Getting Four Families ‘onto its feet’
Building on our initial thoughts about the three characters in our first play, we began a physical improvisation exercise to start devising the set-up.
How we did it As Four Families of The Fallen is a collaborative devising project, we began with three actors on stage who performed the opening of the following scene: George Will’s birth mother (Florence Wills) arrives unexpectedly at George’s adoptive mother’s home. She clutches an invitation purporting to be from Susan, but in fact it was written by Margaret Sertin, George’s step-sister.
The goals for this exercise were:
• Establish a baseline to build on • Generate new ideas • Answer key questions • Experiment with different decisions
Cast members not performing became directors and were tasked with using their audience-eye view to give feedback to the actors and shape the action. After the actors had improvised a short scene, using only a few lines of dialogue, the directors were allowed to change any element(s) except for: the characters’ genders, their relationships to each other and the overarching plot. The actors repeated the scene, incorporating any new ideas. Again, it was important to video the improvisation to record any spontaneous elements which we could add to the character grids and include in the final script (see below).
The directors then swapped roles with the actors, and performed the scene again, building on the previous versions.
What we learnt Improvising the set-up for the first play gave the cast an opportunity to experiment and try out different ideas. George's ghost? We tried and ruled out the idea of having George Wills present as a ghost-like figure watching over the women. It didn’t really work for the audience of directors because it distracted from the build up of tension between the two mothers. Instead, we felt perhaps it was better to have a photograph of George as a prop, as well as the letter from Margaret. A churchyard setting? We also answered questions about the suggested location: Why had Florence Wills gone to the house and not straight to the church? Playing this out through the improvisation, we realised that meeting at the Willis’s home was the only practical option:
• The two mothers were unlikely after 20 years to have recognised each other. • Margaret had created the invitation, pretending to be her mother. If the meeting went badly wrong, she would not want it played out in public. • Florence lacked the courage and social status to meet in public at the remembrance service. • Real world logistics, it was hard to convey the busy churchyard with a small number of performers.
Increasing the stakes: A golden moment of tension Through the improvisation exercise, we identified a key piece of action for increasing the tension and suspense in this play. This moment saw Mrs Sertin send her daughter to the kitchen, leaving the two mothers to face-off.
Thought tacking / tapping We also used the theatrical device of thought tracking / tapping, to quiz characters about the situation. The answers provided helped to complete the character grid.
Helping with casting decisions Over the next few months, this collaborative approach to creating characters gives everyone the chance to ‘get a feel’ for each character (and which they may wish to play) and for the directors to see which members of our cast look most effective in each role.
Next steps The next part of the exercise would have been to layer on Laban’s Efforts and make some decisions about each of the character’s movements.
Our next devising session, will revisit this opening scene and the character grids for this play as well as Laban’s efforts. Depending on feedback from the cast, we will apply the same process to develop our next play, Frank Knapp’s family.
