Monday 13th May 2013

I've only seen one thing in the Brighton Fringe this year, and it might well be the only thing. The trade off is pretty good, since that one thing is excellent - Bitch Boxer (coming back to the fringe at the end of the month), but I'm acutely aware that it's about the third fringe in a year that I haven't been able to see anything. Time just vanishes. Of course, at this time of the year, I'm normally working on my own production, which, even if I feel like I'm not attending to it as well as I should, chews up all spare time and energy with the full force of a particularly nasty patch of quicksand. I've already decided that I won't be directing anything next year, at least not in the fringe. It seems to consume a vast amount of energy and emotion for something that I do outside the day job, in the evenings, where it's bundled up roughly and inefficiently, bursting at the seams. See, I have no idea what that's meant to mean. You can see I'm tired. 

However, we're on the home stretch now. This is the final couple of weeks of rehearsal (if rehearsal is an accurate description, which it isn't) for A Beginning, A Muddle, And An End. Up until now, my crew has consisted pretty much entirely of me. This is nobody's fault but mine - it's down to me to get hold of a production manager, lighting designer and the like, but I haven't been able to find the time to get anybody - because a good deal of my time outside rehearsals has been taken up with the sorts of things a production manager might take care of .. you can see how it can become a effortlessly self-repeating circle. Luckily, I've managed to bless myself with a new production manager just this weekend (nothing like leaving it to the last minute), and hopefully that will stave off the otherwise certain event horizon in which I wonder why things haven't been done in the production, before realising that I've somehow expected everyone else to read my mind. And, yes, I'm aware that professional directors with a full production team are guilty of this trait as well, without ever thinking that it is actually a guilty trait. 

By the way, my cast are doing nearly impossible things. Not actually impossible things, because that would be, well, you know. But nearly impossible things. It's a cast of nine performers, all sharing the space with each other, each having to boldly tear off a strip and sail down a narrative that is - quite simply - made up as they go along - while, at the same time, bending to the need of the other performer - to eight other performers, who will doubtless each have at least six different ideas as to where they think the story might be going. I'm learning as much as I ever did about the craft of improvisation. It occurred to me this week that the very first thing I did for the New Venture Theatre was a long improvisation performance, although I'm not precisely sure that I ever referred to it as such in the time that we did it. Somewhat surprisingly, I'm not even entirely sure that I even knew that it was long form. Certainly, in that performance, which only had about five days of prep, and then - thrown in at the deep end - things seemed a helluva lot easier. This time, it seems like a much bigger mountain, and that time, I was one of the performers (I'm staying off stage this time, for various reasons, which I might chat about on a later blog entry). 

I suspect that at least part of the reason why I find the long form so overwhelming this time round - even if I'm not in it - is because last time round, I was going in blind. I really didn't have any idea what the hell was going on. And naivete is a significantly underrated state of grace: if you don't know that a thing is impossible, or at least smucking difficult, then you're much more likely to wade in with much less concern about the cuts and bruises you might earn before the experience is over. That time, I was simply reacting, responding - not overly concerned about creating a coherent narrative, just reacting honestly to what the hell was going on. As anyone who's done more than one session of improv - long or short form - will attest, that's a great place to be in, improv. You can be too intelligent in improv, and your imagination, your smarts, aren't always your friend. 

Quite often, improvisers, experienced or first timers, will get concerned that their story doesn't really make sense, that it's meandering with no sense of direction, floating off into the wind. And, yes, of course that can happen, but lots of times - I'd say almost eight, even nine times out of ten, concentrating on making the plot clearer, giving it the ol' three act story arc treatment - is not going to do anyone any favours. It will always look false. It will always sound false and forced, dry rusty brakes screaming in protest. We panic that what we say has to be vital, and important - particularly if it's the first scene (the first line) in the play. But it doesn't. I'm pretty sure that most of Pinter's first lines are, on the paper, pretty banal. It's the attitude behind them that give them the import (and allow them to be re-evaluated after the fact). We don't talk in exposition, and whilst it's true that stories (plays, improv, films, whatever) are not exactly real life, there's no reason to speak in exposition there, either. Just because it's wise to only say what's needed on stage, and not to babble, it doesn't follow that every single thing spoken has to have the motive of story behind it. This is a complicated idea, much more complicated than I have the intelligence to voice here, because it might suggest that you're allowed to say things that have no purpose, which isn't the case at all. But neither should you be declaring that it's your plan to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. Even if - especially if - it's clear that your character's main aim is to take over the world with a cabal of syphilis infected monkey rabbits. It's like the acting advice that's most famously attributed to Michael Caine in Educating Rita: just because your character is drunk, doesn't mean that they want everyone to know it. As a performer, you say everything with a purpose. But your character does not have to mean everything they say. 

Which (sort of) brings us back to simply reacting, responding. If the only thing your characters are discussing is making tea, then there's an attitude behind that. Maybe one person is always making the damn tea, and resents that fact. Maybe the other character never makes the tea because they're convinced they are terrible at it. Why? Maybe they think they suck at everything. Is the other character, and more importantly, the other performer, aware of that? Do they (the performer) ask why - at least in their head? How do they react to this new found piece of information? It's this that drives the plot along. As improvisers, we don't really have to worry about plotting out a perfect plot that. In real terms, that's not improvisation, because we're laying down a safe path through the woods to follow. If we simply react, and respond, and throw out - gift out - our responses with verve and energy - then the story will look after us. Story is an awesomely strong beast that simply requires feeding and a loose leash. It doesn't need to be told where to go; it will smash us on the head, go through our pockets, steal our change, and gallop away down the road, laughing loudly. All we need to do is hold onto the leash, tight. 

And listen.