots of images of them and their work. And then you can start to forma sort of identikit, of what he might be like or what it might feel like to be in the same room as him. I probably end updiscarding most of this but certain little tics might remain and become useful. Goucher is quite energetic, is sort of on thefront foot and I don’t think he’s still for very long, so I think I was probably looking for people with a particular energy oran unusual imagination. A lot of the research doesn’t necessarily have a direct impact on how I play Goucher but some ofit might inform it, and anyway it’s a great excuse to read around, which I love doing.

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What did you find difficult about inhabiting him?I don’t believe in God. Goucher does. So I guess I’ve found it difficult to understand the formal side of not only religiousfaith but of committing yourself to God, and of then losing that faith. It’s such a specific thing so it was difficult. Butthen I do have faith in lots of other things and do have values that are similar to those of Christianity. As Goucher Ihave to use the word God but to understand that thing for me, in my own mind, I have to translate it into somethingelse. I can imagine losing my faith then. Working with animation has also been challenging, but very exciting too. Thepieces of film exist and don’t change, so in some ways you have sort of keep up with them and accept them and atfirst that was difficult because I wanted to feel like they were coming from my, Goucher’s, head. But then he’s notnecessarily in control of that, and certainly not as things heat up. He goes on a fairly extreme journey, throughconfusions and change, so that has been a huge challenge, but a privilege too.

Understanding life during the war too, both at home and in the thick of it, and in relation to faith, has been anotherbig challenge. I talked a lot to my partner about her dad, John Finigan, who fought in the Second World War when hewas in his early 20s. He was a religious man and so it was useful to hear how he viewed the war and his service in it.He saw some horrific things that he found it very difficult to talk about for the rest of his life, but in his case theexperience strengthened his faith, unlike Goucher. He wrote a poem, which I keep reading, particularly these verses.He was in Belgium when he wrote it and was 21 years old:

I can look now without any dreadOn a corpse that’s started to swell,I’ve watched a field of German deadThough never got used to the smell.

There’s still some more to come I know, Churn on through mud and dust:I’d rather not be here, although, For England’s sake, I must.

It ends:The startling crack of an eighty-eightA mortar’s menacing whine –Who’s turn now to meet with fate?All right lads – it’s mine.The complete poem is on the next page

What did you enjoy about inhabiting him?Goucher seems to have room in his world for a sense of the absurd, for a certain silliness and a delight in nonsense,more than that, a sense that nonsense might have some sense. I very much feel like that myself and I’ve really enjoyedtrying to find the moments where that is happening, where he’s at his most at ease, I suppose. I’ll keep looking forthem too. He’s playful and has a wicked sense of fun. I always enjoy working on new scripts and it’s great that we hadthe writer in the rehearsal room with us for a lot of the time, so that we could push and pull the text about a bit. It’sexciting as an actor to feel like you might be contributing to and informing that side of things. I also love working withmusic – I’m pretty much tone deaf but I still manage to strum a guitar and a ukulele – and I’ve really enjoyed thechallenge of having to be absolutely precise about everything that is said and done so that the music is anothercharacter in the story. There’s quite a buzz in hitting a moment spot on in terms of what you’re doing and what’shappening musically. The same goes for working with the other two actors, Jordan and Derek, who play all the othercharacters in the story. We have to try and bounce off each other, keep the ball in the air, just the three of us and Finnthe musician. This is great fun.

How has he changed by the end of the story?He’s fairly broken. Raw. Sort of blank with Vivian, as if she’s a stranger to him even though she hasn’t changed. He’snot really present. He’s lost his faith in God and has seen some horrific things. He’s probably killed, at least indirectly,a lot of people. He will find it very difficult to talk about what’s happened. My partner’s dad never really could withhis wife; perhaps it was too painful to tell someone so close. Goucher doesn’t really know how he and Vivian cancarry on with their lives. But I think he will try to find a way. Slowly. They start with the crosswords.

Michael Wagg as Goucher

Poem by John Finigan

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Interview with Designer Trina Bramman

What were your starting points and inspirations?We talked very early in the process about the artist Heath Robinson and how, particularly the 'Pork-o-Matic' machine inthe first of Goucher's stories, was reminiscent of some of Robinson's inventions. Similarly The Hough where Goucher issent to work is a hive of mad invention and experimentation and also quite 'Heath Robinson' in feel. So I looked at a lot ofhis work at the beginning. His drawings are playfuland witty, like the early Goucher stories but asGoucher's ideas are soon forced down a moresinister route I decided to look more towards thework of artist Jean Tingueley whose kineticsculptures are a bit like 3D versions of HeathRobinson's drawings - a ramshackle collection ofstuff, rigged together and made to work - but hishave a darker edge. One of his pieces was a hugecontraption designed to self-destruct once set off,which seemed an appropriate inspiration in thiscase. So the sense of whirring creativity and madinvention present in the workings of Goucher'simagination and also in the secret world of TheHough became the starting point for creating thevisual landscape.

How did you move towards the design?I always start with the practical concerns when approaching a design. We knew from the beginning that projectedanimation would play a key role in the storytelling, so I knew that the design would need to incorporate surfaces thatwould take projected images well. I would also need to allow space for on-stage projectors and, of course, a livemusician. With these things in mind I could then go forward and play with ideas. Having collected together lots ofvisual reference material I used it to start sketching and making rough, paper models, using the shapes and forms in

The Designer Trina Bramman

The Set

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those images, thinking carefully about giving plenty of places for the actors to use - different levels, surfaces, movingbits and hiding places - moving gradually to a finished, coloured model. There were a lot of circles and wheels in theimages, which fed directly into the finished set and were helpful in giving non-standard (i.e. non rectangular) projectionsurfaces. Some of Tingueley's sculptures have surreal, seemingly random objects added in where you don't expect it,like an upside-down garden gnome or a carousel horse, so I wanted to draw upon this and put a couple of oversizeditems, taken from Goucher's stories, in-between the wheels and rusty framework. The finished design became myidea of a little glimpse inside Goucher's head.

Below are links to some of the images that inspired the designhttp://www.artmagazine.cc/picts/tinguely.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8YKoQJuCk8g/TMS36woE-cI/AAAAAAAAAAM/zkEgJCy4KZU/s1600/000tinguely.jpg

http://academics.smcvt.edu/gblasdel/art/J.Tinguely,%20Baluba%20III.jpg

http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/history/timeline/images/card1.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2044/2162700975_c7329fb1f0.jpg

http://ninevolts.pbworks.com/f/1224079119/Jean%20Tinguely%20Homage%20to%20New%20York.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_dLSVgS5AxBI/SsMneLToouI/AAAAAAAAjqQ/N4Jlb7OIt0E/s400/ProfBranstawm_HeathRobinson.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_CHG2GRbeET8/TMXa_fzzn6I/AAAAAAAAQq4/nmfPtHYB6SA/s1600/heath_robinson_pancake.jpg

Derek Frood as a scientist at The Hough. Photo of man with amphibian breathing apparatus © The National Archives

Interview with Composer & Musical DirectorThomas Johnson

What instruments did you choose for the show and why?The choosing bit of the process for me was more to do with choosing the person thanthe instruments. I had one musician on this show. So you really need a polyphonicinstrument, something that can play several notes at the same time. I couldn’t havedecided to write for the trumpet, for example, because that would have sounded reallythin and wouldn’t have worked with the text. That means you have to think in termsof piano, accordion, guitar, harp or perhaps percussion. Given that, I wanted a musicianwho could play several instruments to give a nice bit of tonal variation. The moreinstruments they can play, the richer you are in terms of what you can do. That’s whyI thought of Finn Beames, because I know he brings to the feast a whole host ofinstruments.

After our R&D week I realised I wanted the sound choices to be quite eccentric inkeeping with the man who’s at the centre of the story, Goucher, a sort of mad, creative,genius-type children’s author. I wanted the music to reflect the rather mad world thathe inhabits intellectually. As a starting point I thought the accordion would work wellbecause it can be quite an eccentric instrument. Also, it’s great for theatre because it’svery varied. It can provide all sorts of textures and moods and it can be really loud ifyou want and it can be really tender. I wanted all the music to be quirky and eccentricand the instruments to not quite be what you expect. To give an example, Finn playsthe piano and I thought it would be brilliant to have a toy piano. But to get a decent toy piano that works properly costsabout £2000, so that was out of the question. But Finn said, amazingly, that his family had found this wonderful, oldinstrument called a Dulcitone dumped in a skip and rescued it. It’s perfect for the show because it has a similar sort ofbell-like, fragile quality to a toy piano but it’s made of wood and is rather beautiful to look at. So that was a fantastic findfor the show. Also, the idea of having a ukulele really tickled me. Again, it’s a quirky, off-beat sort of instrument that lookslike a guitar but is much smaller. Finally, because the show is about the SOE creating mad, Professor-Branestawmishdevices, I thought that the theremin would be a brilliant additional sound to the show. It’s a strange electronic instrumentinvented in 1920 by a Russian enthusiast, the first synthesizer that was ever built. It has a quirky feel that was in keepingwith the crazy, Heath Robinson inventiveness of Goucher and SOE. So we’ve ended up with accordion, Dulcitone, ukuleleand theremin.

Are there any other influences on the flavour of the music?My very first idea for music would have been too difficult. I wanted a musician to be seated in an enormous mobileinstrument, a sort of tricycle thing. I thought he could cycle round the stage surrounded by mad percussion instrumentsto hit, xylophones and glockenspiels all hanging round him. It was completely impractical but I think what we’ve ended up

with is similarly quirky. I was also thinking very loosely in musical terms of a genrecalled “steam-punk” which is about cutting edge technology mixed with an old-fashioned style. Brazil (dir. Terry Gilliam) and 1984 (dir. Michael Radford) are bothsteam-punk sort of films where there are lots of computers and modern gadgetryaround but all made out of mahogany. Everything is a strange mix of high-tech andVictoriana. Tom Waits is the musical equivalent perhaps. He often uses foundinstruments and a creaky, wheezy sound, a mixture of very old and very new.

Having film in the show influences the flavour of the music too. I was able to havestudio time and hire in some musicians to record music to go with the film. We hadcello, violin, trumpet and piano. Influence-wise, the big, heroic film scores for filmslike The Great Escape informed my music for one of the animations in the show. Also,there are little hints of church music because Goucher is a vicar. I listened to a bit ofMessiaen when I was composing the organ music for the nightmare film.

To see a clip of the film and music for the show please go tohttp://www.theatrealibi.co.uk/goucherswar.php. Finn Beames is playing the Dulcitone.

The Musician Finn Beames

The Composer & MD Thomas Johnson

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Interview with Animator Tim Britton

What was your process in making the films for Goucher’s War?First thing, obviously, was reading the script. Then I looked to see quite how big a job it might be and therefore whatapproach to take. Stop-frame animation is very time-consuming as opposed to the kind of animation that I normally do,which is using the camera to travel around the picture and thus give the impression of a movie. Then I came down toTheatre Alibi and met everyone and had a chat about how Forkbeard have used film and animation over the years.Although I’d seen earlier Alibi stuff with film in, this is the first for a long time in which they have used quite so muchmoving image, so we discussed how that could be achieved. I thought it was fantastic the way it was realised in the endactually. I loved the circular style of the screen within the set design. There wasn’t the intrusive presence of a rectangularscreen so you were waiting for film to start being shown.

An important part of my job was to create a mischievous and slightly evil pig.

This was a nice project for me because I’ve always liked pigs, and I’ve always done cartoons of pigs. In fact, the very firstpig I drew was for P.G. Wodehouse because I was a big fan of his. When I was about eleven I sent him a Christmas cardwith a picture of the Empress of Blandings on it. That set off a lovely correspondence with him until I was about fifteen,all because he loved my picture of a pig! And pigs are, of course, very close to humans. There isn’t much differencebetween us and them, as George Orwell recognised.

My process initially involves a lot of doodling and drawing tiny sketches, which often end up being used because they’refrequently the most fluid and successful drawings. Sometimes if I draw for too long it gets very tortuous and self-conscious.I always draw with a pencil now - in the old days I used to draw with a pencil first and then pen, thinking that the pen wasthe final version but that’s when it often became self-conscious. Whereas with a pencil I can change, I can rub out and re-do. There were four sequences of film for me to work on, some of which I looked forward to doing more than others. Isoon realised I would have to do quite a lot of research into the Second World War. That came as quite a shock - I usuallydo everything from my imagination. So I got hold of a collection of old war mags, which we all grew up on in the fiftiesand sixties and these were terribly helpful. I went to the Internet as well for details of airplanes and things like that.

The way I work is that I jump around quite a bit until someone is knocking on my door saying, “We really need it now”,then suddenly it all happens. I have this huge pile of drawings building up and then I realise it’s time to get the camera andthe rostrum out. I start shooting the pictures and importing them into an editing programme called Final Cut Pro. Next Itry to use the writer’s words to create the flow of the story in the editing of the film. I’ll keep talking over it until I’ve gotthe right sort of timings. Usually I find that the first takes I have to do again because they’re too messy and joggy. I did alot of hand-held camera work on this one, especially in the first film (Pork-o-Matic), and then changed back to rostrum.The trouble with hand-held is that it can be quite chaotic or you just move the camera at the wrong moment. My workon the films for Goucher’s War is a combination of both techniques really, hand-held and rostrum. I sometimes move thepictures, I sometimes move the camera. There’s very little stop-frame animation in the films for this show, because it’s sotime consuming to make, but there are some little moments, the turning of the cogs in the ‘Pork-o-Matic’ machine, thestarting lever for the machine, for example.

In the end I transfer all the film I’ve made on to disc and hand it over. Then I wait to hear if it’s alright or if anything needschanging, like I didn’t know that Dot wore glasses so I had to add them in afterwards. It was fascinating to see whathappened to the film once I’d handed it over.Having used my cartoons within Forkbeardshows since the seventies, it was really interestinghanding over stuff completely clean to Alibiwithout any soundtracks, then seeing whathappened with the music and dialogue. It wasgreat to find that the sense of rhythm was largelythere already and that Tom, the composer, wasable to work with the film with only one or twominor extensions or cuts to give it the right shape.It’s a funny thing about making films that they havethis innate rhythm in your brain, how you think itshould work in front of an audience, how longeach picture should be there for.

Drawing and film of Hiawyn as a French Librarian by Tim Britton

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Were there any other visual referencesthat influenced the films for Goucher’s War?Herge’s Tintin has always been a huge and important influence on my drawing throughout my life. I grew up looking atthe books. There’s barely a Forkbeard show without at least one Tintin reference, whether it’s in one of my drawings orin something that somebody says. I also learnt a lot from a famous newspaper cartoonist called Giles. I used to adore hisstuff. We didn’t get the Daily Express but as a family we used to get the Giles Christmas Album and I’ve still got aboutthirty of these. When I’m really desperate to think how something works or what something looks like I’ll go throughthem all, which wastes hours because I just find myself reading all the cartoons! He was a complete master at drawingbut he could also create the humour. I definitely leafed through a few Giles cartoons when working on Goucher’s War,sometimes in relation to pigs because he was very good at them.

Which parts of the filmscame to you more naturallyand which did you findmore difficult? They were all scary actually! When I was asked to dothe films I said, “Yeah-yeah-yeah, I can do that.” ThenI read the script and thought, help! The ‘Pork-o-Matic’ sequence felt like it was going to be easy, butthen, of course, it never is easy. There were certaincues in it that were very important to the story, butwhen I got to them I thought, what on earth wouldthat look like? I did disobey some of the instructionsa bit to make it work. Probably the Paris film was the

easiest because I decided to do it as a strip-cartoon. It was already written with subtitles and I love that sort of cartoon -I do a lot of that myself anyway. I like to write text into films so people can read it even if it’s being narrated at the sametime. It really makes the audience connect with the story even better. Then when I started on the film in which the pigparachutes behind enemy lines, I suddenly realised how many things I had to research, like what the Reichstag and aMercedes limousine looked like. It was unfortunate because I picked on the Mercedes as the first thing to start drawing.I thought I could just draw one from memory but it in fact they were ridiculously complicated-looking things! Finally, I wasdreading the nightmare film because I thought it wasn’t going to go with my style of cartooning. But in the end, I ratherrevelled in the macabre and disturbing images when Hiawyn becomes revolting and horrible in the story. There werequite a few people saying afterwards that, with the organ music, it was a really terrifying moment in the show. Tom’smusic was fantastic.

None of the work was that horrible to do. You have a sort of half-dread as an artist - you’re delighted to have theopportunity to express yourself but then, somehow, you get cramp. I think we all suffer from this terribly. Your belief thatyou’ve got the right to express yourself to hundreds of people evaporates sometimes. I thought, God, am I going to getthis right? You think that all the drawings you do are rubbish to begin with. But for some reason when you look at them

the next day you realise, actually there’s nothingwrong with that. That’s the thing about creativity -you can agonise for far too long, but actually you mustjust let things come out. It’s possible to go on and onperfecting something but sometimes you can lose thespontaneity if you fuss and fret too much over it. Youcan worry that people will be nit-picking about thatline at the back of Hiawyn’s head, saying that it’sawfully badly drawn. But actually nobody is lookingat single details, they’re looking at this vibrant massof lines, which is expressing something that’s eitherhorrible or lovely or part of the story or whatever.

To find out more about Tim’s work andForkbeard Fantasy please see their websitehttp://www.forkbeardfantasy.co.uk

Drawing and film of a German soldier by Tim Britton

Drawing and film of a slavering Hiawyn in Goucher’s nightmare by Tim Britton

Solving a Moment

The protagonist of our story, the Reverend Donald Goucher, is a children’s author. We meet him for the first time whenhe’s telling one of his Hiawyn Pig stories, ‘The Pork-o-Matic’, to a group of local schoolchildren. Also at this moment inthe show, we see an animated film for the first time to represent what’s going on in Goucher’s imagination. In the draftof the script with which we started rehearsals the two things happened almost simultaneously:

Gwyneth He lived in the North Downs, this Goucher. Abinger Hammer, I think it was. He was something of a celebrity locally.

(Goucher sits reading from one of his books to an unseen group of children.)

Goucher And so, children, Farmer Pickles set up his new ‘Pork-o-Matic’ next to the pig shed. It was all-singing, all-dancing and although it had set him backa tidy sum, he knew it would make him a tidy sum in the long run.

(As he reads, a thought bubble forms above him in which his mental cartoon of the story unfolds in conjunction with the words.)

However, when we tried this out in practice, it felt that meeting Goucher and seeing film for the first time in the showhappened too close together to allow the audience properly to appreciate either. So we decided it would be good tohear Goucher telling his story to the children for longer before bringing in the film. This made it necessary to write thepreceding part of his story. The script now read:

(Goucher sits reading from one of his books to an unseen group of children.)

Goucher And so, children, the time had come.

The machine had been delivered in twenty thousand separate parts to Scratching Piggery. Fifteen pantechnicons had squeezed up the lane to deliver it, then an army of engineers had laboured for two weeks to boltthe thing together. The din of construction had been so ferocious, the hens had begun to lay eggs with the texture of hand grenades. Farmer Pickles had watched the construction rise up next to the pig shed until itblotted out the sun.

Now, at last, the engineers had gone, and Pickles stood before the machine, which was veiled with a white tarpaulin like a giant bride. He couldn’t wait a moment longer. He grasped the edge of the cloth and slowly… tugged it… aside… and there it stood… the Pork-o-Matic!

(As he reads, a thought bubble forms above him in which his mental cartoon of the story unfolds in conjunction with the words.)

We had already been playing with ways to make it crystal clear that the film represented what was going on in Goucher’shead. We had arrived at the idea of using a little magic trick – Gwyneth pulls a handkerchief out of Goucher’s ear ontowhich is projected the first image of the film, the ‘Pork-o-Matic’ machine. This gave a sense of the film literally being tuggedout of Goucher’s brain. When it was decided to add an extra partof the story it was possible to tailor the new material to the action.At the moment Gwyneth tugs the handkerchief out of Goucher’sear, Goucher is just telling how Farmer Pickles pulls the tarpaulinfrom the ‘Pork-o-Matic’ for the first time. The music was thencomposed to fit to the rhythm of the words and actions as thehandkerchief is tugged out bit by bit.

Then we wanted Gwyneth to be able to throw the tiny pictureof the ‘Pork-o-Matic’ from the handkerchief onto a big screen.With the sophisticated technology at our fingertips nowadays itis possible to project an image accurately onto a surface as smallas a handkerchief and then make it flip as if thrown onto another,larger surface.

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Jordan Whyte as Gwyneth and Michael Wagg as Goucher

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Practitioner Fact File THE COMPOSER/MUSICAL DIRECTORName: 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 Ihadn’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 universitythinking, “What the hell do I do now?” By pure chance my cousin was working with a touring circus that summer and hesaid, “Do you fancy just joining in for a laugh for the summer?” My cousin and I had been playing music together since wewere 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 theSouth West of England with the circus, with my cousin, playing mad music. At the end of that summer it just came togetherin my mind that I’d been really interested in Drama from an academic perspective at University for three years and I’dbeen a musician since I was six, but doing music with this circus just made something happen in my brain. I thought, thisis 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 toplay. Much later when I was 24 or so, I learnt the accordion for a theatre show, and I’ve ended up playing the accordionquite a lot since then. But fiddle is my first instrument still.

What’s your role in the process of making a show?The first thing I do is read the script. Not particularly carefully, just read it to get the general sense of it. Then I have todecide what musical instruments to use. That’s the very beginning of the job and in a way it’s harder than it sounds. Withinthat decision I start also to think about the style – whether or not there’s going to be period music, whether or not it’sgoing to be geographically specific to where the play is set, is it going to have a folky feel, a classical feel, a jazzy feel, talkingvery broadly. Then I have to find the musicians and employ them, which takes ages. This is all quite a long way ahead oftime, before the production starts to rehearse.

Then I’ll read the script again, but very much more thoroughly this time, so I really get the shape and rhythm of it. I’mlooking at this point for where the music should go in the play, picking moments where I think there’s a gear change inthe dynamic of the play, the rhythm of it. I go all the way through the script marking where music goes and also what itmight feel like, “This paragraph might be clarinet and mandolin, that bit might be a soprano sax solo.” While I’m doingthat I start to get a sense of different themes that build up throughout the whole show. And I’ll start to make those decisionswhen I read the script. I’m not particularly thinking what the music is at that point, more like titles. That’s all done beforewe 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 themusic 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, soI make sure I’m constantly writing music in response to what I’m seeing in rehearsals. Writing the music can take up tofour or five weeks. The writing process is a combination. First I’ll sit in rehearsals watching the actors work with thedirector, taking notes about how long scenes are lasting, the feel of the scenes and how the music might work. Then I’llgo away and write some music and teach it to the musicians and help them find the right interpretation. Then the musiciansand I will go in to the rehearsals and place music into a particular scene. That happens back and forth through the wholerehearsal 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. Thedirector does that as well, but my job is to make all the music sound nice and make sure the actors and the musiciansknow how the music works with the text. Also, I tighten up all the cue points and make sure it’s all flowing with a reallygood rhythm.

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Then the show opens and my job after the show opens is to take thousands of notes. That’s to help the musicians and theactors know where they’re making mistakes, whether a particular piece of music could be louder or whether they couldhold back the moment to start it, for example, lots of really detailed things. I’ll do that on the first and second night. ThenI’ll come back half way through the tour and do another load of notes and then that’s the end of my job!

What is particular about working for Theatre Alibi?It’s a lovely company to work with. Very friendly. Very organised. There’s a lot of technical support, a lot of people aroundto help you. Sometimes I’m working with a company and I feel in a bit of a vacuum. There might not be anyone who cango 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 isinteresting for me, because it’s subtly different to what I’m used to. I find that exciting.

Practitioner Fact File THE DESIGNER Name: Trina Bramman

Why did you choose to be a designer?It was when I was looking for university courses. I was doing my Art and Design Foundation Course, and I had to choosesomething to do. I’d already decided that I wanted to do something artistic. It wasn’t so much that I desperately wantedto be a theatre designer, I looked through prospectuses and the course jumped out at me. I was interested in workingbig, and I was also interested in making models, and when I went to visit some of the courses, I could see they weremaking scale models and I was entranced by them - there’s something magic about scale models. Also, I saw them workingon big puppets on one of the courses, big body puppets. The variation between the styles that you work in appealed tome. It seemed you could do virtually anything.

From left: Designer Trina Bramman, Assistant Stage Manager Tom Welch, Assistant Designer Bek Palmer, Company Stage Manager Elaine Faulkner, Sound Designer & Film Editor Duncan Chave, Technical Manager Justin Goad, Composer & MD Thomas Johnson, Director Nikki Sved and Lighting Designer Marcus Bartlett

How old were you?I would’ve been 19. That was during my Foundation year – 18, 19? I always knew I wanted to do an artistic job. I wasgood at other things too, but I liked Art most.

Where did you train?Nottingham Trent University. I did a three-year degree course in Theatre Design. It gives you a chance to test your skillsin all areas of theatre design – costume, lighting, propmaking. Also, you do a placement, which gives you a chance to goand work in the business. I did my placement at Komedia in Brighton working on a children’s show similar to the ones I’vedone at Alibi, on a similar scale. We were in a church hall, working until two o’clock in the morning, so I was used to thehours before I even started earning money as a designer!

What’s your role in the process of making a show?My role is to create everything that you can see onthe stage, apart from the lighting. I work alongsidethe director, the musical director, the writer, thelighting designer, the actors and the musicians. it’s acollaborative thing – we work off each other. We’reall working together at the same time, and I take ontheir ideas as they work with what I give them. Icreate the world of the show.

The first stage is getting the script and reading it. Thefirst thing I do is just read it for fun. You can’t help butsee things in it the first time. But the second time Imight do little sketches in the side of the script, justthings that come to mind. You start to think aboutthe problems it throws up, the things that seemimpossible to create on stage. There are alwaysthings that seem impossible.

Then we all get together as a team, all the peoplewho are going to be working on it, and spend a weeklooking at the difficult bits of the script, seeing howwe can solve things. During that week I do little,private sketches that I don’t show anyone. Also I notedown the ideas that come up, if they need a chair ora platform, for example - practical things that getworked into the show, not so much aesthetic thingsat that point. Things that I need to take intoconsideration.

At the end of the Research and Development weekI have a meeting with the writer and the director todiscuss where the design might go visually. Then I goaway and panic and start drawing things on the trainon the way home, making sure I haven’t forgottenanything, writing things down. Then I start comingup with the first ideas. That’s usually drawings tobegin with. I begin by drawing really loose sketches that no-one else would probably understand, and then I start makinglittle models. I talk these through with the director and the writer just as a first stage and then go away again - there’s alot of working and reworking. When I’ve got a more definite model to show, I go through the script with the director andsee how the set that I’ve designed might work for each part of the show.

Then it’s refining it and finalising it and getting together technical drawings ready for it to be built. I also liaise with thepainter about the textures and colours I want. Then we go into rehearsals. It goes mad from then on because we startmaking things and just getting on with it.

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Illustrations for the covers of Goucher’s books by Trina Bramman

What’s particular about working for Theatre Alibi?The fact that we all start production time together and the production team are making the props and costumes at thesame time as the actors and director are creating. So we don’t know about our last bit of making until the actors havefinished their last bit of making. We always have a good whinge about this but it makes the whole thing more vibrant,more interesting. They’re not just props that you don’t care about, they’re important things, key things and it’s nice as amaker and a designer to be working that way. If we just made all the props before rehearsals started the quality wouldn’tbe as good because a lot of the decisions are made in collaboration with everything else that’s going on. If you made thingsbeforehand they wouldn’t serve the action so well. I don’t know how many other companies get that luxury. The designteam make lots of compromises dependent on what the action needs, which is very different to rep theatre, where thedesign process is very separate.

THE DIRECTORName: Nikki Sved

Why did you choose to be a director?I was more interested initially in being a performer. But at university everyone got a chance to direct and it was then thatI discovered that I could do it and I liked it, and that my interest in performing informed my directing. I carried onperforming when I left university, but I think the lifestyle of a director began to appeal to me more and more – having tosell 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 adirector to follow your own path artistically. I’m now the Artistic Director of Theatre Alibi.

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 atuniversity when I was about twenty that the thought of directing entered my head, although I was given a bit of TwelfthNight 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 atAlibi – we got the opportunity to work with an inspirational Polish theatre company called Gardzienice, and I learnt onthe job from Alibi’s then Artistic Directors.

What’s your role in the process of making a show? The writer often generates several different ideas for a show and I help choose the best one to develop. Then I read initialversions of the script and comment on them. After that, I start thinking about what means we might use to tell that story- what sort of music we might draw on, what the set should be like, how we would people the show, what sort of actorswe ought to be using. Then I cast the actors. You find actors in a mixture of ways. Sometimes you’re lucky enough to haveworked with people that you think will be just right. Sometimes you see someone in a show who you think will be justright. So, I bring things together prior to rehearsal – people and resources.

Before we go into rehearsals, there’s a Research & Development process. It’s a bit like a playtime. We spend a weekworking on an early draft of the script with the actors, the writer and the designer when we try out ideas to see if theywill work. It’s a really nice time ahead of rehearsals when we can try things out and if they fail miserably, it doesn’t matterat all. You can take risks and try things that you’ve never tried before. It’s a scary job making a piece of theatre. That fearcan be unhelpful creatively. So, a Research & Development week is a way of freeing things up and allowing yourself tomake more exciting and interesting decisions. As a director, I select which bits we’re going to work on. I choose whatseem to be key, defining moments that set the tone for the whole show. Also we tackle moments that beg a theatricalsolution, things that you wouldn’t imagine could be put on stage.

Between the R&D and the rehearsal process I discuss things with the writer that came up in the R&D. The other key bitof work that happens between the R&D and rehearsals is working with the designer to develop the design. It’s helpful to

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have the designer on board from very early on in the process. Ourparticular style of work means that the action on stage is very integratedwith the set. This requires close collaboration between the director anddesigner. As a director I have to think very practically about what has tohappen on stage. That’s a good input to the design process.

With the rehearsal process itself, a lot of the things I do are the same as inthe R&D. I’m selecting what to work on and when, making sure we getthrough the material in time. I’m co-ordinating and bringing together allthe elements, keeping my eye on the whole picture. Although people arethrowing 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 wouldprobably never say no to an idea if lots of people were saying yes, becauseI trust the people that I work with. Also, it’s my job to put my own ideasin. The other thing that I do in the rehearsals is to develop performances– I help the actors to access a performance, to find the ways that charactersshow how they are feeling, and to discover who the characters are. Myjob is also to stage the scenes, to work out how to show the action in thescript, but also basic things like how to get a chair off stage at the end of ascene.

Toward the end of rehearsals you have the tech week when you add thetechnical elements to the show. I make decisions with the lighting designerand the sound designer about how sound and light will work from momentto moment. Because I’ve been in rehearsals with the actors I know andunderstand the scenes. The lighting designer will have a very particular skillin 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 marrythe 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 audienceresponse. You learn a huge amount from having an audience there. Often they respond in an entirely different way tohow you expect. I’m in the luxurious position of being able to watch the audience and the show. I’ll watch and make notesover several nights, 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 betteras 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 notesto the actors, which helps keep the show alive for them.

What is particular about working for Theatre Alibi?How the work is generated in therehearsal room feels very particular.The storytelling is very particulartoo, if not unique. We try to makeshows where we enjoy what livetheatre can offer us. You often seeimages being constructed ratherthan it happening in secret. Wenever switch off the lights tochange the set (which often makeslife difficult!). We really enjoyrevealing the transformations fromactor to character and fromlocation to location. We also drawon a particularly wide breadth offorms – music, film, puppetry andour set designs are quite sculptural.

Jordan Whyte as Gwyneth

Derek Frood as Colonel Pynchon

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Exercises for storytellers

The following series of exercises for storytellers is taken from a theatre paper written by Mike Alfreds in 1979 called AShared Experience: The Actor as Story-Teller, unfortunately now out of print. He has kindly allowed us to reproduce thisexcerpt for you. Theatre Alibi takes a great deal of inspiration from the ideas expressed in this document. We hope youget 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 story-tellers

(Suitable for narrators, outside the action, of astory 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 thestory. 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 adeliberately naïve, highly coloured one. The way in which the story-teller carries out his illustration maypossibly 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 isnarrating – 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 istelling 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’ssatisfaction; also to emphasise details.

Of course these techniques can overlap; for example, a gesture of illustrating which is also coloured by anemotional response. However, the point of the exercise is to isolate and work on one technical problemat 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.

3 Tell a story using sound effects:a) made vocally and bodilyb) with objects available in the immediate vicinity e.g. the floorc) made with musical instruments.

Jordan Whyte as Vivian and Michael Wagg as Goucher

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Exercises for solo story-tellersusing 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 story–tellers using third–personnarrative but in which they will function as bothnarrator 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, preferablyconflicting with the characters’ views of themselves and their situations. Try to make your transitionsbetween 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 thenarrative, transform yourself into the character so that by the end of the description you are totally incharacter. It should be possible for an observer to pin-point the moment you stopped ‘being yourself’ andbecame 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 theability to change focus. They should be done with the greatest economy possible. You should eventuallyfind that the subtlest inner change (of attitude or emotion) should affect you physically and vocally. Alwaysmake sure you know what effect you want to have on your audience. Ultimately, as a story-teller ornarrator, your focus must be on the audience and not on yourself.

Exercises for narrators outside the action of astory 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 keepingwithin the structure created by the narrator. There must be strong awareness between the actors and thenarrator so that he allows them enough space to develop what he has given them and they, in turn, allowhim to continue his function. (Beginners tend to turn narrative into straight ‘dialogue’ scenes). Clarify theterms of the exercise before you start – for example, will the actors create their own dialogue or willthey only repeat the dialogue provided by the narrator. The narrator must remember that he has adouble focus: on the actors AND audience.

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

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Improvised or using a text

1 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 discussionbefore the exercise begins; the actors only have to respond to the narrator). A second narrator thentreats the same story in a totally different way. The actors must try to carry this out. And so on. A moredifficult exercise than it may sound. It is imperative that the narrator knows exactly what he wants toachieve. (An interesting point; texts often offer themselves to more justifiable treatments than one mightinitially expect. For the sake of the exercise, the narrator can choose a ‘style’ which is clearly not suitableto the story).

Exercises for narrators sharing a storyThe main point is to develop sensitivity between partners. It is also vital to clarify functions, for example:

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

b Two narrators with totally different viewpoints refute each other’s views: (sections of the narrative canbe 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 becomeconfused or blurred.

Michael Wagg as Goucher. Drawing and film by Tim Britton

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Possible spatialrelationshipsbetween story-tellers and audience

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

2 They tell a story from a position which mightcreate the maximum impact for thatparticular story on the audience e.g. abovethe audience, below the audience, distantfrom the audience, very close to theaudience, all around the audience, with theaudience around them.

3 Story-tellers use audience as part of theirstory: e.g. crowds in streets, courtiers.

4 Story-tellers move freely amongst audienceeliminating any established acting area whilethey tell story.

5 Several actors narrate story consecutivelyfrom different focal points around or withinthe audience.

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

Possible narrator/character relationships1 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” ofthe 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.

Michael Wagg as Goucher