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SO, WHAT DOES THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR ACTUALLY DO?
May 14th, 2012 No comments
Writing this blog entry I was reminded of a little snippet of conversation I once overheard in the bar after a show I had just directed. Two young girls had a copy of the play’s programme and noticed that I had worked as Assistant Director on a play they had recently seen:
GIRL 1: So, what does the Assistant Director actually do?
GIRL 2: Pretty much direct the whole show. I think.
Her guess was wildly inaccurate, of course and was doing a great disservice to the play’s actual director. But it does throw up a few questions about the role of the assistant director: What exactly does an assistant director do? How does an assistant director contribute to a rehearsal process and subsequent run? How do you get the best out of working as an assistant director? Of course, it is a difficult question to answer in any definitive manner as the criteria tends to alter from production to production, director to director, company to company. Nevertheless, I shall try and outline some of my experiences and thoughts on how to go about tackling the role.
First and foremost, you must get yourself into the correct mindset and understand from the very beginning that you are there to learn and support the work of the director as well as that of the actors and the creative and production teams. You need to keep alert in rehearsal as changes are made and ideas are discussed and develop a keen awareness of the particular elements of the process at hand. If you are resident at the theatre, like I am here at The Watermill, you will no doubt be asked to see the show once or twice a week and you may be called upon to give notes to the actors or feed back to the director in detail how the show is progressing. The director will have developed a specific language with the actors in rehearsal and it helps if you try to remain faithful to this language as much as is sensible and natural to you. If the actors have become used to talking about their character’s behaviour in a scene in a particular manner, then it would serve you well to observe this when communicating with the actor. If you get a chance, arrange a meeting with the director in advance of rehearsals. It’ll give you a chance to find out exactly what their ideas for the production are and what specifically they require from you in the rehearsal room. The director may have a specific role in mind or some research tasks to undertake before rehearsals commence. You will feel much more comfortable entering the room on Day One if you have prepared well. On the occasions when I have failed to do this, I have felt nervous, flustered and constantly playing catch up. So do your prep and give yourself the best possible platform to work from!
As for the tasks you could expect to perform, you need to be prepared for anything. In our recent production of Lettice and Lovage I was charged with looking after the “extras”, two groups of four that would appear at the beginning of the play. It was my role to schedule and run their auditions, rehearse them into their roles, create a coherent performance schedule throughout the run and give weekly notes sessions to keep things fresh and accurate. On other occasions I have directed understudies, hosted post show talk-back sessions, helped source sound effects and music for scene changes, explored the best way of using tricky props and furniture, helped keep track of the actor’s role in scene changes, assisted actors with line learning and line runs, remained “on book” to prompt in rehearsal and helped with the Deputy Stage Manager’s rehearsal room tasks. A large and important part of my work as assistant director has also been that of observation; observing the director’s process as well as how the actors communicate with each other and how they develop their performances throughout a rehearsal period. Sometimes the suggestions you are certain will be of great use to the director, illuminate the rehearsal room and unlock all the mysteries of the play, are best left to burn in your own imagination and would be of no help to anyone at that specific moment. You may of course be wide of the mark in your thinking and interpretation and it will inevitably leave you in an uncomfortable and embarrassing position! Tread carefully and work out the best way to complement the director’s process. You will find that this is a much stronger route towards gaining the respect of your colleagues and creating a positive identity for yourself in the rehearsal room. By all means, stay true to your beliefs and ideas (after all, these are the things that make us want to direct for the theatre in the first place) however always remain open to new processes and ways of working. I have certainly never walked away from a project and said “that is exactly how I want to direct my productions” but I have without a shadow of a doubt been influenced by each and every director I have worked with and by every rehearsal process I have been involved in.
Love on the Tracks, our next Outreach touring show, will be the sixth production I have assisted on at The Watermill Theatre, and will very likely be the last one before my year’s training comes to a close. I had a cracking time working on Some Like It Hotter back in October, and the opportunity to get out to some of the village halls and arts centres again is something I’m really looking forward to. There is something very special about the relationship between the audience and the work with this form of touring. I’ll never forget the opening night of Some Like It Hotter in East Garston Village Hall. The audience were raucous and vocal and the atmosphere was pulsating with an energy that can only be generated by a group of people thoroughly enjoying their evening. The play seemed to leap off the stage with the usual mix of nerves and adrenaline driving the actors on. It was exactly how the theatre experience should be! Preparation for Love on the Tracks has encouraged me to return to Anton Chekhov’s short plays. The Evils of Tobacco and The Proposal in particular are fantastic works of comedy. It has also introduced me to some of his wonderful short stories, which some might argue demonstrate Chekhov’s true genius. Richard Attlee, the play’s writer, has pointed me in the direction of both The Kiss and The Lady with the Dog which are both fascinating in their portrait of human behaviour. Get hold of them if you can and enjoy reading them.
Clive Judd
Trainee Director (Regional Theatre Young Director Scheme)
Outreach News – May & June 2012
May 10th, 2012 No comments
Every year, in the three years I have been at The Watermill, I have had the same conversations about our work with schools at this point in the year. It goes like this:
Me: [to everyone in The Watermill office] We haven’t worked with enough schools this year.
Everyone else: [Sounds of sympathy / support / encouragement]
Me: It’s a disaster. Last summer we had squillions of workshops.
Everyone else: You always say that.
Me: This time it’s true. I blame the government.
[Phone rings.]
Hello, Beth speaking? Oh hello! Yes, we’d love to come and do a workshop. On space travel? How marvellous!
[Put phone down]
OK everyone, don’t panic.
And it’s true that we have suddenly had an upsurge of workshops, despite my gloomy predictions. We are working with primary children on Olympic themed days, a technology event in Basingstoke, running communication skills workshops, presenting the Entreprise Skills Day at the Racecourse (with 150 local students), running a Jacobean workshop, judging a poetry competition in Kintbury, and running a series of workshops with an amateur dramatics group in Oxfordshire. We love it all – so if you have any ideas you want to talk through, please get in touch.
I have also been busy talking to schools about our production of Othello, which will be touring schools in the autumn. Some of my favourite conversations at the moment are with teachers keen to discuss their take on this amazing play, how they’d like us to approach it, what gets their students excited. If your school is interested in hosting a performance, please call me on 01635 570927, even if it’s just for one of those conversations. Othello is also performing at The Watermill as part of our Shake Up Shakespeare Festival in November – a week of community Shakespeare activities, workshops, and performances. We’ve not done anything quite like this before so we’re really looking forward to getting started. The final night of the Shake Up Shakespeare Festival will be The Bard Unbound – an evening of Shakespeare highlights and excerpts, performed by local people. If you fancy performing on The Watermill stage, please do get in touch – we want this to be as open as we possibly can.
Meanwhile, every Thursday morning our regular facilitator, Sarah, has been working one on one with jobseekers to hone their communication and presentation skills. In a project funded by West Berkshire council, and working with Careers Springboard West Berkshire, we are running these free weekly sessions until July. The performance skills that an actor like Sarah has learnt can be easily transferred into the interview room, and we’re thrilled that the project is working so well. Fingers crossed that those jobs keep coming – it’s not an easy time to be out of work, from my former life as an actor I know how crushing unemployment can be.
And finally, in a new project to celebrate the Olympics, and funded by West Berkshire Council, we are creating a giant community poem involving ten local groups. My marvellous colleague Heidi has been putting it all together. Each group has a workshop with our writer, Ade Morris, during which they write the next section of the poem. This week we have visited the Kingfisher Unit, elderly residents at Nevil Court, the Phoenix Centre, the Oasis Club, Newbury Building Society, and the Alzheimer’s Society, and the things these groups have to say are truly beautiful. If you would like to see the final result, it will be on display in The Watermill’s glorious grounds from 18th June to 7th September.
Propeller’s Chris Myles blogs on his time at The Watermill
May 8th, 2012 No comments
Watermill Thoughts
Hi, it’s Chris Myles here. I have been prompted to write by a weird combination of celebration and eeriness that was evinced in me by returning to the Watermill with two shows that started their lives there. During one chorus of Henry I took an in-breath to speak someone else’s words and realised that it was because that line had been mine all those years ago and I was standing in the same place in the theatre from which I used to start delivering it. Elephantine muscle memory.
Fifteen years ago to the month on a dusty Sunday afternoon I rode my battered old racer across the gravel of the Watermill Theatre car park as I arrived for the start of a nine week engagement in what promised to be an exciting production of Henry V. The ride in had finished with a turn down a small country road past skittering jackdaws into Bagnor, a village composed of a handful of houses and a pub strung out beside the brook. I had no idea how much the place and the people I was to meet would weave themselves in to my life.
Here I am fifteen years on, having just ridden into the same car park for the last three weeks for performances of the fourteenth and fifteenth different productions of a Shakespeare that Ed Hall has directed with this all-male company. He is uniquely loyal to past companies and will always try to find a part for us in the next show – we sack ourselves he says. I have never fancied the redundancy offer and the one show I thought I was sure to miss, when my daughter was born, was cancelled because two other cast members were off sick and the valiant afternoon’s work to put on a show three men down came to nought.
Fifteen different productions over fifteen years and all of them have either opened at the Watermill or visited on tour. We performed a third of that first production outside and in the pre-set I was one of the soldiers in waders, standing in a balaclava mid-stream dragging on a hand-rolled cigarette, little suspecting that I would skinny-dip in that very brook with my wife-to-be. Eight years later, with timing almost as sublime as his sister’s was to be, our son was born in the middle of the six week gap in the tour of the first production of The Winter’s Tale in which, of course, I played the Old Shepherd who finds the abandoned baby. My son is at primary school now where he was the handsome prince who wakes Sleeping Beauty in his class play last week. Thus the jealousy begins – he’s not seven yet and he’s played more romantic leads than I have.
The kids love coming down to Bagnor to see the ducklings, play pooh sticks and run about the stalls in the theatre. For a matinee of this year’s Henry they saluted us all in to the theatre as we sang “Brown Eyes”. And it’s not just me who has ended up seeing the world with Propeller; last tour the family flew out to Boston for half term and they’ve been out to Brooklyn a couple of times.
There are sadder memories too. The first half of that ’97 Henry finished on the back lawn which turned out to be the last place I saw my father before he died. And no Watermill visit passes without a thought for Jill Fraser whose artistic directorship, in the years before her tragically early death, saw the birth and flourishing of Propeller. Two friendly ghosts to me: of the man who, amongst many other things, gave me my love of Shakespeare and of the woman who did most to help me secure a living that involves that love.
The orange spot of Mars and bright white eye of Venus were visible this month in the Berkshire night when the clouds didn’t lour and they have twinkled over much in the last fifteen years. I have grown in that wide gap of time from a sonless son to a fatherless father. In a “happy accident” as Ed calls it, Propeller grew from a one-off show into an internationally acclaimed company.
Hedda, Jill’s very able successor, popped her head round the dressing room door on Saturday night to say thank you and goodbye and hope to see us again. I’ll be back, in one dress or another to say hello to friendly ghosts and nod to the jackdaws at the end of the lane.
Chris Myles, April 24th, 2012
“Well it made me laugh” – The Production blog
May 4th, 2012 No comments
I know this is a meant to be a technical blog but ….
“Have you seen this play before?” I was asked at the end of a performance of our great new rural tour Love on the Tracks.
I explained I was the lighting designer, so yes a few times – “well how many?” So I totted it up.
Well obviously I had read the script a couple of times – went to the first read through (where the cast all meet and read the play) – popped into rehearsals on several occasions (a special thank you to the Puxleys for allowing us to rehearse in their home!) – went to a couple of runs (this is where the play is performed in rehearsals with as many props, bits of set, costumes and sound effects as possible) lit the show during the Technical rehearsals – watched both the dress rehearsals (where the show is performed onstage with all but the audience) – Saw the first few performances at The Watermill – then repeated the process putting the show on tour.
I then had to ask why do you ask and the response was - “Well we loved the show, but you’ve seen the show so many times yet were still laughing”
It then occurred to me very few people have that opportunity – live theatre is not like a film that you can watch over and over and is always the same. Every show is different – not only with what the cast are doing onstage but the audience. Those that have read this blog before, know we operate our shows from the kitchen in East Garston – our first touring date.
This is such a treat as we see as much of the audience as we do the cast – it is like watching a shoal of fish moving – as the humour leaves the stage it causes a wave of reaction in the audience which then returns and makes the performances sparkle even more.
Sorry, got a bit lyrical then – but if you see a show you enjoy – why don’t you try going again and take someone else. I bet you will find it a completely different production and that you enjoy the experience even more as you sense their reactions as well.
You see you are the ones who add even more fun. What? You’ve not seen it yet? Please check our tour dates – I am sure we are coming very close to you. Then we can all have a good laugh together.
The Hungry Caterpillar – Jen’s last Watermill blog
May 3rd, 2012 No comments
The Hungry Caterpillar is my favourite children’s story. It’s about personal transformation and food, two of my favourite things. I was reminded of this story just before starting my World of Difference placement. I was celebrating the end of my second year exams for the Acupuncture degree I’m studying when my close friend Kyla said “You remind me of the Hungry Caterpillar”. Well I do like my food I replied….and laughed nervously breathing in my tummy muscles at the same time…”It’s like you’ve been in hibernation, collecting and feasting on all this experience that you’ve had for the last few years, and now you’re full but frustrated because you’re ready to stretch your wings and really fly”. She was so right. It was such a good analogy (and one I wish I’d thought of first. Kyla, I will pay you rights in fish and chips and fizz next week xx)
So as one show closes, another opens and the show must go on. Last week was Propellers last week and leave on a high they did. I took three of my close friends to see the show on closing night and boy did we have a good time. I just love what they do for Shakespeare. They make it accessible, transformational, creative, fun, but they stay true to the roots and and offer respect to The Bard with their interpretations. So I sigh a deep and contented farewell to the new friends I’ve made in Propeller and we welcome in the Love on the Tracks team which opened this week, only here for a short time though then it’s out on tour regionally, so catch it while you can!
This week also sees my final personal performance at The Watermill Theatre and time to tie up loose ends, bring projects to a neat curtain close (and work out how I can continue to stay part of the Watermill family long into the future…). My final performance brings a little sadness, a great big sigh of satisfaction and reflections of triumphant memory gathering!
To read more, click on the link http://worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk/blogs/jennifer-potter/
The season for change and growth – Jen’s blog
April 5th, 2012 No comments
I love this time of year, in fact I think it’s my favourite time of year when winter opens into spring. The Chinese believe that wood is the symbol of this time of year. In ancient Chinese writings, wood is represented as a tree meaning growth and development. The roots gain strength in the quiet of hibernating winter, recharging for a surging splurge in spring! I love this analogy as it embodies everything I love about this time of year, life starts to breathe, bulbs start to tentatively peak through and everything starts to feel more vibrant (heightened by the lovely weather we’re having at the moment of course).
Life at The Watermill is quite symbolic of this too as we’ve just gone through (my first) set change. Down with Lettice and Lovage and up with Writers Block. The Stage Management team are amazing. The set is deconstructed and reconstructed within a matter of a day or two and the theatre looks so humbling and accommodating as the team work with great care to take one set down and develop another (the challenge of working with a Grade 2 listed building). I also note with great hilarity that my barbeque is having its’ debut appearance as a prop on the set for Writers Block. Brilliant. How can my bbq make a debut ahead of me (my old team will be disappointed)!! I’m so relieved I bought a new one last year, I’m not sure the rust bucket would have sufficed!!
My research groups kicked off this week finding out what kind of propositions customers would be interested in and what they love about The Watermill… read more here http://worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk/blogs/jennifer-potter/
Today’s young performers, tomorrow’s stars of the stage – the Production blog
March 28th, 2012 No comments
The Production staff and Creative team were sat in the sun in that lull before the Senior Youth Theatre arrived for the start of the technical rehearsal of Writers’ Block chatting about how many of us had started what is now our career’s as the result of being in a youth theatre (some of us many years ago).
I must admit my initial reason of joining was not because of a great love of Shakespeare as “drama” was classed as “a bit sissy” but being at an all-boys school when we heard the ratio of girls to boys was about 10:1 suddenly we wanted to “tread the boards”.
I’ve seen moments of Writers’ Block which is absolutely fabulous and what is happening on stage is so far removed from what we did it doesn’t bare thinking about.
I can’t honestly remember a single show that I was ever in – I do recall we spent most of our time piling into a converted Ambulance (every drama group seemed to have one, usually painted yellow) then turning up at some old folks home to “entertain”? I was normally dressed in an old suit of my dads’ with trousers and cuffs rolled up sporting a drawn on moustache.
There was never bed blocking in those days, I’m sure the Ward Sister was saying “I’d get better if I was you Mavis, they’ll be back in a couple of weeks!”
Needless to say my days as a “thespian” did not last long, but that did not matter as I had much more fun behind the scenes still with the same great crowd but now, building and painting sets out in the car park, recording sound effects normally straight from the speaker of the television. I seem to remember the Milky Bar Kid adverts had some mean gunshot effects.
Its long way from the show computers with Wav downloads that now run our sound effects and the DMX lighting desk that control our moving lights.
But these are only cosmetic changes, because being in a youth theatre is still just as much fun and judging by the number of ex-Watermill youth theatre members that I know who are now working in the industry the effect it can have on your life is just as strong today.
So I wish the Writers’ Block company a brilliant run and see if you can spot the ones who will be trail blazing in the entertainment industry in a few years.
Behind the curtains of the theatre… Jen’s first blog
March 22nd, 2012 No comments
Jennifer Potter is one of 500 people who won placements with their chosen charities through the Vodafone World Of Difference Scheme. She chose to support The Watermill and she’ll be blogging regularly about her experience. Keep checking back for future insights into life at The Watermill…
…there’s a lot lurking according to what I’ve uncovered in my first two weeks including Watermini’s, Encore, and the small matter of “Flat-Pat”. More of that later…
I have been throwing myself into volunteering for the last week and observing just what actually does go on behind the curtains of the theatre. Last night I took on the role of Usher (dressed in black with my official “Usher” badge). I welcomed visitors with my dulcet Yorkshire tones, sold programmes for £2.50 (cheap as chips if you ask me!), helped guests to their seats, tried to think about Health and Safety in the auditorium (gulp), sold ice creams in the interval and breathed in the commentary from guests while they were leisurely hanging in the foyer. Hilariously, I felt like I’d been thrown in to round three of The Apprentice pushing my honey and stem ginger ice-cream tubs to anyone who caught my cheeky eye contact….!
It’s so important to get up close and personal with your customers, your visitors, your guests, your patrons. It’s only when you hear or experience first-hand what your customers’ experience that you can truly understand where your efforts should be focussed. “Brilliant performance”, “Isn’t she wonderful”, “Haven’t watched anything so entertaining for a while”….. to recall just a few of the comments I heard as our guests departed in to the chilly spring night.
To read more, click on the link http://worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk/blogs/jennifer-potter/
Rehearsing in a broom cupboard! An extra’s experience…
March 13th, 2012 No comments
Early retirement at 58 years old! This is something I hadn’t anticipated, – so now, – what am I going to do with all this extra time on my hands and just as much energy as ever? That was the challenge I faced as January 2012 dawned. And then, talk about co-incidence or excellent timing, an e mail popped into my inbox from the Outreach Department at the Watermill Theatre. ‘We are seeking a number of ‘extras’ or supernumeraries to help us with the forthcoming production of LETTICE AND LOVAGE’, the e mail announced. ‘If you have ever fancied appearing on The Watermill stage this is your chance!’
Oh yes, this was exactly the kind of challenge I needed. I had never done anything like this before but I knew it was just the venture to get my retirement off on exactly the right note. You see, in my work as a counsellor, and a trainer of counsellors at the University of Reading, my working life has been serious and quite heavy as I listen to peoples’ difficulties and distress. I feel that I want now to redress the balance and give free reign to the fun side of my character.
I was so excited about the e mail that I replied straight away and was thrilled to be invited to a workshop to meet the Director, Matthew, and the Assistant Director, Clive. It was an amazing evening as, together with a group of other applicants, we were facilitated through a range of exercises in communication and encouraged to express responses and emotion through movement, facial expression and gesture. I went home full of it and conveyed to family and friends what I had experienced. You can imagine how even more excited I was when, two days later, Clive telephoned to say that I was being offered a place as an extra in the production.
Then followed two weeks of rehearsals, firstly just with the group of extras but then with the professional cast. It was truly brilliant the Saturday morning when I saw the play performed in its entirety for the very first time. I laughed till I cried at the funny parts and felt incredibly moved by the poignant and intense moments portrayed by these gifted professional actors. Other fantastic moments were for example, when we were taken to wardrobe and fitted out with our costumes, and when we went backstage and upstairs to the dressing rooms for the first time. It has been like entering another world, unknown to me before, and so very, very, interesting. It has turned out to be everything I hoped for and so much more.
Everyone at The Watermill has been incredibly welcoming and friendly; making me feel a part of the team and really valued for the contribution I am making. I feel really privileged to be learning from great Directors, very experienced and skilled professional actors and stage managers, who have all been really generous in explaining things, giving pointers and advice and never making me feel silly for asking the most basic of questions.
Each of the ‘extras’ is involved in four shows a week throughout the run of the play. At the beginning of each performance, as we wait behind the curtain for the first act to begin, listening to the notes of the opening music, I feel such a thrill. Once we go on we have four changes of costume in the first 20 minutes and I confess I did have a fight with a rain coat on the second night. The coat won on that occasion but I have tamed it since then!! I practiced in our broom cupboard at home to make sure I could put it on in a tight space and in the dark!!
I am really looking forward to the remainder of my time in Lettice and Lovage, I feel as if I ‘belong’ now. I shall certainly be sad when it comes to an end and I will definitely be looking out for any further opportunities that may come up to be involved at the Watermill. It’s a great place to be and the staff members there are a great bunch of people to ‘play’ with.
Thanks everyone! Barbara Richards
“EXTRA, EXTRA”
March 8th, 2012 No comments
For our current production of Lettice and Lovage we have enlisted the help of eight wonderful people from the local area to play a group of visitors to Fustian House, a stately home in Wiltshire. Below is the first of three accounts of their time with our company for the five week run.
Extras… they sit around for hours on film sets doing nothing, and aren’t allowed to look at the stars, let alone talk to them. But it wouldn’t be like that in the theatre, would it? The answer is a resounding No. All the ‘proper’ actors – Selina, Jessica, Michael and Helen – as well as all the backstage crew were so friendly and welcoming that we really felt part of the team.
There are eight of us, two groups of four. We were the chicks, learning the ropes, and Clive, the assistant director, was our mother hen. There were ten hours of rehearsals, just for the extras (how many different ways can there be of taking off a coat?)!
We’re only on for 20 minutes at the start and don’t have much to say (“Thank you. Very interesting.”), but we love it. Would I do it again? You bet! Although I’ve done am-dram for 25 years, it’s thrilling being on the professional stage, and you get a different insight into how to do things. I’m not giving up the day job yet, though.
Paul Shave
