This dream will act in direct contrast to the other comedic interludes, highlighting The Miser’s intense paranoia and stressing the extent to which he has lost touch with those who should be closest to him.

The serious undertones of the play create such an extreme situation that the drama and the comedy come easily. All the characters are affected by Harpagon’s strict control of his family’s finances and it’s really exciting that we can share it with you all in just a few weeks time.

Ant Stones, Assistant Director

As you can imagine, this clowning around has filled the room with laughter, from the simplicity of talking while wearing a mask (it’s amazing how a mere nose and cheek change can so radically alter someone’s personality), to a spontaneous electric broom routine, a sketch based on the performance of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On and the classic ironing board to the face gag.

This mad-cap comedy has woven its way into the cast’s performances and made a talented bunch even funnier. It has also led us to a devising a few interludes, which will entertain the audience between the Acts. And we still have a whole two weeks to hone the show.

Ant Stones, Assistant Director on The Miser.

PS: As I write this the company are being ‘Lizzed’. I have never known a movement instructor to work a cast so hard. They’re rolling about the floor like it’s on fire, which is also absolutely hilarious (for me).

We’ve never adapted a book before
All our previous shows (Optic, Shutterland, A Strange Wild Song) have been created completely from scratch, so it was a new challenge for us to adapt a book, especially one that people know so well. Jekyll and Hyde is told predominantly through a lawyer called Utterson (who is basically described in the book as dry and boring) and all of the action is reported through other characters’ descriptions or by letters. Needless to say, this sort of thing doesn’t translate very well onto stage. The story is also very thin, with a lot of embellishment needed to make it a rounded story. One thing’s for certain with this adaptation: we won’t be sticking reverently to Stephenson’s version.

We’ve never worked with a director before
Up until now, we’ve made our work as a group, with all performers acting as director and vice-versa. Although one of the pleasures of this is an egalitarian atmosphere in the rehearsal room and a strong sense of ensemble, it means making a show can take longer, with cast members having to step out of the action to see how things look and slot together. So making the show with Beth Flintoff has been (and will continue to be) something we have embraced. She was a fantastic help during the week, not only in being able to record and note what we discovered in the space, but in offering a fresh perspective and different approaches to things that we, as performers, were struggling with. To arrive in the rehearsal room with elements of script, however rough, was a huge time-saver and helped focus our energies. Beth is very much a co-creator of this show and it’s wonderful to have someone like her in the mix.

With all of this in mind, we had clear aims in what we wanted to achieve in our development week. Firstly, what story do we want to tell? And secondly, once we’ve worked that out, how do we want to tell it? Playing around in the rehearsal room undoubtedly helped with the former, as we began to realise what characters and situations could be fleshed out and who we were interested in following. Having Hayley, designer for the show, in the room for most of the week was also a big help with the latter, as we began playing with props and costume. I’m hesitant to give too much away and ruin the surprise, but this show is going to be very silly, very funny and occasionally quite dark. Expect elements of penny dreadfuls, Hammer Horror and shadowy gothic styles! We’re excited to get back in the rehearsal room to get it finished before sharing it with the public. Thanks to the Watermill for having us.

Christopher Harrisson
Co-Artistic Director, Rhum and Clay Theatre Company

Director, Jessica Swale

Carefully preserved by its owner of fifteen years, the prop has diversified since its arcade days and has since had an extensive career in film and television. Amongst its credits: an appearance in a Michael Winner horror film where a serial killer’s dying moments are accompanied by the haunting cackle and lurching movements of the sailor. The prop has also appeared more recently in Charlie Brooker and Daniel Maier’s parody series A Touch of Cloth as well as Life on Mars. Disconcerting and amusing in equal measure, the sailor’s unsettling qualities have also put the housemates on Big Brother 13 to the test during a task where they had to spend two days in the house without laughing.

Although the exact age of this antique amusement is unknown, there is no question that it has had a great number of year’s service and will soon add Sleuth to its list of credits.

By creating a full history of a character, an actor has a chance to tromp around in his boots, getting a feeling of being inside his skin, thinking, breathing. An audience will spot a two-dimensional characterisation a mile off.  In a play like this, where tonally we jump between comedy, thriller and insightful naturalism, the characters are complex and unpredictable. That’s what makes them exciting to watch.

This week we’re going back to the beginning to unpick the text, beat by beat, to put in physical detail and find the comedy. It’s probably my favourite stage because we know the lay of the land now -we can get muddy and explore. Fitting in Bagnor, where each day for me starts with a countryside stomp with Hedda (Artistic Director) and her dog, Bear, a good chance to think and digest the work we’re doing. Whilst working in London is great fun, there’s something about being so pleasantly marooned in the countryside which lends a focus and intensity to our process. Let’s just hope while we’re ensconced in our country retreat that the detectives don’t come knocking…

Director, Jessica Swale

 (Click on the pic to expand)
‘What an amazing 8 weeks, please don’t make me go…!  The shows, the rehearsals, the workshops, the meetings, the competition-judging, the driving, the late nights, the cat, the dogs and the ducks! I arrived at The Watermill Theatre unsure what I was letting myself in for. I mean, it is practically in the middle of nowhere, so surely no one knows about it? I couldn’t be more wrong! By the end of my third week I had already been involved with four of the regular drama groups, met the Arabian Nights cast and production team and organised and supervised the Shakespeare festival Scratch Choir. I also perfected my fighting skills by assisting a stage combat workshop. I was punched, kicked, had my neck broken and my eye gouged out. It was such fun, ‘all in a day’s work’ as they say.

My main project was to create the Arabian Nights Education Pack which was used to support many children’s visit to the theatre. My placement at The Watermill Theatre has been absolutely marvellous. I have gained such a range of new skills and found out what excites me, what I am good at and what I need to work on. This is one experience I will never forget and I am now certain I would love a job in this field. Though one thing is for sure, I feel it will be difficult to find any theatre that is so charming, warm and friendly as the wonderfully magical Watermill.’

Charlotte

I don’t think it’s a secret that the Christmas show is always my favorite of the year. There is nothing better, when sitting in the office going over budget figures for the next year (yawn!), than to have the show relay on (this is a speaker that monitors what is happening in the theatre) and hear the reaction from a couple of hundred children to what is happening on stage.

 It’s a continuous soundtrack of laughing, giggling and oohs – not to mention the noise when the belly dancing starts. As always though some of the best reaction comes from the simplest effects – you can never beat the expression on a child’s face the first time they see a mirrors ball or better still a glitter drop.

Now sadly this expression of joy is not shared by all – glitter does tend to get everywhere! 

Fortunately most of the stage management and production team have partners who are well used to the fact every item of clothing we bring home will be covered in the stuff, and the bath has a sparkly tide mark for a couple of months. Though I must say my first visit to the village pub at this time of year always gets a strange look!

Those who are not normally impressed are the stage management team who not only have the joy of crawling on their stomachs into traps in the toilet floor above the auditorium to drop it – but then have the task of clearing it all up at the end of the show!

In the past I’ve tried supplying battery handheld vacuums and even leaf blowers to aid the task but I’ve still been met with the “look” of raised eyebrows that says “great- you think that will help?”

But this year I got a smile – thanks to a small company in West Lothian who provided me with a Back-pack-vac. (DSM Victoria is sporting it in the photo above).

This could be why, on the turnaround between shows, you hear the odd chorus of “Who ya gonna call?” over the show relay.

Lawrence T Doyle
Production Manager

After nine weeks of rehearsals, frantic line-learning, and many angst-ridden mental risk assessments on my part, we finally reached the Shake up Shakespeare Festival.  Over 1,600 people experienced Shakespeare either by watching or taking part.

Much of the week was taken up with Othello, our three-hander which has been touring schools for eight weeks in co-production with The Rose Theatre in Kingston.  It has been very exciting for me to watch Othello visiting schools, and I have enjoyed being grilled by students in workshops afterwards as they hack my adaptation apart. There’s always a lot of discussion about the ending and whether or not they liked it. I sometimes think there is no audience quite so critical and discerning as thirty A Level English or Drama students.

I think the festival summed up, in six days, how I feel about my job here all year round. Especially on the final day, on which we had The Bard Unbound, our community Shakespeare night involving over 120 performers from 8 to 80 years. I was anxious, obviously. Will our volunteer performers, unused to the tiny amount of space backstage, be alright? Will we be able to squeeze 120 actors, plus a choir, plus a maximum capacity audience into the restaurant and bar? Where on earth will everyone park? How do the Outreach team feel about all this extra work? And then I felt ridiculously lacking in faith as I watched all these problems be solved, in front of my eyes, by my colleagues. Heidi and Sarah, my fellow Outreach-ers, never stopped smiling (even when someone had to drop out at the very last minute). The stage management team, backed up by three super student volunteers, seemed to know the show better than I did. Julie P, our Admin Secretary, and General Manager, Clare, made shuttle trips all day to the overflow car park. Miraculously there seemed to be enough space – even for the hog roast. Lawrence, the Production Manager, even managed to find time to suggest a glitter drop at the final moment (this made me so happy I did a little dance up the spiral staircase and nearly put my back out). 

And then, at some point in the middle of the afternoon,  I encountered Malvolio rehearsing in the garden, a piece of Othello busily being practiced under the office staircase, and the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream entertaining someone who was trying to buy coffee in the bar.  I saw a primary school headteacher rehearsing with his co-stars – seven 9 year olds and a drama graduate in her early twenties. Three mothers performing alongside five twelve year old boys. And this is what the glory of it all is: literally hundreds of people with all sorts of other things to do in their busy lives putting that on hold, so that they can experience a bit of artistic magic for a day.

One of the performers told me the next day that it was the fulfilment of a 30 year long dream to perform at The Watermill.  So I end it all by thanking my lucky stars that I have this funny old job, helping these hundreds of nuggets of dreams to come true, for a moment.

Beth Flintoff – Watermill Outreach Director

I failed yet again this morning, like most days!  I may be able to moves shows around the country and juggle very tight budgets but make sandwiches to take to work, no chance. I know you could make them the night before, but it’s not the same.  The night before you can’t tell if it’s a Dairylea slice or a tongue and pickle sort of day.

So what happens is, we pop off to Waitrose and buy them – which is not very green if a stream of cars leave every ten minutes for an hour or so at lunch time. So we came up with this great system in the office where everyone writes down on a board when and where they are going over the next week so we could all share trips. It was all very organized and forward thinking. It lasted about 2 weeks it’s still there with a last message looking very forlorn.

Don’t fear we’re not now some gas guzzling hoard but the simple – head around the door with “just popping out do you want a lift or anything?” is so much more immediate and efficient.

What has this got to do with me sitting in a yurt on a rainy day at the Showman’s Show recently is equally simple.  I was there reporting to the guys from http://www.juliesbicycle.com about how much we had saved with the Better Batteries system when I noticed the stand for  http://gocarshare.com/ and had to find out more.

We’ve all tried to be greener by car sharing but it never works – it all takes too much arranging and being organized and knowing what you will be doing weeks in the future.

This system is so much easier – basically it  started as a way to get to festivals or back to University at the end of the holiday. People went on Facebook asking for, or offering, lifts to gigs.  As you had to register – it seemed much safer- as there was a log of who went with whom, where and when.

Now it has grown so you can get lifts to football matches and comedy arena tours.

So, we started chatting about how people involved with The Watermill could benefit… 

Actors who have never met before could log on to say they’re off to rehearsals and find out who else is going?

Members of drama groups could offer lifts to each other at short notice without having to have arranged it the week before?

Audiences who say “I wish I knew you were coming tonight” could arrange a lift at the last minute, without having compared diaries two months before? 

Those at a University near a theatre could grab a lift back with a truck moving a stage set, and maybe bring home their canoe and mountain bike without having to take the back window of their car out! 

I asked if it was as simple as logging on to the Goshare.com site and telling people “I’m going to the Watermill in an hour, day, week, even a months – time?”  Well, yes it is!

Brilliant!  So then I asked,  “how many theatres are registered with you?”  The answer, NONE!

But that was a few weeks ago – now there is one theatre registered as a Venue on the Gocarshare.com system – 

That same regional theatre that can boast being one of  the first to run the Better Batteries system – the same that was the first to join Jo Cornwell’s now 600 strong UK Prop Network. The same that recycles more of it resources than most – yes, it’s The Watermill!

If this works as well as any of the above we will be leading the way yet again.  The car sharing system will make as much sense as ‘popping your head around the door…’

 Oh, if you’re going, I’ll have a BLT and coke Zero.

Lawrence T Doyle
Production Manager