First Week of Rehearsal

The first week of rehearsals was great but exhausting, as it always is. The first week of rehearsals was a combination of practical considerations, creative decisions and exploration and team building, as it always is. You can see footage of the actors talking and some of the exercises on physicalisation elsewhere on the website.

Some random thoughts on what has emerged from the text as I look back on our work so far:

• Marlowe is a natural born subvert. It is, after all, a play whose central relationship is between a man born “base of stock” and a fallen angel. Knowing your place in the world – or actually, not knowing your place in the world – or knowing your place but being malcontented is fundamental to the action. Of course, Marlowe was a bright scholarship boy too…..
• Every scene reveals some aspect of this interest in power and status. Wagner - who is far brighter, if less educated than the scholars - wants a servant because he is one. Robin too.
• Look at the difference between what Faustus says he wants to do with unlimited power before he summons Mephistopheles (in Act 1 Scene 1) and after he has summoned Mephistopheles (in Act 1 Scene 3) The difference between “When I’m prime minister” and “Now that I am prime minister”…?
• Close scrutiny of the text always reveals inconsistencies. Plot Robin’s narrative arc, for instance, to see what I mean. In the first scene he is unemployed. When we see him with Rafe, he has been working for their mutual master and mistress for some time, while also being close enough to Wagner and Faustus to pick up a little Latin and steal a book of spells. To call the play “loosely plotted” only just begins to describe it! However, the structure of the narrative and juxtaposition of scenes makes emotional and rhythmic sense.
• The Spanish Armada was 1588. Doctor Faustus probably first performed shortly thereafter. Therefore, for the original audience, the moment at the start of Act 3 when Mephistopheles announces that he has transported them to the Pope’s inner chamber is rather like a play written in the months after 9/11 setting a scene in Bin Laden’s cave ….

Music

Music has always been a major part of the Present Moment approach. Our first production, The Country Wife, began with Everyday Should Be A Holiday by the Dandy Warhols because, for the characters in the play, every day was. Plus the hedonistic, arrogant rush perfectly suited the mood of the piece and set the scene for what was to follow. Of course it wasn’t from the period the play was written. That’s the point. Decide the atmosphere you want to create then find the music that fits. So there will be no crumhorns and viols and tambours in the Present Moment Doctor Faustus. Claustrophobic and edgy and ominous. That's what we want to evoke. For that reason I listened to a lot of music from horror films and mysteries, paying particularly attention to how such films – and sci fi – use music to punctuate and underscore. Currently I find myself playing a lot of Burial, Future Sounds of London and the kind of epic washes of electronic sound that Tangerine Dream were creating in the mid 1970s.

Performing plays as if they were written yesterday

The Time Out review of our 2^nd production, The Revenger’s Tragedy began “Present Moment take plays written centuries ago and perform them as if they were written yesterday”. Which was fantastic because it captures the essence of the brand (to borrow from advertising-speak). So how do we do that?

We don’t change the language (although we have been known to edit). We don’t dress everyone in early 21^st century fashion. . But we do try to find a context in which the play comes to life. Because you have to create a world in which the action of the drama makes sense. And to build a bridge from our world to that world.

Elsewhere on this web site you can see me talking about inspiration and starting points. You may not know where an idea comes from. I often don’t, at first. The process works backwards. So it took me a while to realise that the notion of Mephistopheles first appearance evoking Arnie’s first appearance in The Terminator is – apart from being very dramatic – is because of the effect that Mephistopheles has on Faustus world and the action of the play, in the same way that the Terminator effects Sarah Connor’s world. (Mind you, Faustus isn’t Sarah Connor – she’s far more practical. And she can sprint. Faustus isn’t comfortable in his body. He lives in his head.

When you’re looking for ways to contextualise and interpret a piece, ask yourself what the place you’re performing suggests. Stratford Circus is a modern space. There’s wood, but there’s metal. It’s in a neighbourhood that is being rebuilt and revealed and transformed (the Olympic site is just across the road). All that has, I begin to realise, informed our interpretation.

Before and during rehearsals keep asking, “Who is this person like? What does this scene remind me of? What’s the equivalent today?” So – in no particular order:

• I’m playing with the idea of Valdes and Cornelius as undertakers. That’s partly because, for me, Faustus’ study is a state of mind as well as an actual place. I want him out of there. It’s also a practical decision – if you’re a necromancer, you need access to dead bodies. Who has access to dead bodies? Undertakers!

• What happens to people, like Robin and Rafe, with no money and big dreams when they strike it lucky? Maybe their second scene is like a moment from MTV cribs

• The Emperor reminds me of some spoilt rich kid, needing a new thrill, like someone off Gossip Girl. (Hmm. Maybe I watch too much trashy TV)

• Faustus wouldn’t have done normal kid things. He’d have been indoors, learning calculus and Latin. So Mephistopheles becomes the best mate he never had. And what a relief it must be to hang out with and talk to someone as clever as he is.

The process is about honouring the original and its spirit while finding what's there that the audience can recognise and connect with. Creating clarity. That's the point of interpretation.

The Casting Process

The play is cast and we start rehearsals on Monday which, after months of planning, is very exciting. I have been asked how I go about casting. So here goes.

The first thing is to find people that I want to work with and who want to work with me. Nobody gets rich making theatre, so we have to hope that it enriches us in other, non-financial ways. The chemistry has to be right. People have to want to go on the journey. Rehearsals can and should be fun and playful but they can also be stressful and exhausting and demanding and require people who are team players. (Note to budding directors: Some actors, as part of their creative process, need to make the director the enemy. Some need to be bullied. Avoid these types!)

Second, I look for people who have been trained and – for this production – have some experience of acting in Elizabethan and Jacobean plays. There are a lot of bad classical acting clichés – indeed, I usually do an exercise early in the process so we can get them out into the open and out of the way – but it helps if people are not terrified of iambic pentameter. It also helps if people don't go into that weird "I'm making a speech" tone of voice and are able to make the language, however heightened and obscure, sound like words actual people might really say!

Third – in the case of this play – I wanted people who could play multiple roles and had good physical skills. All the actors apart from those playing Faustus and Mephistopheles play several roles so I wanted people who were versatile.

To discover who met the 2^nd and 3^rd criteria, I asked actors to prepare a 2-minute classical speech for their first, one to one audition. I also had a selection of speeches from the play (Robin, Valdes, Emperor and Lucifer) so I could pick one that contrasted with their own speech and give them a few minutes to prepare it. Actors that were recalled were those who showed me a range, as well as an ability to create a recognisable character very quickly. Why? Look at the script. See how many characters appear in a single scene or a couple of scenes. That’s why.

The recall workshop lasted 3 hours and involved a lot of movement work – the concept behind the production requires physically skilled actors who can transform and work in abstract ways as well as handling Marlowe’s text and creating convincing characters.

With this production, we ring fenced 5 parts for people who had completed training in the last year or so. Partly this is practical: there are bits and pieces of funding available for “emerging artists”. Partly, it’s a good thing in and of itself and it’s what Present Moment do: give people opportunities.

Giving people opportunities is why there is also an ensemble of acting interns – young people on BTEC courses, in training, on gap years, looking for some experience before applying for Drama school. They’ll get some additional training and support as part of the rehearsal process (voice classes, movement classes). And they’re a vital part of the concept of the show – on stage most of the time.

Stage Directions

Some time ago I wrote about interpretation. Today, a note on stage directions.

Stage directions are the enemy of interpretation. A lot of mid 20^th century playwrights go into enormous lengths to describe the scene (or actually, the set), what the characters look like, even where they move and how they speak a line (“slowly, with a growing sense of dread” or some such prescriptive nonsense.) To be fair, often these descriptions and moves come from the stage management's prompt copy of the original production.

Regardless of who has written such stage directions if – as a director or actor – you are faced with such a script, go through and cross them out! They will get in your way. How the actor playing the character delivers a particular line should emerge from the rehearsal process not be dictated by a playwright who imagined that line delivered in a particular way.

Of course, plays like Doctor Faustus feature very few stage directions – or indeed scene divisions - and those that are there are often added by a stage manager or print setter. You have to look in the script for clues as to location and delivery. Which is what you should be doing anyway, every time.

Marlowe & the original audience

Elsewhere on this website, you can see me talking about the need for the director to understand the world of the play. The world of the play is also, of course, the world of the playwright.

A lot has been written and speculated about the short, murky life of Christopher Marlowe. Was he an agent, a spy, a projector? Did he really die in Deptford aged 29 or was it an elaborate cover up? Whatever, it is clear that the man who wrote Act 1 scene 3, had a very sophisticated understanding of negotiation, bluff and double-bluff. Working the first dialogue between Faustus and Mephistopheles with the actors who will play them, it’s like a game of poker. What Faustus asks for first, the next; what Mephistopheles offers, what he withholds.

That may reflect Marlowe’s personal world view and experience. What about the original audience’s experience and expectations. When I was researching the play, I came across the following quote from Paul Taylor, the Independent’s theatre critic, on the context in which the play was originally performed:

“a world where the plague killed off many adults in their prime. In those circumstances, 24 years of assured life might not seem such a paltry bargain. Moreover, theatres were meccas of disease and had to be closed down during epidemics. To see the original performance of Faustus in a public playhouse may well have felt rather lke seeing a play about 24 hours of indestructibility performed in a New York or San Francisco bathhouse in the mid-1980s, when the true panic of Aids had kicked in”.

Interpretation

The A level Drama specification talks a lot about a director’s interpretation. At a macro level, I suppose that means “Let’s do Romeo and Juliet and make the Capulets white and the Montagues Asian” – or whatever. (By the way, surely the whole point of the feud in Romeo and Juliet is that no one can remember why it started? If you make it animosity between the families about race, you’ve got West Side Story. Which is one of the great pieces of 20^th century theatre but the poignancy of the tragedy in Romeo & Juliet is that no one remembers why the feud was going on in the first place.

So, yes, the director’s concept (which I’ll write about soon) is important. It may throw light on the play or it may be gratuitous and imposed on the text, but it’s important.

But, at a micro level, it’s worth remembering that, as an actor, you interpret every time you open your mouth. You interpret every time you chose to move. You make a choice. That’s interpretation, pure and simple.

The importance of hearing a play read

Plays exist in 3 dimensions. Everything communicates meaning. Tone of voice, gesture, expression, proximics (that’s the distance between performers). And that’s before you get onto set, costumes, lighting, sound and how they add to the atmosphere. Making decisions about all those things, bringing them together, putting them together – is both the interpretation of a play and the end of the creative process.

Plays are written to be heard and seen, not read. Me, I find reading plays difficult, especially plays with complex language and long speeches. So I get a group of actors together to read them early in the creative process. The reading of Doctor Faustus was very helpful – not least because of the insight the actors bring when we’re chatting after the reading. The comic characters, as one actor pointed out, do what most of us would do if we had access to magic: use it to get rich and have lots of sex. Or dream of it. Another pointed out that most tragic hero’s don’t make their fatal mistake until well into the play, whereas Doctor Faustus makes his crucial decision in his first speech in his first scene!

The one about the design meeting

Hello, and welcome to the production blog of Doctor Faustus, the 5th Present Moment production. I'm Joss Bennathan, artistic director of Present Moment. I hope that this blog will be useful and interesting for teachers and students who are coming to see the show (Stratford Circus, Jan 12 - Feb 6 2010) or studying the play. Maybe it will also be interesting to anyone interested in understanding a production process.

We've be in pre-production for some time now. I'll write about that at a later date. But I'm going to write about what's happening now - there will be flashbacks later.

So - just had a very productive design meeting. David Crisp and I have worked together plenty of times before. We share a verbal short hand by now. He is resident designer at Birmingham School of Acting where I usually direct once a year. This is the first Present Moment show he has designed.

We have met and discussed the design for Doctor Faustus before, and spent some time just standing in the space where it will be performed. (In the education pack that goes with the show, you can see some of the images that inspired us. Sometimes it’s hard to know why an image works for you. Just let it. Don’t censor your imagination.) But now the time has come when we need to start making definite decisions.

A couple of days before the meeting, I annotated the script and sent it out to the creative team – explaining – or trying to – how the transformation of space and people might work.

Doctor Faustus, like many plays of its time, doesn’t specify where many scenes are set. Some have had stage directions added in (his study). Others can be worked out from how the first line of a scene sets the stage. But a lot of the time it ‘s about the collective imagination of the the actors, the director, the designer. It's about finding a location which will enhance the mood of a scene or help make the scene and play as clear as possible.

Any design meeting is a combination of artistic and practical issues. What will the set cost? When will it be ready? I want to have it in rehearsals so I can play around with how it works. I don’t want to say too much about the set at this stage but I’m excited about the possibilities!