Acting Around Words

Fit And Proper People is a play about

who owns our football clubs

and what is the corruption at the heart of our football clubs.

Football and theatre for me

have always been my biggest passions.

They're both live performances, they both engage enormous audiences

and they both allow people to escape

and feel in an enormous, shared environment.

CROWD ROARS

There's a key moment for me within the whole production,

which is the first time we see Casey and Anthony really talk to each other,

towards the end of the first act of the play,

and the play up to this point has deprived you of a simple scene

where two people talk to each other.

It's been football and smoke and mirrors.

Let's go out for dinner one night.

I genuinely want to spend some quality time with you.

What? To ensure that I will keep my mouth shut?

-Casey, please.

-Some average high dining

and a cab home being your idea of fair exchange?

Somewhere in town where we can just chat outside of this circus.

You and me are ancient history, Tony.

It's all in the past.

And I'm not going to let you penetrate my future or my business.

Great, so, shall we take it from the top of the scene then?

You two on the terrace in public,

important people sat in front and all around.

But we're stood next to each other?

Yes, by coincidence or maybe Anthony's plan.

That's what I was going to ask,

-do you think he's premeditated this meeting?

-Yeah, quite possibly.

I was conscious that this conversation

was an incredibly honest, exposed conversation between two people

where subtext had gone and they'd started really talking

brass tacks to each other.

By placing that in a public situation

and depriving them of the ability to shout,

they were forced to use other tactics.

Let's go out for dinner one night.

I genuinely want to spend some quality time with you.

What? To ensure that I will keep my mouth shut?

Casey, please...

Some average high dining and a cab home

being your idea of fair exchange?

Somewhere in town where we can just talk outside of this circus.

We, from the table discussions, knew that the scene was about control,

it was about a power struggle, but it was also a love scene

at its very heart, and it was a scene where someone was seeking

for a closure that they hadn't had for maybe 20 years.

There is now an element at the beginning of the scene

of sussing out the enemy, isn't there?

-Absolutely.

-Them working out what the battle is. Are we going there?

Yeah.

So we played various games involving distance and space

and things that are about the bodies talking to each other,

not the minds talking to each other.

If you stand on opposite sides of the space,

step forward when you think you are making

-a step up in status in the scene.

-OK.

Step back if you think you've lost something.

If you think there's a big shift in the scene,

-swap places.

-OK.

What do you dream about?

Playing Man United.

Knocking that smile off Sir Alex's smug face.

Tactics going round in your head.

You all right, Case?

I heard you nearly married a once-good footballer.

Action and physical movement on stage

have to come from truthful thought

and what was playable between the two of them

is a real soreness and a real ache

about what happened between each other and a real lack of closure.

There is unfinished business there, and that's what makes it dramatic -

they have something to resolve.

Well, secrets is what makes the world go round.

How dare you?

Sorry, all right, yeah, sorry.

There's a key beat in the scene where there's a real power exchange

between Casey and Anthony

and that's the moment of the kiss, or the failed kiss

from Anthony.

With some thought, in retrospect,

she might have wanted to kiss him but not...

As soon as it's there, she knows...

Her knee-jerk reaction to him is one of repulsion.

So, can we try a version of it just to heighten that moment?

This might be completely the wrong thing,

but just to heighten it where somehow

he manages to hold that kiss

for a beat longer than is comfortable.

You did it! You got there!

-Winning, yeah? Winning.

-Spaceless and timeless.

The God bit in our brains.

That place where nothing else matters,

nothing can hurt you any more.

I let the scene run a couple of times

and saw what happened with that kiss moment. We then talked about it

a little bit more and what happened

if she were to put the kiss on him

and how that might affect the dynamic of the scene,

which I think was very powerful in rehearsal

but it was, in hindsight,

it made her the manipulator in the scene.

Winning, yeah? Winning.

Spaceless and timeless.

-The God bit in our brains.

-That place where nothing else matters,

nothing can hurt YOU any more.

Look...

My game plan's just a little bit more evolved

than yours these days, see?

In the end, I trusted both of their instincts entirely,

which was that moment of him coming in to kiss her

and her just limboing back and going, "Got ya."

You did it!

You got there!

Winning. Yeah? Winning.

-Spaceless and timeless.

-The God bit in our brains.

That place where nothing else matters,

nothing can hurt you any more.

-Look...

-Ooh.

My game plan's just a little bit more evolved than yours these days.

This is a play of gladiators and heroes and myth-makers.

They needed to go to extremes emotionally,

points of danger emotionally, but physically really engage with it,

really drop the body into a moment and get their point across.

I never wanted a war with you. I never, EVER wanted a war with you.

Oh, are you threatening me?

-Agents have wrecked the game but you're going too far.

-Woman!

Dare to try things that you might not be able to pull off,

emotionally, physically, however.

For me, that's a very, very important thing to do

because theatre is at its finest

at the emotional extremes at the points of danger.

But, hey...

no time for feelings.

On with this job.

CROWD ROARS

Stay there, don't move, I'll come back for you.

I love you, man. More than I love my own family.

Them man ready to ship me back when I didn't do anything.

I swear, if you weren't there for me...

You can't stop living, brother.

There's no need to live in fear.

Three Blind Mice is a story of three characters, essentially,

who have been thrown together in three flats,

one on top of the other,

they're coming out of very vulnerable situations,

either having been long-term hostel residents

or having been in prison and served a lengthy term inside,

or an entrenched alcoholic.

The vast bulk of the performers we work with

know what it is to be homeless. They have personal experience of it.

That lends it a power

because there's a degree of trust immediately established

with an audience. It's not some smart aleck

coming in and giving us good advice,

but it's people like us,

as it were, talking to us, talking with us.

And Terry comes on as Mouse...

Yeah.

So it's not about training actors or creating actors.

It's more about strengthening people in whatever change or development

they wish to make in their life.

OK, er, fear.

This ain't the sharp-looking Daps I know.

Where you staying?

So the principle is very simple and it's just,

what are the overarching emotions

that are going on in this scene?

What is the word to describe this thing?

And somebody says fear is present. OK, let's play it with fear.

Everything with fear.

I got a new yard. A penthouse.

Lots of space!

OK, cool. Brian, well done, you really go for it.

-Go with bravery.

-You got, I got a new yard. A penthouse!

Loads of space.

I'm good, you know.

Bruv, what's a friend, right...

..if I can't be honest, yeah?

You look like a crackhead!

Crackhead? Never that.

Yeah, but look at you, man. I feel responsible.

Here.

OK, good, interesting. Any moments of interest there?

"Crackhead", when he sort of slapped him round the head.

I certainly...

It was lovely to see your physicality

starting to develop quite naturally there, this stuff,

but it was also quite nice, actually, to see his stuff back.

'It's the director, Tony, who will decide

'how we wish to use any of this stuff, of course,'

having perhaps discovered some things in this process.

This process is simply about discovery.

When we find Dapo in the DIY store,

he's been given a set of keys to his new flat,

and he wants to do it up.

Dapo! Is that you?

Y'know, he then is faced with a problem

of not having enough money.

Henry walks in and further complicates that,

catches Dapo off-guard, if you like.

This ain't the sharp-looking Dapo I used to know.

Where you staying?

-My sister's lending me her sofa, innit.

-Bruv, come stay at mine.

Henry has a very confident sense of himself,

inner confidence which is expressed physically,

a very confident, self-assured man who is used to getting his own way.

-What's your name?

-Pamela.

Pamela, darling, you got some paper?

You know him?

Dapo is stuck, y'know.

He is pretty much stuck in that moment

until he can find a way out or Henry allows him to go.

There's not a lot he can do physically.

He's just got to process internally and I think we see a lot of that

being expressed through his face.

-..hook you up with a couple of girls.

-For real?

Here, Dap. Still grateful for what you did for mans, y'know?

-Was nothing.

-Nah, man.

Certain mans was snitching on mans.

You kept your mouth quiet. I respect that.

-It's cool.

-Catch you later.

Laters.

Actors who are playing off each other is, of course,

what we want, actors who will,

when a ball is thrown, will catch it,

and then throw it back.

Need a driver.

It's just for one day.

It's an hour-drive there,

and an hour-drive back.

That's it. And you get 500 for it.

£500?

Yeah, cash!

Just to drive one car!

You want to pay me 500 to drive you somewhere?

500.

What's the catch?

There's no catch.

I just want someone I can trust.

I trust you.

Five zero zero.

< (Yes.)

Cash in hand.

If you say yes,

you get half up-front now!

HE LAUGHS

-So, what's it going to be?

-When?

Tonight, brethren!

-What?

-Yeah!

You got something else you need doing?

What if I'd said no?

There's plenty of man out there who'd say yes.

All I have to do is drive?

If you want me to write you out a contract

for you, then yes!

Drive there and drive back.

I ain't got to do nothing but drive?

(Cool.)

Emotions being invisible things,

of course, they get expressed physically.

We can play with that

in terms of scale, if you like, to which we heighten that,

y'know, pull it right in, and equally,

we can choose to heighten it and express it

in a much larger scale.

-When?

-Tonight.

-What?

-What, you got something else you need doing?

-What if I said no?

-There's plenty of man out there who'd say yes.

All I got to do is drive?

Do you want me to write you a contract?

Yes, you drive there and you drive back.

SIREN WAILS

-Frustration.

-Why can't it be winter all year round?

-Thwarted ambitions.

-Do we really need summer?

I want to escape her, one of us is plotting to kill one of us.

-I feel so forsaken.

-How will it end?

I always seem to lose.

We scheme, we plot. Who will win?

-You are Jennifer, you are me.

-You are June, you are me.

-You are Jennifer, you are me.

-You are June, you are me.

-You are Jennifer, you are me.

-You are June, you are me.

-You are Jennifer, you are me.

-You are June, you are me.

-You are Jennifer...

-You are June...

BOTH: You...are...me.

We really are about both the physicality

and the language, the meaning.

So the exercises in the rehearsal room

is primarily about playing objectives.

The only thing you have

in order to change the other person,

you can move your chair and place yourself upon it.

And answer that immediately.

The twins were bullied.

They were the only black family in an all-white community,

and then, of course, they were identical twins,

which makes them doubly conspicuous.

I love that exercise because

simply by playing conflicting objectives,

if the actor is really trying to change the other person,

it will come alive.

Ultimately, to be safe and secure

and protect themselves is their strongest objective.

The terrible thing about the story is,

it's also a prison,

and in the end that becomes a place that is really unbearable.

Shall we see what happens if we put obstacles into the mix?

-Because, Demi, you said there was an anger, didn't you?

-Yeah, yeah.

I feel angry, yeah, because she made me...

-forced me to lie about how I was feeling.

-Yeah.

It's an interesting conflict. You want her to forgive you,

because, as you say, she can make your life...

-Hell.

-..hell,

and you want to see Dallas.

Lucy's bringing her parents home today.

Valene and Gary are coming to Southfork.

I need to see what Sue Ellen is wearing. Aargh!

Don't do this. Not tonight.

I can hear them talking!

We're missing the plot.

On the one hand, we know that, when they're outside of their bedroom,

of their home, not only were they silent,

but they were almost unreadable.

Their faces were completely impassive

and they did this extraordinary thing

of moving almost in unison.

'A lot of the process was about exploring, on the one hand,

'this desire to appear to be the same,

'so lots of work mirroring,

'lots of work around moving in unison,

'and yet, underneath that,

'looking at all the tensions, if you like, all the obstacles

'that are making that unity

'become more and more impossible to maintain.'

And Demi, lead.

And Tash, lead.

'In fact, the unity,

'it's not something flowing and smooth and easy.

'In a way, the reason they're having to move in unison

'is in order to cover up all the fractures,

'all the discord that's bristling away underneath,

'and I think that was something that we felt was very important to find,

'that this was a unison that was full of tension.'

And Cathy has left her bag in the room.

And Demi, June really wants to look inside the bag.

'In rehearsal, I will clap my hands in the middle of an improvisation

'or a scene and the actors will express

'whatever it is that they're feeling in that moment,

'totally physically.

'And then when I clap my hands again,

'they have to return to the scene and suppress that, cover it up.'

HANDCLAP

THEY HISS

HANDCLAP

And cover it up.

'We see when they're out in the world,

'we see them really kind of paralysed and frozen.

'It wasn't that they couldn't speak,

'it wasn't that they weren't able to speak,

'but that that they were...

'they WOULDN'T speak.'

Hello. I'm Ju...

You want people to know your name, don't you?

What will we call you if we don't know your name?

The twinnies?

Is that who you are?

Is that who you want to be for the rest of your life?

June!

One of June's obstacles to being safe

is that she longs to have a life

and be able to exist out there in the world and to feel valued

and recognised and some of the things that most of us want,

whereas, for Jennifer, I think her biggest obstacle

is her terror that she's going to lose June,

and that without her, she wouldn't be able to survive.

You...are...Jennifer.

You are...me.

I am June!

I...am...June!

-SHE LAUGHS

-Well done!

Well done, Jennifer.

That's what makes it feel like a real tragedy.

How could these two girls

who had so much going on inside

have ended up in Broadmoor for 12 years

for committing violent crimes?

When people ask us...

When people ask us...

-..how did you two...

-..meet...

..they want a story, a good story.

So together, over the years, we have built ours.

A quiet, shared mythology.

Throughout Lovesong, an older couple

are glimpsing these memories of a former self.

And sometimes they don't recognise what they've lost,

or the people they once were.

We've always been inspired by film, and the music video,

and we talk constantly about the change in focus,

from the largest spectacle to the tiniest little moment,

the touch between people.

And we feel that each of those is equally dynamic.

We want to make that brush of skin against skin

explode throughout this theatre,

just as we would want to make any large-scale

physical scene do the same.

But you have to construct the work in a way in which

your audience can see that tiny thing as something massive.

I think the hand means

-you get stuck on the hand just there.

-Yeah, yeah I do.

Whereas if you have her on here, you can actually roll her up

to your chest and shoulder.

Yeah, yeah!

'Whenever we start a project,

'we always recognise that we might have a cast of four, five, six, however many,

'and they've never worked together,

'and they may not have any physical experience,'

but we still recognise this spark within them,

so we need to find a way of bringing that out,

and that needs to be done in an environment that is safe for them,

where they trust each other. But you can't just ask for that.

You've got to create that environment.

Woo! Oh, see, now,

that's different for me going up now.

We do that by setting tasks, and those tasks are very, very simple,

but once everyone's got that,

you move on, and you add and add and add to that.

And what that does, it slowly builds up

a shared level of expertise

amongst the team.

Let's just do a run for memory, just straight through.

One, two, three,

four, five, six...

Probably the most physically demanding scene in Lovesong

has lots of counts. It's quite dangerous

cos they're all flying around in close proximity.

The making of that... you just give it space,

and you give it time, knowing that what you are going to do

over time in the rehearsal room is, once they feel secure,

you're going to squeeze the space, and squeeze the time.

There is a moment in the show where

Maggie opens the cupboards,

tries on these shoes that she holds very dear,

finds that she can't walk in them any more.

It's a particularly heartbreaking moment. When she puts them back,

suddenly she's in the arms of the younger version of her lover.

-It should be one move, yeah?

-Oh, right.

But it's just fluid.

It's just slower.

It's just slower, isn't it?

-Yep.

-OK.

Lose the feel for it.

Good! Yep, that's all right.

Cool! Yeah!

Our demands of any physical scene within our work

is that it must move the narrative forward.

It's not just there for effect,

it's not just there for shapes.

'They're not just thrown across the stage.'

That one there, let's think about the storytelling of this moment.

It's all very nice, but what is it? It should be an embrace

that she somehow comes out of rather than preparing a space for her to...

That's it, that's it, good.

I need to get closer, yeah.

So, do we look at each other when the hand...

-..or don't we? Or perhaps not?

-Even then it's just that,

that's much more interesting.

Because we follow eyes all the time...

OK, so, perhaps we should be looking that way anyway,

-so there isn't a head-turn.

-Actually, I know what it is.

Let's try this. So what we'll do is,

we just let the hands happen first, so the hands do that

-and then we look.

-And then look, OK.

OK, so it goes...

'When it's as fast and as precise as you want it,

'then you suddenly remind the performers that

'now it's time to perform it,

'it's time to act it, it's time to remember who you are'

on stage in that moment.

And they just fly with it.

Just as she couldn't walk in her shoes a moment ago,

the young life comes in and just

sweeps her across a room like he used to.

It's one of those moments where she grabs strength from memory,

but these moments are fleeting,

and these dreams pass,

and unfortunately, he fades away.

The show has culminated in this crisis in their life,

and they make a decision.

The time has come, they need to act on this,

and that clears the air somehow.

So that scene, where they're all out in the garden,

preparing for this last night or this birthday party,

it had to have all the air and all the excitement of a life well lived

and of a future together all rolled into one.

And that is the story of...

..our beginning.

And this is the story of...

..the end.

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