WRITER & PAPER + DIRECTOR & THEATRE = AUDIENCE & HEART

Today in movement I ended up chatting on the side to Vanessa for most of the class! She had some feedback for me on my writing for Steph: The Musical, particularly around what Philippe had been saying about how I'm trying to tell three stories, not one. She said stories always pose a question for the audience, e.g. in The Lord of the Rings the question is 'will Frodo destroy the ring?'

And throughout the entire story the audience are held by this question. And then once the question is answered the story is finished. (Unfortunately in LOTR: The Return of the King we find out Frodo destroys the ring half an hour before the end, and so the last half hour feels really long and drawn out - because we have nothing to answer anymore.) There can be lots of little questions along the way...

e.g. 'Will Frodo get away from the Ringwraiths?'

...but overall we are held by one core question.

But my problem with Steph: The Musical is I would be posing three different questions:

1. Will New Zealand change her?
2. Will she meet her father? Or will he accept her?
3. Will her and her mother be friends again?

So that made things clearer for me.

She also spoke about how the protagonist always changes, but the central character doesn't necessarily. E.g. In The Shawshank Redemption Tim Robbin's Andy is the central character, but he doesn't change. From the get go he says he's innocent, and he always wants to get out of prison. Whereas Morgan Freeman's Red always wants to get out of prison but by the end of the film he doesn't want to leave. However the protagonist and the central character can be the same person - as is my case with Steph.

She also suggested this book called Story by Robert McKee. So I'll put this on my reading list!

~

Andre and Sophia presented a scene as Ned and Nell from Samuel Beckett's Endgame.

“Do we dream they were a beautiful couple?” No... “We like them but we don’t think they were in love.”

“Good work as actors. We love you. But we don’t love the couple so much.”

Philippe spoke briefly about Beckett’s two most famous works: Endgame or Waiting For Godot, concluding with saying: “Me – I prefer Godot…they hope…Godot is optimistic. This one [Endgame] is not at all. But the couple in the bin is beautiful.”

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David and Maria presented a scene from ¡Ay, Carmela! again, this time taking on board Philippe's feedback from the previous time they presented.

“First, I don’t understand anything.” = It's all in Spanish, and the Spanish speak really fast...

“You have to think the audience comes to see you.” Not to see the play or the character. But you.

“We don’t see the humanity of these people…or the actors.”


"Too much postcard from Spain."

Philippe got Vicky and Ric to swap costumes with Maria and David and to imitate Flamenco dancing.

This showed how important it is for us to first and foremost love the actors. We loved Vicky."We like her. We want to go for a drink with her after the show."

~

I asked Philippe the question: 'Should a play have a message or a moral in it?'

Philippe said simply, "No". In a way, every play does. But you don't have to think about it.

'Should an audience leave thinking about the meaning of the play?'

“For sure when a good show is finished it doesn’t stay immediately like a moral in your head. A good show…everything is so fantastic that you applaud…you leave the theatre…and you drink with friends…and we don’t know how to breathe.”

“A good show…we can’t speak after.”

He spoke about a writer has to have fun using the magic of words, which he gifts to a director who has fun using the magic of theatre to then give to the hearts of the audience.

"It has to be through the paper for a writer." 

WRITER & PAPER + DIRECTOR & THEATRE = AUDIENCE & HEART

~

Claire showed her direction of Tim's script of Steph's story. The scene showed Steph dreaming of two different possible fathers, who both came out behind her whilst she did this, in a dream like state. Tom (Australia) played one, and he was made up to look strange. However Akron who played the other, looked relatively normal, so the image didn't work.

"Give something magic to this guy!"

~

Steph also led an improvisation of an idea she had in her head, in which random characters from our 'Characters' workshop meet and interact. It was very strange. But interesting and surprising. I guess that's one way of finding a story: to put different characters in a room and see what happens...