1605 Rehearsal Diary

  FRI 22 APR 05

AOIBHEANN KELLY

Time just flies here at Riding Lights. I can’t believe this is our last day at Friargate Theatre before we hit the road again. Three weeks have flown by but so much has been achieved during that time. Improvising is a frightening and vulnerable exercise for many actors – being put on the spot there and then and act!  
 
We’ve been doing a lot of this over the last couple of weeks, but on Friday we all did an exercise which Bridget showed us, which helped immensely with the whole improvising process. There’s nothing worse than standing on stage, not knowing what to say or do – it takes courage to throw yourself into it, but by breaking down a scene, contemplating what exactly it is that the scene should communicate, what emotions are expressed, what developments happen and what the main themes are before you perform helps immensely.  
 
We re-visited some previous scenes we had improvised earlier, in the light of this new exercise, and the difference in structure, pace and reality was incredible.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-25 11:30:03

  WED 20 APR 05

BRIDGET FOREMAN

A long hard day at the devising coalface! Only another 3 days in the rehearsal room before we go our separate ways… the actors back to touring their other show for a few weeks, leaving those of us who are continuing the creative processes of the show to try to pull all these thoughts and moments and characters and half-baked scenes into some kind of a play and production. So, the pressure is on to work the material as much as we can at this point.  
 
We pack the improvisations in today. It’s exhausting work, and people are understandably tired from their performance the night before – with another to give this evening. Nonetheless, we plunge into some new scenes, from a touchingly domestic evening with James I and his wife, to an extreme cartoon-ish Masque of the entire plot, to a pilgrimage taken by a few faithful Catholics – people who were horrified by their fellow Catholics’ plans for terrorism. All interesting areas, and every day it feels as though we are finding our way into deeper territory of the story.  
 
We finish at 5, and by 7.30 the actors are starting a performance of Flight Cases in the theatre for an eager audience. The lights go down, the show starts. It’s another world.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-22 08:26:23

  TUE 19 APR 05

ANDREW DEAVILLE

Spent most of today improvising various scenes from the Gunpowder Plot story. Had some fun with the Tesimond / Owen story, getting Father Tesimond stuck in the priest hole. But we also dealt with more serious issues as well. I feel as if we’re all understanding the characters more, which is helping the improvisations to feel more natural.  
 
In the evening there was the small matter of performing Flight Cases… very positive audience, though, thank goodness…

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-20 14:02:39

  MON 18 APR 05

ELLIE TREVITT

We spent most of today rehearsing Flight Cases. It’s been nearly a month since we last performed it, and it was a good chance to go over the sections that need a little more work.  
 
Later in the day, we got back to the Gunpowder Plot and, after a lengthy debate, decided upon a few scenes to research tonight and improvise tomorrow. These are… Tesimond (the Jesuit priest) talking to Nicholas Owen about priest holes and plotting; how James I’s government manipulated information to implicate the Jesuits in the plot; and Anne Vaux and Mary Digby discussing the persecution of the Catholics.  
 
It has been a really useful day, both in terms of getting ready for tomorrow’s performance of Flight Cases, and in terms of the devising process – we’re all feeling very positive about it!

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-20 00:00:00

  FRI 15 APR 05

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN

The first thing we did this morning was to go over our plan again for the workshop with Year 10 in the afternoon. This done, we turned our attention to a couple of improvisations we’d been thinking about, both relating back to the Gunpowder Plot; one involving a mass service which is interrupted , forcing the worshippers hastily to hide all religious matter (including the priest) before they are found out by pious, rampaging protestants. The other looks at how governments (of 1605 and 2005) twist evidence to suit their wishes.  
 
We showed both these improvisations in the workshop, and they seemed to go down very well. We looked a lot at the spreading of today’s climate of fear by the government-supported media, relating it back to how things were in 1605 – practically the same as they are now…  
 
The students were excellently responsive. After the workshop, we went back to a music rehearsal for the two performances of our other show, Flight Cases, coming up in Friargate Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday next week.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-19 09:53:16

  THU 14 APR 05

PAUL BURBRIDGE

After the ‘round the UK’ tour yesterday, we spent our first session assembling ‘useful thorts’ in three categories…  
 
1. Our strongest memories from both our terrorism discussion and our visit to Coughton Court  
2. A list of possible ‘scenes’ for the play  
3. Ideas for the next day’s workshop with students from Joseph Rowntree School  
 
Three quite promising lists did emerge and we then got together with Paul Birch to turn our workshop ideas into WORKSHOP PLANS, dividing up the two-hour slot between us. One of the main ingredients was to try to help the students improvise scenes from the 17th century… so we thought we’d better try a few ourselves!  
 
Came up with a scene based on the interruption of a secret celebration of the Mass at Coughton Court, and also a matching pair of scenes (one 17th century, one 21st century) looking at how governments can manipulate / spin information to their own advantage. Chose to look at the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot through Monteagle’s mysterious letter and this mirror this with an MI5 scene about the Bourgass ‘poison’ trial and government terrorist scaremongering which was all over the papers that same morning.  
 
We all felt that things had moved on a lot since Tuesday… need to improve those scenes before showing them to JoRo’s, though.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-18 16:41:01

  WED 13 APR 05

BRIDGET FOREMAN

Mercifully, I don’t hear Farming Today on the radio very often. It’s not that it’s boring – it’s actually surprisingly interesting (!) – it’s just that it’s broadcast at 5.30am.  
 
Today, though, I hear it, because we all set off extremely early for a day of research hundreds of miles away...  
 
By 10.30 we’re in Cambridge talking to Peter Cavanagh. Peter happens to be our Designer’s brother, but more importantly he’s the Executive Director of The Cambridge Programme for Security in International Society. What that means is that he’s an expert in issues surrounding modern-day terrorism. We have a fascinating discussion with him which takes us all over the globe and in and out of history. He explodes some myths for us (e.g. that we might be able to define what a terrorist is, or that poverty causes terrorism), and he helps us to make some vital connections between the Gunpowder Plot and acts of terrorism today.  
 
We leave with our heads spinning and a lot of new thoughts and ideas that we’ll be coming back to over the next week. Another two hours in the car, a brief pit-stop for lunch, and we arrive at Coughton Court near Stratford-upon-Avon. Join Riding Lights and see the world!  
 
Coughton is a beautiful Tudor mansion, and was a key location in the Gunpowder Plot. Many of the characters we have been researching had connections to the house, and there’s plenty to see which takes us right back to the events of 1605.  
 
Secret chapels in towers, priest-holes which saved the lives of Catholic priests, and the actual room that our characters were in when they heard the devastating news that the plot had failed. It’s amazing to look out of a window or stand on a staircase, and know that 400 years ago they had done exactly the same thing – had stood in that place or seen that view.  
 
The visit fires our imaginations and as we walk around the gardens at the end of the afternoon, everyone’s excited about how we can take away something of the atmosphere and experience of this extraordinary place. A brief trip to a nearby pub, where we try to pull together the thoughts and impressions of the day (goodness knows what the bar staff thought of us all jabbering away about terrorism and gunpowder!), and we were back in the cars again for the long drive home. A really good day.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-15 10:05:51

  TUE 12 APR 05

JONATHAN LAMBERT

Today we wanted to see how the characters that intrigued us might come alive on stage. We chose a wide variety of scenes where there was dramatic potential, scenes which would help us get inside the characters' minds.  
 
In one scene, King James, politically anti-Catholic, arrives at the house of Anne Vaux, a Catholic woman with strong beliefs. Apparently, he is out hunting, but why is he really there? Could things turn nasty? Would the priest hidden in the house be discovered?  
 
By improvising, we found out what worked and what didn't, helping us closer to actually making a play.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-15 00:00:00

  MON 11 APR

PAUL BIRCH, Education Officer

After spending many hours working on creating the teachers’ pack and planning the project, I was very interested in seeing the Roughshod actors meet and work, for the first time, with the Joseph Rowntree students. It was to be the first of two workshops held at Friargate Theatre, taking place at the beginning of the project both for actors and students.  
 
I was very pleased to see a bright, articulate and enthusiastic group of students who threw themselves into the various exercises, both mentally and physically. What I found particularly brilliant was the way in which they tackled the forum theatre exercise. They came up with a range of interesting strategies but also performed under pressure and improvised well with the actors. I think, judging by this, their level of energy and ability will help them enormously as they face the difficult work of devising their own play.  
 
Afterwards everyone seemed to be in very good spirits and I look forward to the second workshop to be conducted on Friday.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-14 00:00:00

  FRI 8 APR 05

AOIBHEANN KELLY

As rehearsals for Hope’s Kitchen draw to a close, there’s a real buzz of excitement and energy at Riding Lights. We were pretty much left today to work through things ourselves upstairs in the theatre. It’s so much easier to create in an environment that has a great atmosphere, and I believe that the devising went very well due to this.  
 
Bridget saw what we had done in preparation for the workshop in the morning, and asked us to cut down the timing of the two sketches. Trying as a group to decide what to cut and keep can be a very prolonged affair!  
 
However, we managed to get each one down to 4 minutes. The whole exercise actually made me aware of how much irrelevant material it’s possible to build up. Bridget also advised us to make sure we remembered what we were trying to say, and make it clear what the focus should be on. A great learning experience and very productive day.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-12 17:23:32

  THU 7 APR 05

PATRICK O'SULLIVAN

Started the day by performing some extracts from Flight Cases, the show we’ve been touring for the last two months, to the company rehearsing Hope’s Kitchen. Then back onto devising our own show…  
 
We spent the afternoon improvising in the theatre, carrying on yesterday’s work around a Catholic household during the time of the Gunpowder Plot.  
 
Jon’s playing a Catholic patriarch, Aoibheann hjs long-suffering Protestant wife, Ellie their Protestant servant, Andy a priest, and me as Sir Thomas Percy, who crashes into their house in the middle of the night to demand that Jon flies to arms with me against the Protestant aggressors. We also did plenty of discussion and hot-seating.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-12 17:22:57

  WED 6 APR 05

ANDREW DEAVILLE

In the morning we watched Yasmin, a TV drama about a young British Muslim woman living in Yorkshire around the time of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. There were many parallels in the story with the Gunpowder Plot. We discussed the similarities, thinking about how we could relate the modern equivalent into our play. In the afternoon we improvised a scene set in a Catholic household just after the Plot had failed. We hot-seated the characters, which really helped to get into the story more. The Gunpowder Plot is quite a complicated story, so it really helped to bring it to life.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-12 00:00:00

  MON 4 APR / TUE 5 APR

ELLIE TREVITT

The first couple of days of rehearsal have really been a time to start deciding what we are going to devise – not in terms of subject matter, because we already have the Guy Fawkes story. It’s been a time to discuss the details of the story – its characters, its messages, any questions or confusions that have arisen from our own private research.  
 
We have all had the opportunity to talk, in detail, about what we like in the Gunpowder Plot story. Things which have arisen for us have been about the difference between Catholic and Protestant practice, the conspirators’ lack of long-term planning, and the atmosphere of fear that existed in 1605. We have also been struck by some of the similarities between 16th century England and the world we live in today. It’s basically been a really important time for making sure everyone in the group is at a similar level of understanding of the story and its challenges, so that we can work together effectively in the devising process. And, of course, a time for swapping knowledge and dividing up the research that still needs to be done.  
 
We have each chosen a character to research in detail tonight, so that tomorrow we can hot-seat those characters and really start the process of making our research come to life.

Posted by rlights on 2005-04-12 00:00:00