Rehearsing LOVE FIFTEEN
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PAUL BURBRIDGE Director
BRIDGET FOREMAN Director
SUZI FOWLER Education Officer, Workshop Leader
JON LISLE Actor, Roughshod
CATHERINE MacCABE Actor, Roughshod
KATIE McLEAN Actor, Roughshod
STEWART PILE Actor, Roughshod
THE AIM:
To devise a new play on the theme of parent / teenager relationships, to rehearse the show and be ready to perform at Friargate Theatre, York, by Tuesday 30 January 2001 before a nationwide tour. Only 25 days to go, then!
 LOOKING BACK BEN BAYLEY (GCSE Drama Student, Fulford School)
When we saw the actors and actresses performing without the script, to help them we had to identify problems and take over the part of a certain character and rectify their mistakes. This was very scary but the group gave you confidence to have a go. This taught me a lesson – always try and be bold about things, otherwise you may get nowhere. The atmosphere and calm of the group – no one would be angry if you made a mistake – helped everybody to perform and act themselves. I found the actors and actresses in the group were extremely friendly and encouraging. They seemed to have as much fun as we did, which was a considerable amount, so the relationship between us developed very well.
THURSDAY 1 FEBRUARY 2001 ANTONY DUNN (MARKETING OFFICER)
Well, Love Fifteen is a great success! Three sell-out shows here at Friargate Theatre have been a really encouraging start to the six months on the road, and the audiences seem to have had a good time.
The Forum section of the show makes audiences a little nervous at first, but once someone has been bold enough to stop the action and stand in for one of the actors, then they all seem to want to have a go!
Steve Chalke, Chairman of Parentalk (the national charity supporting this autumn's national tour of Love Fifteen) was here here on the first night, and was one of the people to fill in a questionnaire about the show. And his thoughts about Love Fifteen?
"Impressive... the sheer creativity needed to develop a scenario which allowed for the exploration of so many family 'issues' was truly remarkable."
We're all feeling pretty encouraged, and there's a real air of celebration after the final York performance. Until we tell the cast they have to take the set apart before they're allowed to go home and go to bed...
Tomorrow, they load it all into the van and head off for a month of public performances in South Wales.
And, after that, the world...
While the rest of us, of course, look forward to two days off before our other Roughshod company comes back to York to start work devising their new play, First Hand.
Aaargh!!!
WEDNESDAY 31 JANUARY THOMAS HUTCHINSON (GCSE Drama Student, Joseph Rowntree School)
Three weeks ago the actors had no idea what their play would be about, in terms of character and plotting. Today was time for the second performance of the finished production. It had all come around so quickly. I'm one of the students from Joseph Rowntree School who have been visiting the rehearsals regularly to find out what goes on and hopefully learn new acting skills.
I suppose this diary entry takes the form of a mini-review. But don't worry - it's all positive. 'Love Fifteen' (an ambiguous title if ever there was one) was EXCELLENT!
I had never experienced theatre this close and personal before, but I found it to be very effective. It covered a lot of topics to do with families, friendship and relationships in a humorous yet respectful way. Even the forum theatre in the middle worked, with some unexpectedly confident adults in the audience. The four actors took on at least two different guises each, as it followed the personal history of a family - two parents, a sixteen year-old daughter and a fourteen year-old son. The simple set worked very well too. The story began with the purchasing of a new car for the family and ended with the selling of it. All the scenes were based around the family car, yet it did not seem contrived, and went unnoticed.
COMEDY HIGHLIGHTS: Dad listening to Bruce Springsteen in the car; the 'ship' jokes; the adventure of Sophie's friend, the spider, Dad and a policeman.
DRAMATIC HIGHLIGHTS: Mum making Sophie clean up sick on 'morning after'; Danny attacks Dad when he finds out about Sophie shoplifting
OVERALL: 9.5/10
Good luck with the rest of the tour!
TUESDAY 30 JANUARY ANTONY DUNN (MARKETING OFFICER)
Tonight's the opening night of LOVE FIFTEEN in Friargate Theatre. It's been even more hectic than usual since last Thursday - hence no diary entries since then. The company has been rehearsing from the finished script, making tiny tweaks here and there to get it absolutely right, while the rest of us have been tied up with the practical side of getting a show open in a studio theatre...
Sean Cavanagh, the Designer, spent the weekend putting the set together - an ingenious contraption featuring a rotating circular platform, about five feet across, set into a raised rectangular structure. Great fun to play on... And most of the office staff were roped in at some point to glue, screw, paint, sand, saw or carry bits of the set throughout Monday.
The cast finally got to rehearse on the set around Monday lunchtime - a mere 30 hours before the first public performance. Gulp. This is pretty normal for a Roughshod show - right down to the wire. It's good for us all, though. Adrenalin etc etc.
So Tuesday, then. The day of the show. While the office staff are cleaning the foyer, throwing out the doomed Yucca plant, hiding a months' worth of coffee cups and so on, the cast are being left alone to rehearse in peace.
Performance day is always a strange one. We're all quite nervous. And if you find yourself with an unoccupied moment of calm, you can't enjoy it because you're worrying about all the things you might have forgotten you should be doing...
Seven o'clock: the audience begins to arrive. By quarter past seven the foyer is heaving. All three Friargate performances of LOVE FIFTEEN have been sold out for several days, and we've had to turn lots of people away. (NB. Early booking recommended, folks!)
Seven thirty: every seat in the theatre is full. Lights out. On with the show...
THURSDAY 25 JANUARY PAUL BURBRIDGE
We’re learning! After experimenting (constructively, but ultimately unsuccessfully) with the Forum Theatre section of the play in yesterday’s workshop with the first group from JoRo, we decide that we need to rethink our strategy. We need to be clearer about what Forum Theatre is and how it can help to ‘solve’ problems which characters in the play create for themselves. We need to make the process of encouraging members of the audience to step into the action (by stopping the scene and taking over one of the roles) far less intimidating. We spend the first part of the day refining the workshop for the second JoRo group, due to arrive at 10.50am. We plan a different series of games and exercises which are all based around the concept of stopping an action, stepping in and changing the situation.
12.45pm – the result is very different! The Forum Theatre experiment is much more successful… the young actors seem to catch a vision for the way Forum can break deadlocked situations.
After lunch we get back to detailed rehearsal of Love Fifteen. This continues throughout the afternoon and into the evening, by which time everyone feels that we have progressed a long way. The liveliness of our early improvisations is beginning to melt back into the script and each scene is coming into much sharper relief. Yes… relief all round!
WEDNESDAY 24 JANUARY THOMAS HUTCHINSON (GCSE Drama Student, Joseph Rowntree School)
Today was our third visit to the Friargate Theatre. We met with the Roughshod actors once again, and began with some warm up activities involving moving around the room in different ways. We also tried working together in groups so that only certain parts of our bodies could touch the floor at any one time.
Next, we changed our groups to people who we might not usually choose to work with, and in threes, we were given a situation and five minutes to prepare a short scene. Mine involved a mother discovering that her son had been shoplifting. I was pleased with ours, but after showing the scenes and discussing them, we realised that we had made the son the more sympathetic character. We were asked to re-develop the scenes so that the mother was the figure that the audience could empathise with. In our previous scene, the mother was already calm and collected, so we figured that the only way we could do this was to make the son more immoral. This produced mixed results, but made us think about the different ways we could approach the same scene.
We continued the same theme on a larger scale by watching an already scripted piece of work that the actors had already rehearsed. We experimented with the concept of Forum theatre, in which the audience had the chance to interrupt the scene and change the approach of one of the characters to achieve a more successful outcome.
Unfortunately, the class had lots of ideas but no one was willing to actually take the place of one of the actors. I wondered what this interactive section of the play would be like with a public audience the following week. Would anyone be brave enough to put themselves forward?
A big thank you to all at Friargate Theatre.
WEDNESDAY 24 JANUARY BRIDGET FOREMAN
The final workshop session with the first group from Joseph Rowntree school. While they explored ways of engaging in Forum Theatre – a developed form of role-play – the script for Love Fifteen was still being frantically developed: re-write upon re-write, with sparks flying both in the young people’s improvisations, and from the keyboard of the trusty computer. The final session of the workshop was our first attempt to engage an audience in Forum coming out of the play. They took some persuading, but we were excited as we began to experience the possibilities of this style of work. In just a few days’ time, we’ll be doing this with a real audience!
Some scenes are really coming to life now, while others continue to challenge us. The afternoon brings a head-banging discussion about a particularly knotty scene, which concludes in a total re-think, and a new ‘brief’ to be taken away and written up. It may have taken some time and stretched the little grey cells, but we’re confident we’ve cracked it this time.
TUESDAY 23 JANUARY STEWART PILE
What a day! With breaks for lunch and dinner, we worked from 9.00am till 9.30pm.
Well, we’re really getting into the swing of rehearsals. We’re now going over each scene with a script, chopping and changing words, blocking the scene (ie. deciding where everything goes on the stage) and it’s really exciting. Quite scary, as time is so short, but we know we’re going to pull it off. Prayer in the morning always helps…
Yesterday, Bridget showed us the final script. What a corker! Ooh, I’m so excited. We’ve also been figuring out how to do the Forum Theatre scenes with the kids from JoRo tomorrow – lots of healthy debate and good suggestions… from everyone apart from me who, living in cloudcuckooland, kept asking questions that had just been answered. The prize for most melodramatic acting in the year 2001 [and Stewart should know – he did a module on 19th Century Melodrama at College – Ed.] goes to Jon Lisle for stamping rather hysterically on a dead fly, shouting, “That’s the little blighter!”
Paul’s directorial note was, “Jon, do less.”
MONDAY 22 JANUARY JON LISLE
Through the wonders of modern technology (Bridget Foreman with a hefty supply of caffeine), Monday sees the unveiling of a draft script for the first half of the play. The actors, by now unfamiliar with such traditional concepts, circle nervously around the confusingly thick bundles of paper. No one wants to say it, but the old sense that a rift in the space/time continuum has occurred hangs heavy in the atmosphere. Somehow the traditional activity of Day One has found itself on Day Fourteen. Normality is restored by the re-introduction of a lengthy discussion session. By mid-afternoon the script has a mercury-feel to it – pick it up and it slips through your fingers. The actors, sensing that every line is up for grabs, eagerly proceed to change everything in sight. Bridget has returned home to finish writing the second half and (fortunately, perhaps) does not witness the casual destruction of her prize work. Late afternoon involves a session on Forum Theatre. Someone has realised that if we’re going to do a Forum Theatre section in the show, we should probably find out what it is. We finish with general agreement that we’ve cracked it. This is, of course, an exercise in collective self-delusion.
MONDAY 22 JANUARY (LOOKING BACK...) MAGGIE GODDARD
DRAMA TEACHER, JOSEPH ROWNTREE SCHOOL
I was really excited about this project and looking forward to getting started, although it seemed a huge rush getting back to school after Christmas and then straight in to workshop visits to Friargate: There were letters to write, transport arrangements to make, finance to be found and so on.
The exciting part about this project was that we were going to be able to take part in and learn from the actors creating the play ‘Love Fifteen’. I knew this meant that the students would see, try and share in a whole range of drama techniques.
I think everyone on both days was impressed by the actors’ skill at improvisation, but I think all of us were equally impressed by some of the students’ presentations of parental memories. There were some moments of truth that I think were only reached by carefully focusing on an idea and putting a lot of energy into playing the moment completely honestly. The warm up activities, discussion and demonstrations all helped us to do this.
We came away on both days knowing that there were many ideas we could use, that we could really help each other to achieve a credible presentation and that we were on the road to making a play, although we still didn’t quite know how!
On a personal level, I really enjoyed the opportunity to join the group for the workshop on the first day. It’s great teaching Drama but, along with most teachers, I get little opportunity to ‘practice what I preach’ so to speak. It’s easy to lose sight of how demanding some activities can be!
SATURDAY 20 / SUNDAY 21 JANUARY Bridget spends the weekend writing the first half of the script, using the agreed storyline, and basing her writing on the scenes improvised by the company over the last couple of weeks. Time is very tight – and there is a huge amount of writing to be done.
FRIDAY 19 JANUARY CATHERINE MAC CABE
am. We spent most of the morning improvising our way through scenes that will make up the second half of the play. I think because it was Friday, I found this harder than usual. One thing I have learned with improvisation is that you need to concentrate constantly. If you don’t concentrate then you stop listening, which is very important for this work. We still had a very constructive morning and all felt satisfied that we had done enough improvising for the time being.
pm. Pupils from Fulford arrived. Having been able to watch how we improvised using a simple idea, the pupils were able to show the work that they have been preparing. They all chose a parent/teenager discussion that had some conflict in it. They then approached the discussion and took away the conflict. This was very amusing to watch but the pupils agreed that, although it was very entertaining, it was not a very accurate reflection of real life, which was something to think about.
THURSDAY 18 JANUARY STEWART PILE
What a day! A classful of teenage girls from Joseph Rowntree school showed us how they argue with their parents, and helped to direct a scene where Sophie (15-year-old girl, played by Catherine) had been sick in the car and Rachel (her mum, played by Katie) had gone mad. Then in the afternoon (after a nice Chicken Satay sandwich from Al Fresco, only £2.10 in a baguette) some more improvisation. I can’t tell you what happened in the scenes leading up to the interval because it’ll spoil the show, but our characters are really progressing. As is the plot, as is the fabulous never-ending script-writing from Bridget; and we really are starting to behave like a family with a history, not just a group of actors shouting at each other. Bikes, make-up, Steps CDs, a few fights, and of course the car, are some of the ingredients to look forward to...
WEDNESDAY 17 JANUARY CATHERINE MAC CABE
Today we had our second workshop with the GCSE Drama students from Joseph Rowntree School. Firstly, Suzi talked to them about what we’ve been doing and how the devising process has progressed. Since we last saw them we’ve decided on the setting of the play (in a car) and we’ve decided which characters we’re each going to play. This means that we each have particular areas that we want to research. I was particularly interested in talking to the girls in the group to find out more about issues affected teenage girls today, and how they relate to their parents. We did this in small groups and some of us tried hot-seating [the actor, in-character, is asked questions by the rest of the group, and must answer as the character] as a way in which to experiment with our characters and gain useful input from the teenagers.
It was helpful to watch the group perform some improvisations they’d been working on back at their school since last week. They gave us an insight into how teenagers view their parents and how they have experienced their parents’ reactions to certain situations. They also performed their improvised scenes with the parents giving atypical reactions, or by reversing the typical relationship-roles between the parents and the teenagers.
We were able to carry out some improvisations of our own in front of the students, and to get their feedback. This was helpful because they were able to tell us what they liked and what they felt was not realistic. It was very challenging, because it can be very tempting to play a teenager in a typical “Kevin-and-Perry” way. This is something I want to avoid. At times it felt as if the improvisation was being rushed, but once we slowed it down and made a point of listening to each other, we got much better and more realistic results. It is very useful to have the schools working with us on this production. We’re learning a lot from each other. But it has increased the challenge for me, as they brought up issues that I had either not thought about, or had thought about incorrectly, and it made me realise that I still have a lot to do to develop my character fully and realistically.
We did make a lot of progress today in our devising process. We worked through a good proportion of the scenes that we wanted to get through. Some were great and some were not so great, but that’s all part of the process.
Hopefully, tomorrow will be good in pushing us even further forward and we will be able to get even more input from the next group of teenagers from Joseph Rowntree.
TUESDAY 16 JANUARY PAUL BURBRIDGE
We divide forces again for the first part of the day: the actors continue to etch in the details of their characters, while Bridget, Suzi and Paul develop the storyline and scene breakdown of the major section of the play.
The actors share with one another the individual work which they have done overnight to fill in background understanding of the core family group. Whenever they are visited by the director to check how things are going/if they've got enough to do etc. they smile cheerily and wave encouragingly full notebooks... though they have collected in a huddle around the radiator.
The storylining process continues to cover the table with small rectangles of yellow paper - each defining either a new scene or a description of the major 'revelations' which will be provided by a particular character at that point. By lunchtime, this spine of rectangles has reached both the interval (in the performance) and the edge of the table.
We spend the afternoon improvising our way, scene by scene along our storyline. Each scene takes a few minutes to 'set up' and is then improvised several times until both director and writer are happy that the right mixture of ingredients (thought, action, plot details, atmospheres etc.) has been unearthed by the actors. Lots of scribbling by Bridget. The actors are becoming more and more fluent and sensitive to the needs of each scene - their detailed work on character is beginning to pay off.
The day ends with Suzi outlining a plan of action for tomorrow's workshop with the first group from Joseph Rowntree's School. We try rather desperately to attach names to the twenty-two faces which swim back into our minds. Our plan is to involve them with this process of devising through improvisation and give some clues as to how we get from an initial 'go' at a scene to the scripted version ... scripts? ...Actors' ears prick up and a hungry look comes into their eyes.
Sean the designer reappears from Wales with drawings of the set. Late-night discussions with Paul will result in some modifications being necessary before Sean meets the set builders on Wednesday. First thoughts about costumes are also tossed about. Need to sleep on this one.
MONDAY 15 JANUARY BRIDGET FOREMAN
a.m. Paul, Suzi & I spend the morning outlining possible storylines and scenarios. We ‘create’ a family for the actors to develop through research and improvisation, and earmark some events to throw at the new family…
p.m. The acting company join us and we spend some time in exercises to help them start to build characters, before improvising possible scenarios for the opening of the play. It’s an exposing and demanding way to work, but jumping in with both feet and accepting both the ‘failure’ of blind alleys and the ‘success’ of truly dramatic moments is the only way to do it.
We end the day excited and daunted at what lies ahead.
FRIDAY 12 JANUARY SUZI FOWLER
Began with feedback on our “homework” (aarrgghh) from the previous day: ideas for a. a cultural context for the play and b. an event or crisis specific to the central family. A wealth of ideas splurged forth (notably more for the event than the context) but no obvious solution shone out from either category.
We identified key ingredients that are beginning to define the shape of Love Fifteen; ideas are converging on a family car providing the setting, and the themes of “success” and “revelation” are likely to be explored in parallel to that of parenting. Also, that the cultural context and family crisis (when we discover them) are to provide an anchor for the storylines of our central family. We then continued to improvise scenes from the list of ideas given by the school pupils.
After lunch we met our 3rd and final group of pupils (this time from Fulford School) for a two-hour workshop. They proved a very positive bunch who were willing to be open with their views and experience. The main exercise demanded their improvisations on the subjects they saw as important in their relationships with their parents, and we were very grateful for the insight these gave us.
Somewhat exhausted at the end of a week full of an unusual range of new experiences, we finished up by exploring an incident from various viewpoints. The scene where a teenager unwittingly interrupted his parents during sex provided a great deal of humour as well as sympathy for all the characters concerned, as they each gave voice to their angle on the experience…
I think we all departed for the weekend feeling much has been generated over this first week, forming a huge mound to be bashed into shape over the remaining two.
THURSDAY 11 JANUARY JON LISLE
One week, and slowly you begin to see how a play might take shape. Nonetheless, the fear factor that comes from the Artistic Director…
As someone who nurtures a secret ambition to be a star on Eastenders, today’s rehearsal dealt me something of a crushing blow. During an interactive session with our second group of GCSE Drama students from JoRo, the question was asked, “What would you like to see in this play?” A response which gathered almost universal approval was that we were to avoid predictable storylines & clichéd families… “like Eastenders.”
In fact, this proved a double blow – not only does it entail abandoning my gravelly Phil Mitchell-style voice, it also cast doubt on a large section of my extra-curricular research – regular sessions in front of the TV with the families of Albert Square.
Nonetheless, I suspect the audience of Riding Lights will be secretly glad that the universally depressing lives of Walford are not about to be toured round the schools, churches, arts centres and community centres of the UK. I suppose the next logical question is, “Well, what WILL be toured…?” A good question, and still unanswerable. Yet, slowly, the faint outlines of a show begin to emerge. It’s uncertain, blurred and very fragile. But it exists. Only don’t blink – because tomorrow it may have gone. The endless discussions, gently and skilfully managed by Paul, have begun to give way to something approaching the outline of a story. And, imperceptibly, the balance shifts from discussion to improvisation. The improvs remind you of a child learning to walk. Progress is unsteady and uncertain. And you fall over. A lot. But there is progress. Yes, there is… I think. I hope.
Oh, and it may end up being set in a car…
WEDNESDAY 10 JANUARY Today includes the first of a series of visits from a group of GCSE students from York’s Joseph Rowntree School. Two local secondary schools – JoRo and Fulford – are taking part in our Love Fifteen Education Project. They will observe (and contribute to) our rehearsal process then develop their own plays, on the same theme, in a series of classes and workshops in their own schools, under the guidance of Suzi Fowler (our Education Officer) and their own Drama teachers. Their devised plays will then be performed in Friargate Theatre to public audiences. Dates to be announced.
KATIE McLEAN
9.30am. We start our morning in prayer. We expect nineteen Year 10 students from Joseph Rowntree School at 10.45am so we spend some time praying for the two hours that they’ll be with us.
While Suzi and Antony (Dunn, Marketing Officer) are introducing the kids to the work of Riding Lights, the rest of us wait anxiously (well, I do) for them to join us upstairs in the theatre. We start the morning’s workshop playing some theatre games, to relax and warm everyone up.
Next: Brain-storming session. We wanted to find out from the Drama students what they thought was important surrounding the subject of parenting. With this in mind we asked them, in pairs, to come up with two issues they would most like to discuss with their parents. This was followed by us (the cast) demonstrating how we go about creating a small scene based on a moment in our own lives. After watching us, the students were encouraged to go through the same devising process, working on an important memory from their own experience. I was really touched by the openness and honesty that they showed throughout the morning’s workshop. I expected them to be quite closed and embarrassed, but I was wrong. Thankfully.
The Afternoon: Paul announced that this was going to be a talking and thinking session. Sean Cavanagh (Riding Lights’ Designer and Artistic Associate) joins us – with his dog Molly – as we all sit around to discuss the development of Love Fifteen. We talked A LOT about story-lines, structure, main subjects, smaller issues etc. It made me realise that this devising ain’t as easy as it sounds… Two hours later, Bridget tries to summarise all we have talked about. I’m glad she was asked, rather than me. By this point I was going, “Three weeks is all we have!” However, there were some story-lines that were sounding like possibilities, and this reassured me that there IS a light at the end of the tunnel. I left feeling hopeful!
TUESDAY 9 JANUARY STEWART PILE
Day Two of Mark’s Complicité workshop. We all started a little sore from yesterday, so after a few leg-stroking warm-up manouevres, we played a ball-juggling game… running, freezing, everyone running around… thoroughly exhausting, but all about working as an ensemble, focusing our energy on one thing..
Learned a Georgian folk song, too. In Russian!
We had to devise a group-journey from one end of the room to the other, involving five stages of tension – from something happening unnoticed outside the group, through the group noticing, the group reacting slowly, the group reacting quickly, to a final confrontational climax. We chose to be soldiers, encountering the enemy and ultimately chasing ‘em off. All this combined with singing and stylised movement made it an exciting piece of ensemble theatre.
Then the climax of the two days. We were given a still picture from World War I and asked, with the words of our Georgian song as our whole vocabulary, to tell the story behind the picture through the five stages of tension which dictate its outcome. So we created the sinister story of the new Town Crier and his stutter, the familiar street, the ignored postal boy, the climactic terrible news… and all in Russian, which we didn’t understand, but we still managed to make sense of the story.
What was amazing about the day was that every exercise involved everybody – what we’d created depended on us all. We wrapped up with a good discussion, unpacking our new understanding of the nature of ensemble theatre, and how we’re going to be able to use it to make Love Fifteen a really exciting production.
MONDAY 8 JANUARY 2001 CATHERINE MAC CABE
Today, at Friargate Theatre, we participated in a workshop led by Mark Payton, based on the work of Theatre de Complicité, a theatre company that uses actors and directors who have specialist training in mime & physical theatre. Use of the ‘ensemble’ is their hallmark style. They tell stories without being literal, and aren’t confined by reliance on sets or traditional methods of theatre.
This was a refreshing and fun way for us to work together as a company, especially at the beginning of the devising process. The workshop included a lot of rhythmical exercises, with our voices and movement. This meant being very aware of the people around you. You had to listen carefully to each other and watch each other closely. Another exercise was an improvisation in which we were not allowed allowed to speak, and could use only eye contact and movement. This produced some very watchable results, which often allowed those watching to interpret for themselves the unfolding story. I found these exercises helped me to increase my own awareness of how I react physically to situations on stage. The workshops also demonstrated how over-complicated movements are not always as effective as simpler, stronger movements. Especially when you are working as an ensemble, it can produce a very watchable piece of theatre.
Today was a great start to our rehearsal and devising process. It gave us fresh ideas and new exercises we can use. It has helped to get us into the right frame of mind to be creative with our new show. It was also exciting to be working together like this again, because the last time we did anything like this (September 2000) we did not know each other very well as a company. But now we do, it will hopefully produce some confident, new and exciting results!!!
FRIDAY 5 JANUARY 2001 SUZI FOWLER
Bridget's house for discussions and brainstorm around a kitchen table and big mugs of coffee. Comments on books and statistics quickly led into personal anecdotes & the realisation that all our experiences of family were totally different.
The Parentalk videos & a brief look at Augusto Boal's Forum Theatre added further ingredients to our melting pot of ideas. We set off into the weekend, our heads swimming with ideas & more books under our arms to feed into next week – when devising the play will really begin.
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