Mistake in devising...

Over the past few weeks I have witnessed some of the best and most consistent devising I have ever seen and it’s been happening throughout the work of all of my companies.  There has been so much fantastic stuff that has delighted not only me but all of the audience who were lucky enough to witness it.   Workshops, whether they have been exploring farcical comedy or the lives of the fictional street we have created, have produced theatre of a truly excellent quality.

I spend a lot of time in these sessions pointing out the things that were good about the work.   I concentrate on what was done successfully as I am a firm believer in positive reinforcement being the most powerful force in education and development.   However I thought I’d use the opportunity of this weeks blog to highlight a number of mistakes that can stop devised work reaching it’s full potential in the hope that it might enhance our work in this field even further…I hope you’ll take them in the positive spirit that they are offered…

1.  Not listening – a pretty obvious mistake but so easily done.  When you’re devising in groups there are lots of voices, all of which deserve to be heard.  Once you have heard all of the ideas you can pick the ones that will make the best combination and therefore the best scene.  Married with this thought is that in order you to be listened to you need to give voice to your ideas, don’t have a great idea and not be brave enough to say it.  In fact you don’t even need to think it’s a great idea…a half good idea can be the starting point for a great scene.  Once the ideas are out there and the decisions have been made don’t be precious if this time your idea doesn’t make the cut.

2.  Not allowing the story to progress - I see this quite a lot, it’s a common mistake.  It happens in a number of ways…an argument between two characters that goes round and round, a character that goes against everything that other characters suggest, a scene that takes too long with the exposition and not enough time on the action.  Filling the scene up with a load of unnecessary tangents that add nothing but clutter and get in the way of the audience engaging with it.  Like a story a devised scene needs to move forward towards the finish line whatever that might be…everything in it needs to help it to this in some way and to some extent.

3.  Not considering the audience – this connects with the last one…although to be fair all of these aspects of devising are interlinked.  As you build, recap and develop your scene take care that you are thinking about how the audience will engage with it…this can be a good way to avoid some of the above mistakes.

4.  Not being aware – The best actors are sensitive to the space, the significance of their words and actions, their fellow performers, the environment, the audience, the subtext, the cultural climate…everything…the more sensitive the performers the better the piece…as long as point 5 is taken into consideration at the same time.

5.  Not being brave – too much sensitivity can suffocate you into inertia without a good helping of bravery.  Try things, experiment with character, approach, genre, structure…work practically as soon as possible so you can audition as many of your ideas as possible.  Once this is done you can start the process of refinement.  Much better than sitting there trying to come up with the perfect idea.

6.  Not having a clear structure – the basics of a beginning, middle and an end are key to presenting your work.  When you’re given your 5 minute call before sharing starts this should become your priority…ignore this at your peril!

7.  Not performing what you rehearsed – it can be so tempting to go off on one, do something in performance that didn’t happen in the making and the rehearsing…rarely does it end well…see point 6 as a way of avoiding this temptation.

So there you go, some top tips of things that can trip you up when devising…hope they help…it would be interesting to hear your thoughts…is there anything I’ve missed, anything you agree with or disagree with…? Leave any comments on the facebook wall, I’d genuinely like to know…

Alex from Gold has contributed this weeks guest blog...

• There's a saying that goes 'From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.'
  
  Of course, anyone who has ever spent a reasonable amount of their time at Yew Tree Youth Theatre knows that this is total nonsense. So often there, the ridiculous IS the sublime. At Gold this weekend, after rounds of absolutely mad but absolutely brilliant games of Ninja Warrior, Amoeba and others, we were set a small devising task - a 2 minute scene set in a library in which all lines had to be questions. But groups still managed to include lines like 'Do you need cheaper car insurance?' and 'Can you feel the love tonight?'. All, of course, making perfect sense in the context of these short pieces. Well, almost perfect sense anyway.
  
  For our main task, we continued, from last week, to be split into two sets, one developing their takes on a Chekhov farce, and another couple of groups working on their own short scenes. The Chekhov piece I was working on, 'The Proposal', is just as ridiculous as anything devised on Saturday mornings at Gold, but brilliant for different reasons - beginning relatively seriously, the dialogue later becomes comical, but even that becomes interrupted by a tendency of the characters to suddenly start dying and then recover all of a sudden. The devised short scenes were great as always, including a bus driver refusing to stop to allow the woman to give birth due to needing to cook a Shepherd's pie. As always, YT this week was so ridiculous. But so sublime.

Rollercoasting

This week has all felt a bit like a roller coaster…there have been great highs and real challenges…lovely moments and difficult decisions…victories and losses.  It’s hard at times like this to keep hold of the bigger picture indeed there have been times during the last seven days when I’ve felt like I was lurching from one critical incident to another and this always unnerves me as it’s a dangerous position to be in. 

Living in the moment like this means you lose sight of the journey you are on, the things you are learning on the way and the things that each step teaches you regardless of whether the current one goes in your favour.  At YTYT this week the casting for the two Shakespeare plays has either been done or is imminent…the coin has been flipped for which cast goes to Kendal and lots of drama school auditions and prep.  Of course there have been and will be disappointments, of course amongst the happy faces of those who have got what they want there are those that will feel like life has dealt them a severe blow.

It’s my instinct to want to protect you from all of that but I also know that by avoiding the risk of disappointment nothing would get done, nothing would happen…every single thing worth anything means taking a risk, means a chance of disappointment and if you live simply by the verdict…only take into account the moment of victory or defeat you’re missing a whole vista of life experience…

In every path, alternate course, shift in position there is something of value even if it’s not the one you wanted…there is an opportunity to experience something even if it’s not the vision you imagined…perhaps you get to observe from the outside rather than being in the central role…perhaps you get to explore something you hadn’t expected to experience…or inhabit a place or lifestyle you had never considered an option.  The important thing is to treasure each section of the journey and add them into the whole that makes you the best you possible…a resilient, hopeful, generous, empathetic individual that welcomes whatever challenge is next…

Appreciate it.

So here I am, Danny Bell - remember the name – bahaha – writing a blog of all things.
Gold company inspired me to do so this morning. I feel a little like Peter Brook in his introduction to Grotowski’s ‘Towards a Poor Theatre’ in that I don’t want to discuss the work we undertook in the room for fear it will be broken or misrepresented. So I’ll follow in his footsteps and allude to the work and try draw out some more general points that are perhaps more accessible.
Gold Company are embarking on a journey into farce, specifically looking at Chekov’s ‘The Bear’ and ‘The Proposal’ however that journey has literally just begun with read throughs today so I’ll leave that and concentrate on the creative task that was set for the other half of the company who haven’t yet acquired their scripts. 
Neatly combining Black and Gold’s themes of farce and mistaken identity (It’s worth noting that last week’s plays on mistaken identity were excellent) this week’s creative task was creating a play about a mistaken situation. And what followed was nothing short of magic. (It’s also worth noting I’m not normally this gushy.)
What was magic about the pieces was that the actors were in complete control of the style and not the other way around. There were toying with it. The best analogy I can think of is a cat playing with a mouse purely for it’s own amusement. It was indulgent, sure, but let’s look at the bigger picture.
There’s a city called Wakefield which is socially deprived, where on a Saturday morning 30 or so teenagers gather. Now rather than yknow paint graffiti and wear hoods and abuse the elderly and flirt with traffic as all teenagers surely do, they instead choose to spend this time attending a youth theatre. A youth theatre that challenges and stretches and supports and demands from it’s members. Where confidence is raised and shared and artistic tastes are discovered, where skills are learned and utilised, where kindness and insight are rewarded and egos and agendas surrendered at the door for the greater harmony of the ensemble. Where new forms of theatre are introduced and experimented on, where an open dialogue and culture of reflection constantly points towards the development and furthered well-being of the individual…still teenagers from Wakefield doing all this remember…so now, the point of this mini speech is that if whilst they’re doing all that they can’t be a little self-indulgent when looking at farce then the world just needs to be imploded.
So yes- there was a little self-indulgence strutting around but still let’s think about this. It was funny. Genuinely funny. Because these actors ‘got it’. They grabbed hold of this style of theatre and milked it for all it’s worth. Actors from age 14 in two weeks have mastered mistaken identity/situation. This is huge! This is an incredible point. Actors weren’t stamping themselves all over a play – they were working together to produce the best thing possible. In terms of indulgence and showing off, because yes there was indulgence and showing off, BUT what they were showing off is how good they are at a new style of theatre. I can’t stress this point enough. All the arrogance and enthusiasm of youth was channelled for a moment in a room in the same direction! THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN A LOT! Phew – good to get that off my chest.
The set ups were pitch perfect. Clear, concise, exactly what the audience needs to understand. Nothing more. No Oscar attempts, no ‘look at me with my ultra-real character neuroses on display.’ It’s farce, it’s a mistaken situation, it’s the set up – done. These 14 year olds know that’s not where the good stuff is.
Now we’ve got the set up we exploit it. With everything we’ve got. And they had it all. Subtle intelligent word play; Not so subtle intelligent word play announced with just the right amount of awareness. Buckets of physical energy and performance. Sticks. Gag after gag at the expense of the situation and for some reason I don’t understand there were puns! Like loads of puns…like loads of hilarious, Shakespearean nods to the audience. Now who doesn’t love a pun? So in terms of grasping a style of theatre, and creating new work that’s accessible, engaging and entertaining they tore it up.
So I guess I have two points really that I’d like to reiterate. The first is that Gold company did very well indeed today…they set out to entertain for the sake of entertaining and achieved it. They did it with intelligence, wit and bravery and to an exceptional standard regardless of age.
The second is that you (as in you, in Gold company) should appreciate it. I don’t mean this in a ‘oh you should be grateful you have drama done to you every week’ kind of way. I mean it in a ‘relish this opportunity and take as much as you can from it’ kind of way. There’s genuinely something a little bit special happening, and I’d like you to get that it’s not happening regardless of you and you just happen to be there – the thing that’s happening is you and what you’re doing. Appreciate that this thing is happening at all and appreciate that you’re smashing it 

A place to play...

This week at Yew Tree has been all about play as a reward for the hard work that went into Spirit of the Landscape and Journey to X and it’s turned out to be a perfect and joyful reward.  In Sapphire we had 2 full on rounds of situation wink murder and in both Black and Gold we spent the time we weren’t trying to pull something together for The Hepworth’s Zombie walk exploring awkward situations and mistaken identity and trying to get out of a fix…I even agreed to play park bench…TWICE! 

I was utterly entertained by your response to the creative tasks, such creative scenarios, such a good balance of word play and physical humour, the clever capturing of an environment in the sort of clear short hand that allows the audience to enter into the spirit of the scene effortlessly…you really are the most delightfully witty group of actors…

Youth Theatre sessions this week were full of laughter which with all the stress and challenges you tell me about in best and worst seems like the perfect antidote for real life and fully in keeping with one of my ambitions for the youth theatre, that it’s a place apart a space to find relief from day to day pressures, a safe place to play…

James Loughlin has kindly blogged about last weeks performances

Due to there being no-one from Journey to X writing a blog for last week’s performance I thought I’d come along and tell you all about and add an extra mention about the Black Companies performances of Spirit of the Landscape.

Last week everything else seemed to have come to a standstill and all focus and attention was focussed on that of the performances of Journey to X. It was a week of greater discoveries, overcoming obvious obstacles and great success (and I’m talking about both Journey to X and Spirit of the Landscape).
We had very strong performances with many of our friends and families coming to see our hard work we had put in over the past few months, with each cast improving on the last performances meaning that we wouldn’t become comfortable with our performance but strive to make it better and push the boundary in each scene. We have attained brilliant feedback from all that saw it and we thank you all for your support.  Now unfortunately we have this month of cool down from the performance until we pick back up on the rehearsals at the end of the month to prepare for our Kendal date.  Hopefully our next set of rehearsals will bring new ideas and discoveries to both the play and characters.

There was also our Black Company piece of Spirit of the Landscape, our physical theatre piece that we had created in only a few sessions (5 or 6 I can’t exactly remember). It’s a rather weird feeling when you perform a piece like this and people are telling you how good it looks, and says how beautiful it looks, you decide to imagine what it would look like from the audiences point of view and start saying to yourself “surely it can’t be that good” but we’re not ones to not accept a compliment when given one. Even though on the occasional nights we were missing the odd member it was a piece where this was easy to cover and adjust the performance as if they were never there. After the pre-show performances we did before Journey to X, all of Black Company had a nice visit to York to show other Youth Theatres from Yorkshire our latest piece and again all gave positive feedback.

So now we all go back to our respective Yew Tree companies, and enjoy our time off intense rehearsals and performances, and just get to have fun … at least until it’s time to do it all again (but hopefully that won’t feel like it’s just around the corner).

Taking the Moment...

I am both very happy and very sad as I sit in my chair this evening…Happy because both Journey to X and Encounters have been a success, happy because all the hard work everyone has invested in them has paid off, happy because so many people generously took time out of their lives and travelled a ridiculous distance to come and see them and happy because the amount of lovely things that have been said about our work are enough to overcome any amount of fatigue.  It’s been a brilliant week, hard work but brilliant.

However I’ve also got post show sadness and because both Encounters and Journey to X are over it’s double the sadness.  I shall miss so much about both the shows.  It’s like finishing an excellent book…I feel I know both sets of characters so well they’ve become familiar friends and now I have to live without them, at least for a while.

So I’ve decided that I’m going to take tonight to wallow in that, wallow and appreciate it.  There’s a danger in life that we don’t take a moment to recognise our achievements and experiences, that we move on so quickly we forget to give ourselves permission to have a reaction and if that’s the case we miss the richness that life is offering.  After such a rich week I’d like to take more than an evening but an evening is all I can have so that’s what I’m taking…I hope you do to…you do so much…you do so well…take the moment (or the evening) to be proud of yourself…