footprints

Back at the end of March we presented two scenes from The Light Box as part of Cut & Paste at the Old Fitz.  It was a great night – hearing the opening scenes in front of an audience for the first time was constantly surprising.  A line I had thought to be a heart-felt and deep moment was instead greeted with roars of laughter.  Maybe I’ve been writing a comedy all along?

It’s weird how much a play can change.  I tinker, I edit, I lose some characters and invent others.  The Light Box has been a case of constant investigation – what am I trying to say?  Am I saying it in the best way possible?  In its original incarnation it was based on research about the treatment of women in asylums in the nineteenth century, but as I’ve been looking at the characters this year it’s become clear that what I was really exploring was how we negotiate new, unknown spaces and how we interact with the voices we encounter there.

Since the CDP and, more recently, Cut & Paste, I have been reworking the play.  It has meant being cruel to a few characters, deleting them permanently from the story.  One thing that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is consistency of imagery.  In the development, a scene that seemed central to the play was an encounter between Ethel’s mother Lesley and a toucan.  Birds had always featured in the play as imagined beings, never seen, and it was only fairly recently that one made its way on stage.  I wanted to explore Lesley’s fascination with this bird – what did it want, and more importantly, why did it want her?  It also tied into a thought about Ethel living on a diet of boiled eggs.  Bird imagery became suddenly central.  Any other animals mentioned in the play, then, seemed as if they might break this balance.  And so a horse called Mudley, who had done his best and told stories about old Greek heroes, suddenly found himself displaced.

But maybe what Mudley was attempting to provide in the play was a mythological framework – and if this was the case, was there a more satisfying story that I could translate, one that tapped into the fears and desires Ethel and Lesley struggle with throughout the play?

Two drafts later, and The Light Box is finding its way along an exciting new path.  Jimmy suggested that underneath any play lies an Ur text, a footprint or a ghost of what came before.  In this light, re-drafting doesn’t feel quite so brutal – even if characters or events don’t end up in the final draft, they leave a trace behind.

as all things must

Day 4 was also the last day of working with Jimmy, Em and Edan through Bambina’s creative development program.  I had overnight written some new material, based on observation during the week as well as feedback.  Hearing these aloud, I found that I had spent about 7 pages writing myself back into the world of the play – they sounded quite clunky.  The other 9 pages worked better, and I think may have a place in the new draft of The Light Box, which I will work on over the coming months.

After Edan and Em read out these scenes, we placed them within the play that remained, and upon hearing it Jimmy asked us to all write down what we thought the story of the play was.  This was a great exercise.  It is always interesting and helpful to hear what other people think your play is about, as it not only tells you what parts of the play have the biggest impact, but also reminds you of holes in the story that you had hoped no-one would notice.  Writing my own version of what I thought the story was meant that I had to begin thinking again about whether there is enough reason at the start to invest in Ethel’s journey through the play.  Would an audience care about this character?

As I was writing the story in my little notebook I realised, too, that I was missing another scene at the end, one that would conclude things properly and also allow Ethel to finally speak with a sense of certainty that she tries and struggles to find earlier on in the play.  This scene would also be about confronting the haunting of her past, and allow Ethel to (hopefully) start defining herself on her own terms.

After this, Zoe arrived and Edan and Em performed a read-through of the play for her.  Zoe’s feedback was fantastic, and really addressed some things in the play I had tried to avoid thinking about.  There were certain characters that she missed later on in the play, and I began wondering whether it might be possible to bring them back, somehow.  One of the best suggestions she made was that I should not be thinking of this play in terms of it being a piece for 2 actors – how might the world be opened up if we used three or more?  This would introduce a different dynamic and potentially make it easier (and more fun) to keep the focus on Ethel as the central character.

I have had a fantastic and inspiring week, and it has been so good to be back in a room with a director and actors and just explore a play without the pressure of needing it to ‘work’.  I am quite a messy writer, and often need to write a few drafts before I begin to see just what it is that I’m writing about.  But what I’ve realised this week is that it’s okay to work like that.  I don’t think I want to be the sort of writer who swans into a room and tells people what to do, what the play means or how it should be played.  I love hearing other people’s voices, thoughts and ideas.

Thank you Em, Edan, Zoe and Jimmy.  It has been a great week.

horsing around

Today, day three of our CDP, we began by talking about symbols in the play.  How might the mundane world of the office, where Ethel works, set up some reasons for why she finds herself in an institution later on?  Are there any other forms of ‘light boxes’ that might be found in that kind of space?  Jimmy suggested a photocopier – like the coin slot in the pokie machine of yesterday, it provides a similar way of seeing into a world.  I also began thinking that Ethel’s monologues in the play need to exist in an actual reality, and should be directed at another character (and not vaguely projected out at a hypothetical audience).  The character of the Cleaner again came up as a possible answer or solution here, and as Jimmy and the actors began discussing whether the Cleaner interacts with Ethel before he enters her room  – what if he pushed the end of a mop through a hole in the wall? etc. – I began running scenarios in my head.

We then moved on to the relationship between Ethel and a horse called Mudley.  Em and Edan went through the various scenes related to these characters, and following Jimmy’s suggestion went into a series of sad and wonderful improvisations between Ethel and Mudley.  In the play as it is currently, Mudley essentially trots across stage and dies in Ethel’s arms.  I had thought this was quite a poignant moment, until Jimmy pointed out that any old horse dying in Ethel’s arms would not have the same impact on her (or the audience) as a horse she knew and understood.  In other words, Mudley had to become her horse.  Using little more than a sci-fi paperback and a blonde wig we found hidden under a table, Em and Edan began working on a repeated scenario: every night, Mudley would arrive in Ethel’s room and tell her amazing stories about horses.

We saw their friendship move along in three to six month intervals until we reached Mudley’s death scene.  As with earlier thoughts about Ethel’s monologues, I began to realise that Mudley’s monologues about a famous wooden horse were actually directed at Ethel – part of their game.

After a break, we shifted focus to the play as a whole.  How might the play look if organised differently?  Inspired by Jimmy’s list of worlds within the play, we began by exploring the space of the office.

We experimented by placing all the ‘office’ scenes together at the start of the play.  This created a really nice way in to the story and also set up a sense of the world Ethel is trying to escape from.  The other sections of the play didn’t work so well boxed in their various locations though: it made sense, after laying the script down across the floor, to weave together the non-office scenes by theme or motivation instead.

Like yesterday, seeing your script organised by scene across a stretch of floor is ridiculously helpful.  Sections that were once obscure and a bit obtuse become clear.  Rhythms and repeats call out to you like drunk friends across a crowded room.

Hearing Em and Edan reading the script aloud after this was fantastic – I felt that I could hear bits that weren’t working, things that made no sense, and thought again about where I could write more scenes for characters like the Cleaner and Mudley.  I also came to the conclusion that Hastings really belonged in the world of the previous version of The Light Box, and that his function was now redundant.  I hate getting rid of characters but I think somewhere, in another play, Hastings might re-appear.  He might have changed gender or be wearing a different t-shirt, but I’ll know it’s him.

improv-ing things

Day 2 in the CDP and we’re in a completely different room.  Gone are the pretty wood panelled walls from Monday, the large windows, the majestic seats at one end (I felt like a Stratford brewer waiting to hear Shakespeare’s dad’s verdict on my beer).  Instead we’re below ground.  The airconditioning unit sticks out of the wall and roars.  There is no natural light.  Small windows in the doors are covered in latticed metal and under the door handle there is a lock.

In many ways, this is the perfect space to begin exploring The Light Box in detail.  The play is ostensibly set in an institution where the central character, Ethel, is being held in solitary confinement.  As we began the second day of the development, Jimmy suggested I set out the play in order across a very large table – scene by scene – to get a sense of the shape of the play.  I’d never really tried this before (it seemed like a very mathematical way of doing things) but, again, it worked.  As I looked over the play, wandering from the first scene to the thirty-third, I realised that it would be possible to echo a relationship that Ethel has with a cleaner at the end of the play, with her interactions with the institution’s psychiatrist, Hastings, at the start.  As the cleaner appears currently in the 3rd last and 5th last scenes, I suddenly thought – what if Hastings likewise appears in the 3rd and 5th scenes of the play?  Later on, too, Jimmy and I went through the play again, looking at all the scenes laid out on the table.  “Which of these,” he said, “do you no longer want to keep?”  Somehow seeing the scenes ordered along the table made it easier to notice immediately which ones didn’t work, or which ones were in the wrong position.  I ended up picking scenes 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26 and 28.  Jimmy then took these scenes off the table and we were left with an interesting skeleton of the play.

The larger part of day 2 was taken up by improvisation.  We looked at scene 20 – in which a woman and a man look through a coin slot in a pokie machine to locate a friend that has fallen in – with our actors using the dynamic of one character inside a dark room, and the other on the outside, looking at them through a slit of light.  One thing I realised when watching Em and Edan improvising was that the person on the outside looking in could actually be the cleaner (a character who has greater relevance later in the play).

Another technique in the amazing world of improvisation was giving one actor the script for a scene and allowing them to use the lines of a character, while the other actor improvised responses.  This was amazing to watch, and brought up so many new questions about the play and, in particular, the lives of some of the smaller characters, like Cyril.  After a break, we looked more specifically at Hastings.  In an earlier version of the play, Hastings had a very central and important role in the play.  In this version, he exists in fewer scenes, speaks less and generally doesn’t pose the same threat as he once did to Ethel.  The improvisations here brought up other questions, too – does Hastings think he is helping/curing Ethel, but is in fact harming her?  Is that worse than if he were consciously mean?

Before we began day 2, Edan mentioned that a director he worked with once told him that every scene is either one of three things: a fight, a negotiation, or a seduction.  This was something I’d never heard before but immediately found useful, and I kept thinking about this idea while looking at the play.   Particularly in terms of Hastings – does he, in fact, want to seduce Ethel?

turning on the lights

My play The Light Box is a strange beast. It’s been around since late 2008 and has been tugging at my sleeves ever since. It started life as a play about a girl in a 19^th century asylum somewhere in Australia who struggles to escape, and acts out her fantasies with a psychiatrist and an ex-governess-turned-nurse. It was overwritten and featured a talking horse – why, I’m not entirely sure.

Last year I worked with Jimmy on my grad play at NIDA, which featured a life-size cow on stage (thank you, Dylan) but sadly, no talking horse. We began talking about working on a project in the future, and after casually mentioning this play that I had in my drawer about a girl in a room with a guy and another girl – trying very hard to make it not sound like that quality Ryan Reynolds vehicle Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place – he suggested we apply for one of Bambina’s Creative Development Projects.

Now I’m finding myself in a room with Jimmy and our amazing and gifted actors Edan and Em as we try to work our way through The Light Box. Except – and this is the strange bit – over the last two weeks The Light Box morphed into another, quite distinct play while I was working on edits in preparation for the development. Unfortunately for me I can’t just tinker with a play – I begin to see its faults too much, and in the case of The Light Box end up with an almost new play. As I was rewriting, my sister suggested I was like Father Ted tinkering with a hammer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6G3CnbDPgc

This sums me up quite well. I’m not sure how anyone knows when a play is truly finished. I remember watching a documentary about Jeffrey Smart, and how even when his paintings are sold or displayed in galleries he still goes in with his paintbrush and tries to improve his work – often to the annoyance of his collectors, who worry he might be lowering the value of the paintings by tinkering with them.

The version of The Light Box that we’re working with in the CDP is quite different to its original incarnation. It is a succession of (often short) scenes, not always in chronological order, and features a cast of seventeen characters including the talking horse, performed by two actors. One of the most important moments with any play is the first time you hear it read aloud. You’re never sure if anyone will laugh at the jokes except for you or even if it will make sense.

Yesterday we began with a read-through of the play – as always there are cringe-worthy moments but I was generally pleased with how it sounded. We then had a chat about the play, I tried to answer some questions and after a coffee break we went through it again, this time out of order. Jimmy had carefully organised the play into various ‘clusters’, relating either to a specific character or a location, and we then read it in this form. I can’t recommend this technique enough – it wouldn’t work for all types of plays, but in the case of the The Light Box, where we jump between locations, times, voices, it made the play open out in surprisingly different ways. I could hear more clearly the tensions between characters, where things weren’t working, where scenes were too long or, alternately, too short, and when scenes simply needed to be cut from the play (I’m looking at you, scene 20).

Hearing the play has brought up a few new ideas and themes. Characters constantly ask to be held or kissed or loved, all craving some kind of physical connection. There are references to characters desiring others to dress or undress, and towards the end of the play we also get a sense of the problems of speech, how words are inadequate and slippery, and whether failing to speak is really as bad as it (doesn’t) sound.  Hopefully over the rest of the development I’ll be able to see how these themes appear/reappear throughout the play, whether they need to be brought out more, and whether the talking horse needs more lines.  

More Milk Pics

This second round of shots from the Melbourne Fringe Festival taken by our awesome set designer, Natalie Hughes.

Pics from the Melbourne Fringe

Some of these taken by Designer, Natalie Hughes, and some by me.

The new LLareggub

The new LLareggub is looking pretty good and its inhabitants are quite happy…which is a rarity indeed!

Not quite sure how Ness is fitting in directing, marketing and finishing off hours of media nor Zoe having to practically relearn a new play, but dont worry girls, the globulous nebulous is a formidable thing to behold

Before touring

1 week before we pack our bags full of milk and head to melbourne…

Re-designing the set

gahhhhh…..how do we go from a stage 9m x 7m to half that size and a bump in time of 5 mins?