You’re crazy
“Improvise a new full-length play every night? You’re crazy.”
That was pretty much the response I got from everyone I told about my idea to direct a full-length improvised play. And there was some sense behind that. They knew I’d previously directed five devised pieces in the KDC Studio programme, but devising is different from on-stage improvising. In devising the actors are using improv techniques in rehearsals to create the story, but that story is then captured in a script, edited, redrafted and then learnt and performed just like any other play. In improvising, there is no script. No editing. No redrafting. A line is created live in front of the audience and it cannot be taken back. The performance goes where it goes and no one – not the audience, not the cast, not the director – knows where it will end up.
So they had a pretty good reason for calling me crazy. But despite that, they were still interested. They wanted to know how. It was that spark of interest which gave me hope that – at the end of this weird, unique rehearsal process – there would be an audience for what we had created.
The first person who didn’t say I was crazy (and still hasn’t) was Kim Morrison. Kim is the Artistic Director of KDC and is overall responsible (with the help of others) for programming each season. She and I met to discuss the show at KDC’s home-from-home, the Hoop & Grapes pub on Farringdon Street. There was a slot open in the Spring Season and – between the drama and heavy subject matter of The Children’s Hour and Woyzeck – she was open to something lighter to balance the season. She had acted in and directed several devised pieces over the previous years and was interested – just as I – in taking it a step further. I remember it as a conversation all about the practicalities of the show, never questioning whether it was even possible for a cast of actors, working in their spare time, to create something so different from what KDC had done before. From her prior experience with devising she knew how far actors could be pushed and how quickly a show can come together when the cast were so deeply involved in its creation.
I gave my pitch and answered her questions as best I could. She seemed satisfied and left saying that she would need to talk it through with Emma, KDC’s chairperson. Not long after she emailed me to tell me that the show was accepted and whether I would be available for the following dates for Newcomers, auditions, committee meetings etc.
With that, it was official. The idea that Allan had brought along to a game design jam one day was now going to be a week-long production running at the Rosemary Branch Theatre the week before Easter. Kim had been confident in it and myself for the company to book the theatre and organise rehearsal and audition space, all for this play of which I could not show them a single line. But then I was confident as well. Except for once.
It was KDC Newcomers. The Newcomers event is both a chance for the committee to introduce the company to interested new joiners, but also the next season to everyone. It’s each director’s chance to encourage the actors to audition and to answer the questions they had. Ironically for an improvised show, I’d prepared a page-long script of what I would say and arrived, waited and listened. The director before me spoke for a while, perhaps ten minutes, and had several questions from interested attendees which took another five or so. I then got up. Turns out that my page-long script took about sixty seconds to deliver and, when I finished, I felt that it had been the same length as my predecessor’s opening remarks. I asked for questions. I knew that this was unlike any show KDC had done before and sounded very ambitious. Surely, people would want to know how I planned to make this fanciful idea a reality.
There were no questions. Not one. I finished up by saying that folk could also grab me in the break if they wanted (no one did) and sat down. It was right then that the thought hit me ‘Maybe I am crazy.’ Maybe this is the first KDC show ever that gets zero auditionees and has to be cancelled through lack of actors. One of the committee asked me privately if I knew anyone that was auditioning or was there anyone I could call. I replied, oh yes, I know a good few gamers into improv who might be interested (yeah, one or two, maybe).
Even though this was my tenth show as director, I arrived at auditions more nervous than ever before. Would anyone come? I wanted ten actors total. Would I even get that many auditionees over the three nights of auditions?
I ended up seeing seventy-four and had the incredible luxury of not having to cast for particular characters, but instead pick those who – in the limited time I could see them – I thought would respond well to both the acting and creative demands of the piece and work well together. One of the ten was Kim, who decided that she wanted to see this strange type of show up close and from the inside. That next Monday, these courageous actors and my production team started down the road to becoming a single troupe of performers. I might well be crazy, but I would not be alone.
Dreaming on a Midsummer’s Night performs at the Rosemary Branch Theatre on 22-26 March 2016. http://www.rosemarybranch.com/index.php/programme/82-dreaming-on-a-midsummer-s-night