How do you start devising? Tips and tools to get started
Use a simple three act structure
To help make the devising process more manageable and achievable for us, we will split each story into three parts (aligned to a simple three-act structure) and develop each part in turn: 1. Set-up 2. Mid-point / Confrontation 3. Resolution
Use Character Arcs
Compelling short stories and plays use character arcs and this is something we will look to include in our plays to add interest for our audiences.
The Set-Up
The set-up informs the audience about the setting, location and firmly establishes the characters in each play, and their relationships to each other.
As Four Families of the Fallen is a character-led performance, our devising process needs to give performers plenty of opportunities to step into the shoes of the characters and see events from their perspectives.
Through improvisation, we will capture the most interesting, powerful and entertaining content we collectively come up with, to create an outline for our final play. We will then distil the improvisations and edit the content to create a final working script, which will tell the stories about the lives of the four families.
Getting to know George Wills' family
To help the actors familiarise themselves with the characters, and to start developing the first of our plays, we began by collectively creating a starting state for each of the three women in this play:
Mrs Sertin (George’s adoptive mother)
Ms Florence Wills (the birth mother)
Margaret Sertin (George’s step-sister)
We discussed the characters’ backstories (based on the stimulus material) and identified how this would inform each character’s personality and behaviour, during the set-up. We also shared our thoughts on the different dynamics between the characters, their emotional states and any other influences relevant to portraying the character.
The Character Grid"
To help record the conversation and organise our ideas, we wrote suggestions on Post-its and attached them to a grid, with the following categories:
Emotions / Feelings
Action / Event / Motivation
Dialogue
Other traits / thoughts about the character
To add an extra level of interest to the character, we also assigned a character flaw.
A tool for devising and collaboration
There are a number of benefits to each character having their own grid. We can use the character grids in a number of ways to help our devising:
• Developing character arcs The grid enables us to see an overview of our character’s traits at the start of the play and identify which aspect(s) we may want to change, to make more compelling viewing. We can experiment with changing different traits and the events needed to trigger the change.
• Consistent characters The grids will also help actors to get into their roles and help maintain some consistency as we experiment with different actors trying different roles.
• Avoid repetition Having an overview of our characters and events in each play will help us to ensure that we avoid repetition between the plays. There’s a lot of grief in all the plays, but we will need to find clever ways to present this and avoid the performance becoming samey. • Supporting script development We can help keep the script feeling spontaneous by recording snippets of dialogue on the grid, which are spoken during improvisations or other conversations.
Download a copy of the Character Grid and see other useful tools, by visiting Creating the Stories.
