Directing and Rehearsing the Play











Written by Peter D. Lathan





















Peter D. Lathan

62 Sandringham Road

Roker

Sunderland

SR6 9QZ

United Kingdon



Tel.: 0191 548 7482

e-mail: 100667.3273@compuserve.comCHAPTER 1



CHOOSING THE PLAY





There are as many different ways of directing as there are
directors, but they all begin with one thing - the play.  You
must believe in the play or you won't give it your best efforts.
 The poorest production I have ever done was my first
full-length show at my present school, Smike.  I really only did
it because my MD wanted to.



I'll be honest: I wasn't that keen on the show when I started. 
I only really agreed to doing it because I wanted to keep the MD
sweet for when I started - as I knew would happen! - to want to
do shows that she was unsure about.



I'll be completely honest: I didn't like Smike at all.  It went
down well with the audience and the powers-that-be because it
was the first show that school had seen for many a year and - if
we are really truthful - expectations of school shows are so low
that staff, parents and friends are just delighted to see the
kids up there on stage and remembering their lines.  Critical
faculties do tend to fly out of the window!



Not for me, however!  I was, in the event, pleasantly surprised,
because it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be.  The kids put
their all into it.  They loved being on stage, they enjoyed the
singing, they were mesmerised by the lights and sound equipment,
they took (generally speaking) well to the discipline, and, all
in all, from an educational point of view it had to be
considered a success.



Artistically, however, it wasn't, and here I must part company
with many of my colleagues.  With a theatre, rather than an
educational drama, background, I cannot be satisfied with the
idea of "the process, not the product", at least in relation to
something for which you charge an entrance fee.  The idea's fine
in the classroom, but the moment you ask people to pay good
money to watch what you are doing, you have, I firmly believe,
to give them the best value for that money that you can, and you
mustn't be satisfied with that so damning comment, "Well, they
are just kids, of course".  I want the audience to forget that
they're watching kids!



And that isn't a pipe dream.  It can happen.  The most
satisfying moment of all, as far as I am concerned, was when, at
the end of a show many years ago, a relative of a kid in the
play just sat in his seat and said, "I only came because the
wife said I had to because our X was in it.  I still can't
believe they're school kids."  That's the reaction to aim for,
and if you get it just once in your career, you'll feel
wonderful!



You might even think that sounds selfish, but it isn't really. 
If you drive, bully, cajole the kids to aim for that kind of
level, then even if they don't make it, they'll still achieve a
standard well above that of the average school production.  When
we did Godspell, a reporter from the local paper came to review
it, and set out a list of those things for which school
productions are famous (or, rather, infamous), such as giving
sly waves to mam and dad in the audience and so on.  She went on
to say, with what seemed like genuine surprise, that there was
no sign of any of them in our show!



The thing is, kids, if they are really inspired by what they are
doing, will work their socks off to achieve what you expect of
them.  Set your sights low, and you'll get what you ask for; set
them high and your kids will bust a gut to try to meet your
expectations.



And it all starts with the play.  Choose a play which is written
down for kids and you're on a hiding to nothing.  But choose one
which will make real demands on them and they will respond - and
surprise you.  Even now, after following this philosophy for
over twenty years, I still find myself surprised by what they
are capable of achieving.



Take Steel Magnolias, for instance.  When I mentioned the idea
of doing this play to the Head, she reacted with "Well, if you
think it's suitable..." which summed up the attitude of
everyone, excpet me and the kids.  But it worked: the first
night audience was in floods of tears at the end!  These six
sixteen year old girls had taken part in shows since their
second year, had developed a reasonably sophisticated taste in
theatre, and were willing to work on understanding the situation
and the feelings of the characters.  It was the right choice of
play at this time: four years before it would probably have been
a disaster.  It's a much more difficult play for kids to do
than, for instance, Antigone (the first straight play I did at
the school), which is, after all, about a young girl and her
feelings.  In Steel Magnolias they were nine years younger than
the youngest character and fifty years younger than the oldest,
but they were able to make that imaginative leap by studying the
text in a very mature way.



I am not saying that you shouldn't choose a play which has been
specially written for kids, but rather that you should approach
such plays with care.  Many are little more than pot-boilers,
written (like the myriads of light comedies and thrillers
produced for amateur companies) because the market is insatiable
- and quite profitable.  For goodness' sakes, don't lose your
critical faculties: apply the same criteria to a children's play
as you would to a play for adults, or, for that matter, to a
novel for children.  Children's novelists like Alan Garner,
Susan Cooper, Joan Aitkin, Diana Wynn-Jones and Peter Dickenson,
to name just a few of the best, all make demands on their
readers, stretching their imagination, testing their response to
language, making them think, whereas others pander and preach. 
Decent teachers cringe when they hear others putting on their
special talking-to-children voice ("Now children, I want us all
to think today about..."  Yech!) and yet they often seem to have
no qualms about choosing the dramatic equivalent for a school
play.



And please, please, please! avoid those plays which are sold on
the basis of their "relevance": they might be good, but they
might also be a load of rubbish.  You may have thought, in the
last paragraph, that my illustration of talking down to kids was
a bit old-fashioned, rather Joyce Grenfell.  You're probably
right, but people like that still exist in our schools (I know a
couple!).  Their modern equivalent, however, is the
relevance-monger.  You know the sort I mean: This exciting new
play by Fred Bloggs explores the temptation to vandalism which
all teenagers face and shows how Joe, a new fourth year at
Mucktown Comprehensive, is nearly dragged into crime by a gang
of......, and so on!  What a bloody insult to the kids!  Pander
to the fascination with low-life that all kids have, and preach
a good old-fashioned moral at the same time!  They might even
try to give it a veneer of literary respectability by calling it
a "modern, teenage morality play"!



Now I'm not saying that all "relevant" plays are badly written:
they aren't (Willie Russell's Our Day Out springs to mind), but
the vast majority are.  For goodness' sakes, judge them on their
worth as pieces of drama and not on their "relevance", a quality
as spurious in Drama as "sincerity" is in poetry.  And if you
don't believe that, just look at some of the very sincere but
absolutely appalling pieces of verse which appear in the
Readers' Letters columns of local newspapers or the In Memoriam
classifieds.



I think that's why I was unhappy with Smike: it's a moral tale
(look at how much nicer schools are nowadays, and even our hard
headmaster is much nicer than Squeers!), sugar-coated with a
type of music which can best be described as the acceptable face
of pop.  It made no demands on the kids other than technical
ones, and certainly made none on me other than problem of
manipulating large numbers of very inexperienced kids on-stage
for the first time.  It was safe, sure to be a success with
indulgent parents etc., and ultimately of no value except as a
confidence-builder for something better.



Look for a play which makes demands on the kids as actors (and
singers and dancers if that's relevant), and which also
challenges their prejudices and makes them think and react in
ways which are new to them.  And don't be afraid of the
audience: if you're doing the right thing, you'll take them with
you.  In a compilation show I did the following year - I
included that scene from Richard III in which Queen Margaret
triumphs over Elizabeth and the Duchess of York (from So now
prosperity begins to mellow to 

			Farewell York's wife, and queen of sad mischance,

			These English woes will make me smile in France.)

simply because I had three very good actresses (Year 10s) whom I
wanted to push to their limits.  They were unhappy with the idea
at first (Shakespeare has such an undeserved bad reputation with
kids!) and, even when they were feeling much more confident in
their ability to handle it, they were sure it would die with the
audience.



It didn't!  Certainly many of the younger kids in the audience
didn't understand a word (for God's sake, don't fall into the
trap of playing to the lowest common denominator - someone is
certain to bring a couple of three year olds!) and the older
ones weren't sure, but they all admired the acting unreservedly,
and for many adults it was the highlight of the show.  



Actually I'm willing to bet that we would have got away with
doing the whole play, if we'd had (a) sufficient boys, and (b)
they were good enough to carry the parts.  And again I'm not
exaggerating: don't forget that the National Youth Theatre uses
kids from fourteen upwards and they've done very many more than
worthwhile performances of Shakespeare.  And any company that
produces Helen Mirren, and others of like calibre, has got to be
good.  (Who was it that described her as "the thinking man's
crumpet"?  I can't remember, and anyway, it isn't really
relevant!  And rather sexist too.  This man shouldn't be a Drama
Teacher!)



You may have to start with an obvious crowd-appeal play (which
is why, in spite of everything I've said, I don't really regret
having done Smike as our first show), because then your kids
will trust your judgement.  You see, there will be times when
they'll say to you that they don't like what you want to do and
they don't think it will work.  You can say, "Look, I know it
will work" as much as you like, but if they don't trust you,
they won't accept your word and so will either drop out or put
in a very unsure, and hence poor, performance.



You will have your failures here, of course.  Kids are very wary
of making fools of themselves in front of their friends, and
sometimes that fear will overcome their trust.  I had that
problem with Godspell.  I explained the story to the Drama Club
and played the David Essex recording.  The older kids fell in
love with the show straightaway but some of the younger ones
(mainly Year 9s) didn't like it (if it's religious it's got to
be bad!), didn't believe my assurances that it would be a great
success, and dropped out.  I'm pleased to say that they sat in
the audience and kicked themselves - and had to grace to admit
it.  It'll happen: you just mustn't allow yourself to be
disheartened but keep your belief in what you're doing and fight
on.  If you're right, and what you want to do is good, you'll
win in the end.



Finally on this matter of choosing the right play, if your kids
are anything like mine they'll want to do Grease.  Personally I
wouldn't touch it: to me its message is appalling - if you want
to get a man, be a slag!  Annie, too, is out, because it both
panders and preaches, and is mawkish about it into the bargain. 
Be prepared to hold your ground in the face of much pressure: in
the long run they'll respect you for it.



Here follows an (almost) verbatim conversation between me and
group of kids:



"Sir, why don't we do Annie?



"Because I don't like it."



"Why not, sir?  It's great!"



"Sorry, but I just can't stand it.  I reckon it's the most
rubbish musical ever written."



"Aw sir!  I think it's great and we ought to do it."  (Cries of
agreement from the rest.)  "We ought to vote on it, sir.  That's
democratic.  You believe in 

democracy, don't you sir?"  (Aha!, they think: got you there!)



"Yes I believe in democracy."



"So we can vote?"



"Yes.  Real democracy.  One man, one vote.  OK?"



Jubilant cries of "Yeah!"



"Fine.  One man, one vote.  As I'm the only man present I vote
against, so we don't do it.  End of story."



Yes.  I know.  A bit silly.  But I honestly think that if I had
given way, when they knew I was dead set against it, they would
have lost some respect for me.  Kids expect teachers to be a bit
arbitrary and autocratic and are a little disappointed if
they're not.  My mob think it's great to mutter to each other,
"Oh him! he's got no taste.  He doesn't like Annie or Grease."!



*****



	So, you will be able to tackle very demanding plays, but you do
need to work up to them.  You can do it in one school
generation, but don't rush it.  Choose your play to suit your
company.CHAPTER 2



STARTING WORK ON A PLAY - GODSPELL





Why did I choose to do Godspell?



Because I like it.  I do think Jesus Christ Superstar is a
better show, being much more dramatic with stronger music, but
we just didn't have the boys, and anyway, I am not sure that
kids are capable of doing it the justice it deserves - although
it has to be said that they are capable of doing much more than
we credit them with.  I also did Godspell because it's a good
show for kids to do: it's mainly ensemble playing, which kids
are far better at than adults (not having yet learned to hog the
spotlight and upstage each other!); also it doesn't matter
whether you've got loads of boys or not (we had four); it can be
interpreted in a way which suits kids down to the ground, and -
this may seem strange, but it's absolutely true and we proved it
- it doesn't even matter whether Jesus is played by a boy or a
girl.  (The interesting thing is that no-one - and I mean
absolutely no-one - commented upon the fact that our Jesus was
female.  True, she was an extremely good actress, but the Jesus
of Godspell is, in any case, somewhat androgynous.)  And of
course - an important reason - it has such good music!



Let's go through the whole process of getting the show ready,
from start to finish, and that will give some indication of the
approach to the school play which works for me.   can't stress
that point enough: it works for me but may not for you.  On the
other hand, you can always learn from other people.  In my time
I've been lucky enough to watch a large number of directors in
action, from the first ever to direct me in a show (Les Jolley,
employed as a Biology teacher at Bede Grammar School for Boys in
Sunderland but known mainly for the amazingly high standard to
which he raised Bede Drama in the fifties and sixties) to
Michael Bogdanov (he did the infamous Romans in Britain at the
National Theatre which attracted the opprobrium of Mary
Whitehouse and many others) who led a couple of courses in
direction which I attended, and I have learned something from
all of them, even from a couple of dreadful amateur directors
whose productions I suffered in.  No matter how good or bad the
show or the director, you can learn something that will will
increase your own knowledge and understanding of theatre and
direction.  I have watched John Blackmore direct Barbara Windsor
in panto at Newcastle's Theatre Royal and Bill Alexander direct
Anton Lesser in Julius Caesar with the Tyne-Wear Theatre
Company, and have used what I saw to great advantage, so, even
though I am a million miles from being the world's greatest
director, even of school plays, perhaps something I have done
may give you an idea which you can develop into something of
great value.



Perhaps you saw that BBC TV programme soem years ago which
followed Dustin Hoffman rehearsing Shylock in Merchant?  It
taught me a hell of a lot.  And I learned as much, although in a
totally different way, from spending three days with Bruvvers, a
Community Theatre company in Newcastle, as they devised and
prepared their Christmas pantomime.



Incidentally this was a so-called industrial placement, a kind
of Work Experience for teachers.  I'd always looked on this sort
of scheme as being aimed at Business Studies and Technology
teachers - after all, it is usually called Industrial Placement
- but I was able to get one of our Year 11 girls a week with
Bruvvers and thought, why not me?  So I contacted the
Authority's placement officer and found her very enthusiastic
about the idea.  The company was keen, too, and I had a very
good three days in which I learned an awful lot which has proved
useful both in play production and in Drama lessons.



Grab every opportunity you can: you can't spend too much time
learning from others - even if all you learn is what not to do!



The decision to do Godspell was arrived at by discussion between
the M.D. and myself.  You know the kind of thing:



		"What the hell are we going to do this year?"



		"God knows, 'cos I don't!"



The first thing, once the decision was made, was to decide how
we were going to cut down the numbers of kids who wanted to take
part.  I had seen an amateur production of the show not long
before and they had an enormous cast, which really limited the
on-stage action.  I didn't want that sort of restriction.



Now the school choir always has a part to play in our main
productions: that's a policy of which I approve 100% because I
want to see the barriers between the performing arts broken down
in kids' minds as much as possible.  Then there was the Dance
Club, fpr I really did want some good dancers.  And, of course,
there was the Drama Club, and whilst there was obviously a
considerable overlap between the three, it seemed that we had a
potential company of some sixty kids.  Clearly that was far too
many to be able to do anything other than stand them all on the
stage and sing!  On the other hand, I didn't want to discourage
anyone.  However when you are dealing with kids there will
always be some natural wastage, and so it proved this time.



I next had a chat with the choreographer (a girl from year 11)
and asked her to select those dancers she thought were up to
taking part in the show.  The only guidance I gave her was to
say that I didn't want more then six who were not already
members of either the choir or the Drama Club.  In the event she
chose only two of these "extras".  Then we discovered that the
last night of the show clashed with the first day of a skiing
trip to Austria and a couple more were forced to drop out.



By now I was left with about fifty so I had to settle down to do
some serious thinking about how I could use thirty people more
than I could comfortably fit on the stage!



Of course, all this time I had also been seriously thinking
about what direction the production was going to take.  I first
read the script three or four times without any attempt to do
any interpretation or impose any structure, and then I forgot it
for a week or so to let it, as it were, ferment in my mind.



Gradually the idea began to take shape that all of the
characters, with the exception of Jesus and John the Baptist,
were very childlike.  There was a quality of innocence there, in
the first act at any rate, that reminded me of young children. 
Parts of the script called to mind something we had done as part
of a Carol Service a year or two before, when we had presented a
Nativity Play with the kids playing the various parts as if they
were five and six year olds.  There was, it seemed to me, the
same innocence and na‹vet‚ that you find in an infant's Nativity.



This gave me the start I needed and the ideas began to flow. 
The cast would be little children, and the setting would be a
children's playground.  I put up a notice in the staffroom
asking for someone to loan us a climbing frame, swing, seesaw or
anything similar to help set the scene.  Poeple were very
helpful and I soon had what I needed: a two-seater swing and a
climbing frame.



Then the next little bell rang in my head and I decided it would
be an inner-city playground, next to a building site or a
derelict building propped up by scaffolding.  We could then
divide up those who wanted to take part into two parts: the
Company, who would be the actors and dancers, and the Chorus,
who would be singers only, and the Chorus would be on the
scaffolding which I envisaged as surrounding the stage on three
sides.  This way all those who wanted to take part could, and I
would not have to disappoint anyone totally, something I hate
doing.  Behind the scaffolding would be a blank wall covered
with graffiti. (I left the kids to do this themselves, insisting
only that there should be no obscenity.  Newcastle United FC got
an awful lot of mention!)



But where would we get the scaffolding?  It would be very
expensive - prohibitively so - to hire.



So I went to see the Head.  I suspect that her heart sinks when
I walk into her room when we're preparing for a show.  You can
see the "God! what mad idea has he got this time?" expression
come across her face!  This dates back to the time when I
insisted, for the Awards Day entertainment, that I needed an
eight foot by sixteen foot hole in the middle of the stage for
the lion's den in "The Daniel Jazz".  She had visions of the
local MP falling backwards off his chair and vanishing down this
gaping hole!  He didn't, but it might have been fun!  



Anyway, that defensive look came over her face when I asked, "Do
you have any influence with the Public Works Department?"



"None," she said, "but we can always try.  What have you come up
with this time?"



When I mentioned a fifty-two foot run of fourteen foot high
scaffolding I rather think she regretted having asked the
question.  She certainly did when I mentioned the fact that
hiring even a ten foot run was way beyond anything we could
afford and we'd have to have it for free!  However she bit on
the bullet and said that we couldn't lose anything by trying and
that she'd get back to me.  And, by God, she did!  Less than an
hour later she told me that one of the big-wigs from the PWD was
coming to see me to sort out exactly what we needed.  He did,
and we got it, everything I was after.  They'd come and erect it
when I wanted and take it down when I wanted.  They could not
have been more helpful if we'd been paying a thousand pounds a
foot!



As an aside, the next problem I presented her with (when we did
Anouilh's Antigone later that year) was a coffin.  She found
that, too - free of charge, of course!  The kids were quite
horrified.  "Is it a real coffin, sir?" I was asked.  I told
them it was OK, they had nothing to worry about.  It has only
been used once!



So one problem was solved.  Now I could really get down to work.



Most of the company were to be young children, so they had to
learn to be little 'uns.  For the next couple of weeks in the
Drama Club we played children's games: my Assistant Director,
the Head of English, was very helpful here.  She had two kids of
just the right age and knew all the games, so she organised it
all.  Everyone had a great deal of fun, and it got very, very
noisy, but it was an invaluable beginning for it got the kids
thinking about how they were going to play their parts weeks
before the scripts arrived.



Yes, as often as I can, I have an Assistant Director, who keeps
The Book, the copy of the play in which every move, every
lighting and sound cue, every nuance of the production is
carefully written down - and who, incidentally, does the actual
writing because my scrawl is illegible even to me.  She (and it
usually is a woman who volunteers for this job for some reason;
I don't know why) will also take rehearsals when I am unable to
be there, or, when I want to have two rehearsals running at the
same time, she'll take one of them.  And of course she's there
to take over if anything should happen to me.  That may sound
rather pessimistic but in fact twice in one year recently I was
taken into hospital (via Casualty) for a couple of operations on
my knee and, had that happened at the wrong time, it could have
wrecked a production.  Now I know that, should it happen again
(and I no longer have the same belief in my personal
invulnerability I once had!), then someone I trust can take over
with the minimum of disturbance.



I felt that we needed to establish, right from the start, that
these were little kids, and so I decided to send the Company on
stage and into the audience, in character as little children,
half an hour before the show was due to begin.  There they would
play the children's games and involve the kids in the audience. 
They actually - as kids will - went further than I intended, and
on one night I was amused (no, I fell about laughing!) to see an
Assistant House Tutor playing Ring-a-ring of Roses with a group
of Year 11 girls!  To say that the audience was bemused was an
understatement!  But it did get the point across and faded so
naturally into the play that most of the audience were not even
aware of the transition until the first lighting change.



Re-reading the script with this idea in mind, I realised that it
was fine for the first half but that it would be wholly
inappropriate for the second.  The opening song of the second
half, Turn Back, O Man, is very definitely adult.  But then it
occured to me that the interval could easily be taken as the
passage of time and that they children could have grown up in
that time.  But they were not to be fully adult: Turn back is a
bit of a send-up of sexy songs, but it could also be taken as an
adolescent view of sexiness, so I decided that they would be
adolescents, with the adolescent's occasional lapses into
childishness, right until the dawning realisation that something
terrible is about to happen.  The attack on Jesus by the
Pharisees would be followed by a regression to childhood as a
kind of reaction against the fear provoked by the hostility.  It
would not be until the Last Supper that they would really grow
up.



Thus the overall pattern for the show was established and my
next task was to see that everything fitted into it.  It is
worth pointing out here, however, that you should never try to
impose any pattern on a play that is not, first and foremost,
supported by the text, and - and I believe this is equally
important - does not illuminate the text in some way.  Every
theatregoer has suffered through plays where the director has
clearly imposed a particular style on the production just to be
different.  Some directors are particularly prone to do this to
Shakespeare, feeling, no doubt, that being different is somehow
of value in itself.  It isn't, of course: if you have nothing
new to say, then fiddling about with costumes and setting isn't
going to bring about a great production.



In this case, I felt, the idea I decided to use was supported by
the text - it was the text, in fact, that gave me the idea in
the first place.  I also felt the maturing of the children would
be a reflection of the maturing of Jesus' Disciples (and, by
extension, of all Christians) as they came to understand what
his message was.  The final growing up, brought about by the
crucifixion, reflects both the effects upon the Disciples and
the fact that we do mature through suffering and pain.



It is difficult to explain what comes next: so many things seem
to happen at once.  The moment the basic idea for the show takes
root ideas start flowing fast - if they don't, then the idea
isn't a very good one; it'll seem very forced if you continue to
use it.  So the order I mention things may not have been the
order in which they actually happened.



Working on a show of this nature is very different from doing a
straight play.  Then you may have no one to consult at this
stage except, possibly, the designer.  And I say "possibly"
because in most school productions, as in most amateur shows,
the director is almost always the designer.  In a musical,
however, you certainly have a Musical Director and, almost
certainly, a choreographer.  They need to be put in the picture
straightaway.  At my previous school I used to hold production
meetings with all of the various heads of department: M.D.,
Choreographer, Stage Manager, Designer, LX, Sound, Wardrobe,
everyone who had an input.  But that was back in the seventies:
education has changed so much in the interim that finding a time
when they would all be available for a meeting takes longer than
seeing each individually, so that is what I now do, meeting each
on an individual basis.



The first, in this instance, was the choreographer, our Year 11
girl.  She was a good choreographer in that she had good dance
ideas and was able to get them across to the dancers, but she
was not experienced enough to be able to go through the show
with nothing more than my outline approach, and produce the kind
of ideas someone of more experience could.  So I made a list of
those songs for which I wanted dance routines, added notes on
what effect I was after in the routines, and gave her David
Essex tape to work from.  It would, obviously, have been better
to have the M.D. make a tape but, as always in schools, she was
up to her neck in another musical event and I was unwilling, at
this stage, to put any extra burden on her.  The show was, after
all, over six months away.



The notes I provided were fairly sketchy: the first routine (for
God Save the People) was to be based on the same sort of
children's games that were to be played during the half hour
before the actual play started; a solo ballet for Day by Day; a
hill-billy routine for Jesus for the second verse of Learn Your
Lesons Well; something wild and full of movement to close Act I
(The Light of the World); a Tiller Girl routine for the final
chorus of Turn Back, O Man; and, for All for the Best, a tap
routine to accompany Jesus and softshoe for Judas.  My initial
request was simply for her to listen to the music, look at what
I wanted, and let me know if it was possible.  In the event she
agreed with everything except the softshoe which she wanted to
replace with a Charleston.  That was no problem - in fact, I
thought it would probably look better - so I gave the go-ahead.



Next was the lighting.  I had two Year 10 lads who, in the
previous year's show, had rigged and operated my design under
the supervision of a member of staff.  After that they had
borrowed every book I had on stage lighting, and all the
catalogues, and virtually learned them off by heart!  One was
even basing his GCSE CDR. project on the subject.  I had decided
that, for this show, the lighting was to be kept as simple as
possible, unlike the previous year's show in which we'd had over
a hundred lighting cues, so when I met with them I gave the most
basic of instructions and said I'd check back with them on the
day they started rigging.  All I wanted, I told them, was an
open white full-up state for most of the play with an area
centre front which could be lit separately if necessary, a red
state for the crucifixion (concentrated mainly on Jesus but with
spill onto the rest of the stage), and a single narrow beam
profile spot as a special so that we could isolate a soloist
during Turn Back, O Man but I couldn't say where because I
didn't know who the soloist would be.



Sound was even more easily dealt with: two radio microphones,
one of which would be on a low stand centre front and the other
looked after by a member of the chorus on the scaffolding stage
left; one omni-directional cable mic on the scaffolding where
Jesus would be crucified; another centre front for sound
reinforcement, and a cardioid at front on either side for
soloists, the mixer to be placed at the back of the theatre, the
better to balance the vocals against the band which would be at
stage right, but off-stage.  In the event the centre front omni
proved to be more of a nuisance than a help so we got rid of it.



Equally easy was the discussion with the stage manager. Although
no furniture was required as we had the swing and climbing
frame; we would need a lot of small hand props but the actors
would position most of them and all she would have to do was
make sure she collected them after every show and handed them
out at the right time during the next one.



I don't have meetings of this nature with the M.D.: she and I
are in constant communication throughout the period of a play,
from the moment we decide upon what the play is to be.  This
sounds great, but it can be very dangerous, for you often think
you've told each other things when you actually haven't.  No,
that's unfair: I often think I've told her things when I
actually haven't!  Fortunately she knows me well enough now to
expect this kind of thing and her reaction is, "The silly
bugger's done it again!" and there's no animosity.  I do try,
though, if for no other reason than that I don't like being
reminded that I am a silly bugger!



Now the next stage is a reflection of the way I like to work as
a director.  Some people sit down with many sheets of paper and
work out and write down the moves; others do the same, but with
a model of the set and counters for the actors; I simply read
through the script and scribble down notes to myself as I do so.
 Often ideas occur to me when I'm doing something else and,
wherever possible, I'll jot them down, often on a cigarette
packet or one of the pages of my diary, or just a bit of paper I
happen to have with me.  Then when I get home I get out all
these pieces of paper and, after rejecting those ideas which on
reflection prove to be no good, I put them into a special Notes
file on the computer.  I'll print them out every now and then,
to remind me of what they are, and leave them lying around,
altering, adding to or scrubbing out.  Since normally I start
work on a show two to three months before rehearsals begin, I
manage to accumulate a lot of ideas.



Incidentally, I've recently modernised this approach and,
instead of using scraps of paper which I have - I confess it! -
been known to lose, I now carry around a mini cassette recorder
which fits into my pocket and I just speak the ideas into it.



With a straight play (or, for that matter, with most musicals) I
would have decided on casting at an early stage (and, of course,
told the kids), but with Godspell, which can be done with a cast
of eight or eighty, I merely cast the parts of Jesus and John
the Baptist (who, by tradition, also doubles Judas) and arrived
at the first rehearsal with very little idea of who was going to
do what.  I had, of course, talked to the MD and got a list from
her of who could sing so I wouldn't make any silly mistakes in
that area, and had promised that, wherever possible, I would
leave the choice of singers to her.



So, there I was at the first rehearsal, with Jesus and John the
Baptist/Judas cast and a list of possible singers in my pocket. 
What I did not have, however, were my, by now, three pages of
notes.  I'd forgotten them!  But, I reasoned, they were only
meant to guide, not to be definitive, and anyway, I could
remember most of them.  Any I couldn't remember, I further
reasoned, would be no good anyway, because if they hadn't made
sufficient impression for me to remember them, then they
wouldn't work.  It was only afterwards that I remembered that I
do this every time!



With a straight play the first rehearsal would have been a
read-through, interrupted by comments about how I saw various
characters, followed by a little chat about my interpretation of
the play, but with plays like Godspell I always think it's best
to start straight in with the process known as "blocking",
setting out the basic moves, which in this case would include
the allocation of lines.



By the way, don't fall into the trap that many amateur
(including school) directors do, of thinking of the moves set
during the blocking rehearsals as sacrosanct.  They're not: they
are the basis on which you build, nothing more.  When we move in
real life, whether in relation to other people or when we are
alone, we are prompted to do so for a reason, either because of
something external (the movement of other people, for instance)
or something internal (an emotion, perhaps).  Once the actors
begin to build their characters and relationships, it is
inevitable that moves will need to be changed.  I always find,
too, that, no matter how careful you are in trying to reproduce
what the stage will look like when you're working on a rehearsal
room floor, things won't look the same once you get on the
stage, so you'll almost certainly have to change quite a number
of moves.  One of the reasons for the stilted look of many
school or other amateur productions is a too-close adherence to
the preconceived notions of the director which fail to work when
the characters develop or the play transfers from the floor to
the stage.



So there I was, on the open floor area of my Drama room, a swing
and a climbing frame set up in position, the Assistant Director
sitting there with pencil poised over the as yet virgin prompt
copy, and a company of twenty waiting to begin.



And that sounds a pretty good place to finish this chapter!  In
the next we'll try to get down to the nitty-gritty of running
the rehearsals.CHAPTER 3



DIRECTING THE PLAY





At the end of the last chapter we left our hero confronting the
waiting masses, everyone ready to embark on the adventure called
Godspell.  What happened next?  Would our hero dazzle the
assembled company with his brilliance?  What crises would he
have to face?  Would the company hearken to his every word or
trample him underfoot?



Nail-biting stuff, eh?



What actually happened next was six weeks of hard slog, for a
tiny fraction of which time the company loved him, but for most
of which they wanted to kick his head in, which was only fair
because that's how he felt about them.



It is worth mentioning at this stage that, as in every aspect of
teaching, those who look for popularity will not find it, and
they'll make a mess of the production too.  Don't be afraid to
work your cast very hard.  Yes, they'll complain, but they'll do
so for form's sake: after all, you're a teacher and they're
pupils, so they've got to put up a fight.  It's the nature of
the beast!  It's a problem you'll only have the first time:
after that they'll be used to it, and when newcomers complain
they'll be put in their place by the old hands!



Interestingly we once worked with another group who were joining
our production, for its second outing, as chorus.  They were
used to working in a far less intensive manner than is normal
for us and they had real difficulty in handling it.  They
couldn't concentrate for the length of time we were used to and
began to get restless and even to misbehave.  At the end of the
first rehearsal, at least a dozen of my cast of twenty made it
their business to get me on my own to let me know how worried
they were that "they'll wreck our show, sir.  Can we not get rid
of them?"



It's easy to say what steps you take to get rehearsals started,
but to describe how you actually operate during rehearsals is
next to impossible.  A professional director may be able to use
the same approach in every production but you can't do that with
kids.  Of course every actor is different, and requires
different handling, but at least professional actors have, as a
general rule, the same background of technique and expectation:
the director may have to allow for this one's temperament or
that one's slowness at learning lines, for delicate egos or even
more delicate relationships, but everyone does have the same
basic grounding, the same professional underpinning as it were. 
With schoolkids, however, you start off with a much greater
mixture.  Some will have some experience, others none; some will
have a lot of talent, others very little, if any; some will be
totally dedicated, others just there because their friend is. 
There'll be those who will probably end up as PhDs, and those
who have difficulty writing their own name.  Some will have a
deep love of the theatre, and others wouldn't recognise one if
it stopped them in the street.  Most will be well-behaved, but
the occasional real villain does creep in.  There is only one
thing that you can be absolutely sure of, and that is that you
can take nothing for granted.



You can make some generalisations, however, so long as you do
realise that they are generalisations and will not apply in
every case.  One is that you will have to teach the majority to
act.  That's why I always think that you are more likely to be
successful in directing a school play if you have acted
yourself.  If the worst comes to the worst - and, believe me,
there are times when it does - you can always get one or more of
the kids to imitate your own performance.  It's far from
satisfactory, but it's a damned sight better than letting them
go on-stage in front of a whole load of their friends and
relatives and make fools of themselves.  They will never forgive
you for that, nor, if you are any sort of a teacher, will you!



Another generalisation: their egos are going to be much more
delicate than even the most precious of professionals.  That
doesn't mean that you should never hammer them hard: you should,
if they need it, but as a group, not picking on individuals.  I
remember in one production sinking theatrically to the floor and
whispering - yes, whispering - "Just go away.  Go away. 
Please." and remaining crumpled there until they had all left
the building.  It was one of the most ham performances I have
ever given - I wouldn't even have got away with it in a
melodrama! - but it worked: the next rehearsal was two hundred
percent better.  None of us ever mentioned the incident again. 
I suspect they recognised that I was being theatrical but had
enough respect for me not to want me to make such a fool of
myself again!  Whatever the reason, it worked, and that's all
that matters



 Moral: you may have to make a fool of yourself to get the best
out of your cast!



But don't ever pick on an individual in that way.  Be critical,
yes, but supportively so: "It's difficult, isn't it?  Let's see
if we can play around with it a bit....".



But even here there can be exceptions.  I always thought there
couldn't, but I did discover one: the kid who is really into
theatre, who is a member of lots of groups, and has begun to
think (s)he knows it all.  Then you can attack on an individual
basis.  However you don't knock the performance - that would be
counterproductive - but the attitude.  And once you've done that
and won the attitude battle, you backpedal a bit and meet
him/her halfway on the point of performance at issue.  You have
to tread a delicate balance between maintaining your r“le as the
director (in school plays you have to work on the "director as
god" principle) and bolstering the kids' self-esteem.  It
shouldn't be too difficult: after all, most teachers are doing
it every day!



For me, at any rate, there are three types of rehearsal:
blocking, talking and performance, each with its own aims and
methods of achieving those aims.  The blocking rehearsal is not,
I believe, always essential, although many amateur directors
seem to feel that it is.  What you are doing is moving the
actors around the stage with two aims: to create the requisite
picture and to stop them masking - or even bumping into - each
other.  These moves should not be carved in stone, but should
serve as the basis for the real moves which will emerge as
character, motivation and relationships become clearer.  There
probably won't be a great deal of change (well... possibly not
that much... oh, alright, it'll all change!) - after all, you
will have thought endlessly about these things in preparing the
production - but there will be some.



By the way, do make sure that every member of the cast has a
pencil and writes down the moves, otherwise they - and you! -
will forget them.  Your assistant should, of course, write them
down in The Book.  And insist on a pencil, not a pen, because as
sure as God made little green apples the moves will change.



This sort of rehearsal is vital when there are large numbers on
the stage but otherwise can vary from useful to useless. 
Personally I won't block a small cast play until after a few of
the next type of rehearsal, the talk.



The worst directors share one common fault - a contempt for
their actors.  They would never admit it, of course.  In fact,
they probably don't realise that they feel that way, but what
else can you call it when the director treats his actors as
pieces on a chessboard, telling them their characters, the tones
of voice to use, their moves - everything?  In my time as an
amateur actor I worked with one or two like this and hated it:
you were afraid even to mention that a move felt uncomfortable,
let alone ask to change it!  The best directors, however,
encourage their actors to bring their interpretation to the part
so that what finally emerges is a real fusion of everyone's
ideas, but a fusion which follows the director's guidelines. 
Watching Bill Alexander of the RSC working on Julius Caesar with
the Tyne-Wear Theatre Company was a real revelation for me: two
hours were spent whilst he and the cast tossed interpretations
of just one short scene back and forth until finally a consensus
emerged and when they ran through the scene, for the second time
that day, it came alive and had real significance, in sharp
contrast to the first, almost throw-away version.



I can already hear voices raised in protest, suggesting that you
can't possibly do that with kids.  To an extent that's true -
they don't have the experience or the knowledge to be able to
explore a text as throroughly as professional actors - but if
you guide the discussion, ideas will emerge and the scene will
be much more natural because it will be theirs, not something
imposed from without.



I mentioned previously the piece from Richard III which I
included in a compilation show.  I said then that, for many
adults in the audience, this scene was the highlight of the
show, and it wasn't just the quality of the acting which
pleased, but the interpretation, which was very mature.  We had
three two hour rehearsals on this scene alone, two of which were
talk rehearsals in which we explored the feelings of the
characters.  It was only in the third rehearsal that we actually
got down to moves and most of them (apart from a kind of tableau
towards which I was aiming at the end) came from the girls and
arose from our discussion of the characters and their motivation.



(Perhaps I can mention here something I will talk about in
greater depth later - the importance of the text.  I firmly
believe that we must make the text the centre of our work on any
play.  It's far more important than setting, movement, costume,
or any other aspect of the show.)



They were, clearly, intelligent kids, and I made sure the
discussion followed profitable lines by asking leading
questions, but, by the time we got down to taking the text from
the page and putting it on the stage, they had a clear idea of
who they were and what they were doing, so the moves came
naturally.  What was also obvious was that, between rehearsals,
they had thought about the scene and discussed it.  Working like
this is time-consuming, of course, and to the uninitiated it
looks more like an English Literature lesson than a play
rehearsal, but it works.  And then again, what is putting on a
play but a practical lesson in Literature?



Incidentally, the more experienced your actors, the easier this
kind of rehearsal becomes.  The show just mentioned was only the
second I had done in that school; when I came to do another
compilation show some three years later and was working with
year ten and eleven pupils who had been in shows and had
attended the Drama Club since they were in year seven, there was
a tremendous difference.  Included in this show was the balcony
scene from Romeo and Juliet, and I confess that I expected some
problems in the first rehearsal.  There weren't any!  I'd given
them their scripts beforehand and it became very clear from the
outset that they had read and thought about the lines.  I had to
explain a couple of words - gyves wasn't in the dictionaries
they were used to using! - but apart from that they clearly knew
what the words meant and had the basic structure of the scene
sussed out.



These rehearsals are not always talk: sometimes we use
improvisation, setting, for example, an historical scene in a
modern context, or changing the mood of a character to see the
naturalness or otherwise of a move or a tone of voice.  There
are plenty of tricks that can be used to illuminate the text. 
It is sometimes useful to play the scene out getting the actors
to say, not the words of the text, but the thoughts going
through the characters' minds (thought-tracking, one of those
theatrical means of exploring a text which "progressive" Drama
teachers have elevated to something of value in its own right),
or perhaps to imagine it all happened some time ago and that the
character is justifying himself to someone else.  I also make
use of what I call the "Why?" game: I interrupt to ask a
character "Why did you say/do that?", then follow up their
answer with another "Why?", and so on, peeling away layers of
motivation or justification.



This kind of rehearsal is also useful for breaking down
inhibitions.  In Godspell we had a real problem with the Wailing
Wall scene where the cast are supposed to wail in accompaniment
to the words of Jesus.  It is difficult: I know of at least one
amateur company which simply left out the wailing.  The problem
in our case was twofold: the cast were embarrassed at making
what was, for them, a silly noise (after all, wailing of this
nature is not part of our culture: it would have been easier to
do in some countries), and everyone waited for everyone else to
start.  As a result a long embarrassed silence was followed by
some hestitant moans that tailed off into silence.  In order to
break down these inhibitions I sat the cast on the floor and
asked them to close their eyes.  I then told them to breath
deeply in time to my instructions and gradually I lengthened the
time for breathing out.  After some three or four minutes (yes!
as long as that!), I asked them to make an "Ah" sound as they
breathed out.  We did this for a further five minutes, gradually
increasing the volume.  When I was satisfied with the way it was
going I tapped the actor playing Jesus on the shoulder and
signalled the start of the Oh Jerusalem speech.  We had no
problems after that!



One word of warning, though.  It is easy to get carried away
with talk rehearsals and spend most of your time on them.  That
may work with professionals (although I doubt it!) but kids will
find it frightening if they don't get sufficient time in the
normal performance rehearsals.  They need that time, if only to
build up their confidence.  I have come across one director who
worked that way and his cast, even though they were experienced
and loved the theatre, hated not only the rehearsals but the
play too - because they were scared stiff.



Performance rehearsals are what most people think rehearsals
are: going over and over the play.  There are two ways of doing
this: you can either start at the beginning of a scene, go
through it to the end, then talk about it and begin again; or
you can interrupt whenever anything is not going exactly as you
want it and go over and over until you're satisfied.  As in
everything else, I am rather eclectic.  In other words, I do
both!  When we first start rehearsing I'll keep going back and
back until I'm reasonably happy  - I've been known to spend
thirty minutes on a couple of lines! - but when the rehearsal
period is well on (in other words, when the play is little more
than a week away!) I'll move on to scene by scene rehearsal
because by that stage the flow of the whole thing becomes
important.



This leads to a very vexed question: how long should the
rehearsal period last?  I am very aware that I frighten my
Assistant Directors somewhat (I used to worry the M.D. but she's
got used to me now!) because they think that the play will never
be ready on time.  They always think I am leaving things far too
late.  The thing is, I am firmly of the belief that you can
over-rehearse kids.  They produce their best peformances under a
certain amount of stress, when the adrenalin really flows, and
if you rehearse for too long they become over-confident.  I try
to judge it so that they feel not quite ready and that little
bit of fear gives them the boost they need on the first night.



I can't really give any actual timings because there are far too
many variables: the talent and experience of the company, the
number in the cast, the play itself, the possible number and
frequency of rehearsals in a given period - these are just the
most important.  I have been fortunate in every school in which
I've worked in that the Head has given me the full week before
the show to rehearse throughout the day.



There are always restrictions, of course: with examination
classes the members of staff concerned have to agree (fair
enough, and I have been known to sit with kids during lunchtimes
so that they can do supervised assignments and still attend
rehearsals) and I can expect no cover for my lessons - my
classes must come into the theatre with me (something which I
don't mind at all: after all, I am a Drama teacher and this is
an aspect of Drama which they ought to see.  And anyway it helps
sell tickets!).  I have always fought for this concession
because I believe that as the kids give up so much of their own
time they are entitled to some school time; and so am I, given
the amount of unpaid overtime I put in!  The same applies to the
MD when we do musical shows.



Perhaps an example would help.  With Godspell we rehearsed for
six weeks: for the first three we did two hours one night a week
and then did two nights in the fourth week.  For the last two
weeks we did three nights but came in to do four hours one
Sunday afternoon.  Thus, prior to the actual rehearsal week, we
did 22 hours.



For Godspell every company member was called for every
rehearsal, but this was an ensemble production.  For most shows
I call specific people for specific rehearsals, so, although I
may work three or even four  nights, the average member of the
cast will only be called for one or, at most, two.  Music
rehearsals are usually done on a lunchtime or at times when a
particular kid is not needed for the main rehearsal.



The rehearsal week consisted of five hours a day (or thirty
hours altogether), making a total, including the Sunday
rehearsal, of 56 hours.  Compare this to the average amateur
company: the one I know most about, where I was a member for
many years, used to rehearse three nights a week for 2« hours
per night for six weeks, a total of 45 hours, plus a dress
rehearsal on the Sunday afternoon lasting about three hours,
making 48 in all.  Leaving aside music rehearsals, which would
have been extra for the amateur company too, we only did eight
hours more, in spite of having a company which, in general, was
less experienced.  I must say that had I had more time I would
merely have lengthened the period by keeping the number of
nights per week to one or two, not pushed in more rehearsals. 
As I said earlier, you can rehearse too long with kids so that
they become over-confident or, even worse, stale.



I must confess that I rely on that rehearsal week.  This is when
we do all of the whole act performance rehearsals.  Because we
have more time we are able to have a long run at the play and
the kids' attention is wonderfully concentrated by the proximity
of the performance.



And that week (or whatever) of performance goes by all too
quickly leaving behind it a wonderful feeling of euphoria, the
like of which you can get from no other aspect of teaching.  It
almost makes the day-to-day grind worthwhile.....almost!



I do call other types of rehearsal too.  When lines are proving
to be a problem I find "babble" rehearsals very useful.  These
are rehearsals in which the cast run through their lines as fast
as they can, quite literally babbling the words.  It is amazing
how this concentrates the mind!  If only one or two are having
lines problems I will combine the babble with an individual
rehearsal.  Here I will read in the other characters' lines
whilst the individual babbles through his/her part.  To
concentrate the actor's mind more fully I will only read the cue
sentence: everything else becomes "Di-dah di-dah di-dah"!



In fact individual rehearsals are very useful.  I usually have
at least one individual rehearsal with every member of the cast
who has a speech of any length.  The ostensible aim of these
rehearsals is to work on any problems of interpretation or
performance the kid might have - and they are useful in that way
- but I will also have them with those who are not experiencing
any difficulties, because the hidden agenda for these individual
rehearsals is building confidence.  Kids' egos need massaging as
much as any professional actor's and the thought that the
director is devoting time (even if it's just fifteen minutes) to
you helps enormously.  I use lunchtimes for these rehearsals,
even taking kids out of music rehearsals for quarter of an hour
or so.  But I always clear it with the MD first - not to do so
would be a hanging offence!  Quite rightly, too: directors
sometimes come really to believe that they are God  (mea culpa!
mea maxima culpa!) and need to remind themselves (or be
reminded) that they too are mortal.  And music or dance
rehearsals, costume fittings and so on are an integral part of a
play.



And then we come to the dress rehearsal!  There's an old
superstition that a bad dress rehearsal means a good first
night.  It's not true, but it does help.  If the cast goes away
feeling that the dress was pretty awful, then they are more
likely to psych themselves up effectively than if everything
went well, for then over-confidence can set in.  Actually first
dress reheasals usually are pretty bad, for it is then that
everything comes together for the first time: lights, costumes,
props, make-up, sound, even the set.



I do try to lessen the strain somewhat by having a technical
rehearsal before the dress.  Here I will go through the lighting
and sound cues with the technical staff only.  I don't call the
actors but most of them are usually so strung up that they want
to be there, so I can put them on the stage just to make certain
that the light is falling where it should.  Major errors in the
lighting plan tend to show up at the Tech. so that only minor
"tweaking" is required after the actual dress.  No professional
production would go on without a Tech. and who am I to argue
with the professionals?  They have the experience, after all.



Having said that, I didn't have a Tech. for Godspell, simply
because there were only three lighting states: a full-up state
which we used for most of the play, a state in which we had the
centre front at half and the rest at about point three, and a
red state.  To call a special Tech. would have been a waste of
time: instead we simply ran through the cues about fifteen
minutes before the first dress.



I do prefer to have two dress rehearsals.  You may have gathered
that I believe in putting my casts under pressure so I try to
make sure they have an audience for the first one.  When the
play is suitable (and it isn't always) I invite our feeder
junior schools to send their Year 6 pupils to come and see the
dress.  It puts the cast on the qui vive and has the additional
benefit of making the juniors tell their mothers and fathers
that they want to come to our school so they too can be in a
show like the one they saw this afternoon!



Actually it's amazing how many turn up on the first night with
parents and friends, so it sells tickets as well!  The audience
is warned that what they are seeing is a dress and that I might
have to stop and restart the show if things aren't going as they
should.  This makes the cast determined they are not going to be
shown up in front of the little 'uns and they work even harder
than they would ordinarily.



This first dress is usually on an afternoon and the second
starts the same evening at about 7.00.  It begins with the
dreaded notes: what was right or wrong during the afternoon. 
Giving notes is an important part of any rehearsal but is
particularly vital at the dress.  Don't be afraid to tell them
how bad they were, just so long as you find something good to
say, even if it's just "I know you can do it.  Why didn't you?".
 You probably will need to stop and start the second dress.  The
kids will be tired but you do need to sort out any problems -
and, believe me, there will be some!



One final point: you can't just wash your hands of the show the
minute you've given your last note at the final dress, which is
what happens in the professional theatre: then the stage manager
takes over full control, including any rehearsals that may prove
to be necessary.  Kids need encouragement: I always speak to
them five minutes before the show goes up.  On the first night
it's words of encouragement (and, of course, Don't forget....)
but on subsequent nights you must push them to guard against
complacency and over-confidence.  To be honest, the only time my
pre-show words are unalloyedly positive is on the last night:
"This is it! the last night.  Be brilliant!  Go out them and
sock it to them!  Enjoy yourselves!"



And be sure that you are there every night as they come
off-stage and that you speak to, shake hands with, hug or
whatever, every member of the cast.  All you're doing is saying
"Thank you" and showing your appreciation of their hard work,
even if all hasn't gone as well as it should.  If you've
rehearsed the show properly they'll know if they weren't as good
as they should have been; they won't need you to tell them.  But
they will need some reassurance that you're still on their side!



And it's also a good idea to have a party a week or so later
when all the photos have been developed.  We spend some of the
profits of the show on pop and food, and a tradition has grown
of both staff and kids sending each other up in specially
written songs or scenes, all, of course, based on the show. 
Again, it shows your appreciation of their work and it help weld
them into a real company which will have real benefits in future
productions.

CHAPTER 4



ACTING





It occurs to me that we've got this far and we've not really
made much mention of acting.  Most peculiar!  We've discussed
choosing the play, even writing it; we've talked about how to
direct it, how to interpret it and how to rehearse it, but we
haven't mentioned the one thing that makes a production stand or
fall, the way the actors perform it!



In a way that isn't surprising, because when I am asked about
plays I have directed the questions are always about these other
subjects, never about the acting.  It is somehow assumed that
the performers know how to act.



What prompts this is an incident which happened just a day or
two ago.  Having not - mirabile dictu! - lost a couple of free
periods to sit for an absent member of staff, I was working at
my desk in the drama room when one of the house staff walked in
with a complete first year class.  Would I mind, she asked, if
she brought them in to rehearse for an assembly?  I should point
out that the drama room, being large, is used for house
assemblies, and she wanted them to rehearse in the area they
would be using.  What could I say but to carry on?  I considered
uprooting myself and going off to the staff room but I knew that
if I did I would waste precious time by collecting everything
together, and anyway if I went to the staff room I'd just get
involved in conversation and wouldn't get anything done, so I
decided to stay put.  I've learned to filter noise out and get
on with my work because the Dance Club meets in the room under
my supervision: it's run by the kids themselves and I am just
the token teacher - there for insurance purposes only! - so I
leave them to get on with it and do some work.



So I sat and tried to do just that.  I couldn't, however.  Not
because of noise (there wasn't any) but because they were, to
say the least, under-achieving!  I have the class for Drama and
I knew they could do much, much better, and I can't tell you how
frustrating I found it to sit there, watching them work well
below their best.  As I've said before, kids will always try to
live up to the teacher's expectations of them, so if you set
them a low standard, then that's what they'll reach.  My
colleague's sole concerns seemed to be whether or not they could
be heard at the back of the room and that they pronounced words
correctly.  When they achieved that, she was satisfied - amd so
were they.  Had I been taking them, however, they wouldn't have
been.



I'm not suggesting - far from it! - that I am a better teacher
than she is.  It's just that in this area she has dual
standards: she knows what good acting is but she does not apply
that knowledge when the actors are kids.  Her attitude seems to
be that it is a matter for congratulation, not that they act
well, but that they do it at all!  Unfortunately this seems to
be the attitude of many teachers, even those who produce school
plays, which is why, even on nights when both I and the kids are
aware that the performance is well below par, many teachers will
heap uncritical praise upon them.  



Now, don't get me wrong: I wouldn't want any member of staff to
damn kids' performances in a school show - that's my job as
director! - but it does worry me when they put their critical
faculties into abeyance just because it is a school show.  The
same thing happens when we see kids in TV plays: so often a
merely competent performance is hailed as a masterpiece by the
uncritical viewer.  By treating them in this way we do our kids
a disservice: we are undervaluing them; we are being patronising.



Obviously kids lack the experience of life that adult actors
have, and that limits their performances to an extent, but if
they are playing parts which are within their experience there
is no reason why they should not turn in first class
performances.  At the age of eighteen I played Mark Antony in a
school production of Julius Caesar.  It was just within my
range: I could follow his motivation and understand his
feelings.  Looking back - and making allowances for rose-tinted
spectacles! - I think I produced a workmanlike performance. 
There was, of course, nothing startling - no new insights, no
great depth - but I don't think I failed Shakespeare.  Had I
been asked to play Lear, however, I would have produced a
caricature, because the part would have been far beyond my
understanding.  A good girl of sixteen can produce an excellent
performance as Antigone (the Anouilh version; I'm not so sure
about the Sophocles) but ask her to play Cordelia and she'll be
lost; she'll make a good Viola but produce a cartoon version of
Olivia.  In the right part kids with acting talent and
intelligence will put in performances which will rival anything
that a competent adult can produce.



We should, however, add a rider to that last sentence: always
providing that the direction is right.  And by that I mean that
the expectation of the director should be high: (s)he should
expect the highest possible standard.



Occasionally I have heard a teacher (even a director) telling a
kid to "put some expression into it".  What a singularly
unhelpful instruction!  It's the surest way to get a performance
which screams aloud "I am reading this with expression in my
voice"!  Unfortunately this "expression" usually has nothing to
do with the meaning of what is being read: it's just a variation
in tone for the sake of variation.



Always start with the meaning.



That's the best advice I can offer to would-be directors of
school plays.  And by "meaning" I'm not just referring to the
lexical meaning.  Everything that is spoken, or is written to be
spoken, has a sub-text of emotion.  We almost never speak
unemotionally, unless we do so deliberately, which is itself a
clue to what we are feeling.  Even the most vacuous gossip has
this emotional sub-text.  Gossip is a prop to the self-esteem, a
way of convincing ourselves that we know something important,
that we are privy to the secrets of people's lives.  It can be,
for some, a way of making human contact, perhaps their only way.
 It makes us feel important, or more secure, or even that we
have power over another.



So start with that word which is central to the actor's skill:
why?  Why does the character say this?  It's just as important
for the actor to know why, if he's playing, for instance, Simon
Gayforth in Shadow Play (Tonight at 8.30), he says "Lotuses
smell of pineapple", as it is for Hamlet to know why he says "To
be or not to be".  If the sub-text is wrong, then no matter how
well-delivered the lines, they will not make proper sense.  A
good actor, of course, will understand instinctively what we
might call the ordinary common-or-garden sub-text, but for the
average kid - and let's face it, for most of the time we are
working with the average kid - words on a page do not translate
easily into words in the mouth.  They can decode them, of
course, but they have difficulty seeing past that decoding.  For
many simple decoding is sufficient.  



Let me take a fragment of dialogue (imperfectly remembered, I
must confess) from that assembly piece I referred to a few
moments ago.  One line, spoken by a slave of the man who was
later to become St. Alban, to the Christian priest whom Alban
was sheltering, ran something like this: "How can you bring my
master into such danger when he has been so kind to you?"



Now my colleague said not a word to the child who spoke this
line.  He could be heard and the line made sense, so she was
satisfied.  Had I been directing, the conversation would have
gone something like this:



	"Stop a monent.  Why do you think he said that?"



	"Well, because he was angry."



	"Why was he angry?"

	

	"Because the priest had put his master in danger."



	"Why should he be so angry about that?"



	"Because he was frightened."



	"For himself?"



	"For his master."



	"So he was angry and frightened?"



	"Yes."



	"Do you think you sounded angry and frightened?"



	"No."



	"Would you like to have another go at it?"



	"How can you bring my master into such danger when he has been
so kind to you?"



	"Was that better?"



	"A bit."



"Shall we try to make it even better?  I'm Mrs (the Head of
House) and I've accused you of pinching something.  You haven't
but I won't listen to you.  I'm going to take you to the Head
and get you suspended.  Right?"



	"Yes."



"Right.  You've got really mad about this because I'm just not
listening to you.  So you shout at me that it's not fair.  OK?"



	"Yes."



"Come on then.  Have a real go at me.  Right Fred, I don't
believe you.  We're going to see the Head, and you'd better tell
him the truth or you're in real trouble.  If I have my way,
you'll be out of this school so fast your feet won't touch the
ground!"



	"Sir!  It's not fair!"



	"Why are you shouting at me like that?"



	"'Cos I'm mad at you."



	"Why are you mad?"



	"Because you're going to get me thrown out of school."



	"Why are you mad about that?"



	"'Cos it's not fair."



	"Is that all?"



	"No.  I'll get into trouble at home."



	"So you're not just mad at me? you're frightened as well?"



	"Yes."



	"Isn't that how the slave feels?"



	"Yes."



	"Then shouldn't he sound like you just did?"



	And so on.



It takes time, and it's quite possible that the kid will never
get it exactly right, but that line will sound five hundred
percent more convincing when you've finished.  And the strange
thing is, you'll probably not have to mention volume at all,
because once he really feels the line the right volume will come
of its own accord.  And you won't have to do it for every line:
once the kids get into the way of thinking like this they'll
start doing it for themselves, and that's the point when they
start acting rather than just "reading with expression"!



It's the same with moves.  They too have to arise from the
emotion.  Unfortunately it's a rare kid who will realise that. 
If we are not careful, what will happen is that that kid will
say the line with conviction and feeling, but his stance and
movement - his body language - will belie what he says.  You'll
need to do something similar to get him to make the movement
natural.  Back to the dialogue!



"You know why I thought you'd pinched that money?  Because Joe
Bloggs over there told me you had.  He said he'd seen you do it.
 Don't you think you ought to go over there and tell him off
about that?"



And with luck you'll get exactly the right movement.  It merely
remains to translate that into the movement on the stage, and
you've got a natural and believable scene rather than something
artificial and wooden.



It is, of course, best if the ideas about the sub-text come from
the kid rather than you, so you'll have to use leading
questions, forcing him to think along the lines you want.  But
you're a teacher, and so you're doing that every day!  Once the
kid gets into the way of thinking like this, then you can leave
your questions much more open-ended, offering him the chance to
come up with alternatives.  We may work on the "director-as-God"
principle but that doesn't mean we're omniscient!  And once
you've got your actors thinking, you've got to respect their
thoughts and ideas, and sometimes they can have a deeper or
better insight than you.



That's very easy to forget.  As teachers we are used to being
the expert, the one that knows it all, imparting knowledge to
the ignorant.  In fact, our popular image is just that, which is
why we often seen as bossy and overbearing!  And it's very
difficult for most teachers to admit either to ignorance or to
being wrong: it requires more self-confidence than most of us
have.  



(Isn't that interesting? - our reputation for arrogance comes
from our basic insecurity.  But then, no one who knows teachers
and teaching should be surprised at that!)  



But in this case we are not dealing with knowledge, but with
something in which we don't have a built-in advantage:
experience of life, or emotional states, even of suffering. It
is my experience that there are kids who have experienced far
more of these than so many of us who, from a more or less caring
middle-class background, have gone from school to college to
school.  It has to be said that many kids have far more
meaningful insights in this area than most of us.



If motivation is so important, if it is so vital to get the kids
thinking why all the time, is there any place for specifically
technical acting training?  The answer, I believe, is a
resounding "yes".



Confidence on the part of your actors is the key to a successful
production.  Anything which boosts that confidence is therefore
of great value, and there is no doubt that some training in
basic stagecraft and acting technique makes them feel much more
at home and at ease on the stage.  But you've got to time it
right.  I think it's a mistake (made all too commonly, I'm
afraid) to begin with this kind of training.  For it to be
effective the kids have to see the relevance of technical
training.  Expose them to it before they experience actual
performance and it will have no meaning for them: it's only when
they have been on-stage and faced the problems that they realise
its value.  



Of course, once you have a tradition of school plays up and
running, kids who are new to you will accept this training
because they will have seen its results in terms of the
performances which they have watched; they will see the "stars"
giving their time and attention to it and will therefore
recognise that it must have relevance and value.  As every
teacher knows, they're much more likely to take the word (or the
example) of another kid than of a teacher.



So, what should this technical training consist of?  



There are, I think, four areas of prime importance in school
theatre: breaking down inhibitions, establishing mutual trust,
building concentration, and actual acting technique, especially
voice.  I think also that they should be tackled in that order,
although I would suggest that the first two are interdependent.



The next question, of course, is "what exactly do we do?"  



For the first three we rely on games of various kinds.  I don't
propose to embark upon a coverage of even a proportion of the
drama games you can call on - there are many books available
which will give you far more than you could ever use - but I
will give a few examples which I find work well.



My prime aim is always to mould the diverse collection of kids
who will turn up for a Drama Club into a company, a group who
feel comfortable with each other.  To feel that way, they have
to trust each other - and you! - and be uninhibited with each
other.  The two go together: you can let yourself go and take
the most incredible risks in terms of revealing yourself or
doing things that might seem silly or even stupid, if you trust
those you are with.  My first aim at the beginning of every year
is to attempt to achieve this comfortable feeling with all the
kids who join.



A word of warning here: there are some kids who won't be able to
handle this and they'll drop out.  Don't pursue them and try to
dragoon them into staying!  We have to recognise that performing
in public is not everyone's cup of tea and some kids cannot
achieve that strange mixture of mutual dependence and
self-confidence which playing in a show requires.  Let them go! 
No matter how let down you may feel, or how much you may imagine
you have in some way failed these kids, let them go.  Your
function as a play director is not the same as your function as
a classroom teacher, nor is the function of the play that of a
lesson.  If you try to combine the two you will fall between two
stools: you will not succeed with kids who are temperamentally
unsuited to performance and you will do serious damage to the
quality of the finished product: thus you will let both sets of
kids, the suited and the unsuited, down.



Try to establish a sense of working together from the word go. 
The first thing I do at the beginning of a new year, at the
first meeting, is to get the kids to "find a space" and then
say, "On the word 'go', shake hands with everybody in the room,
then return to your place.  Go."  The chances are that the first
time you do this it will become obvious that they don't count
you as a person!  Don't let them get away with it: tell them
they haven't done it, but leave them to work out why.  Sooner or
later the penny will drop and they'll come and shake hands with
you.  By this little piece of symbolism you establish that you
are part of the group, as is any other member of staff who may
be present.



And whilst we are on the subject of other members of staff, I am
firmly of the opinion that there must be a distance between
staff and kids, so I would never, for instance, allow any child
to call me by my first name in school (what happens out of
school, of course, depends upon the relationship with individual
kids: if we were both members of the same non-school Drama Club
and appearing on-stage together, then the situation would be
totally different).  On the other hand the formality of the
classroom needs to be relaxed and one way you can signal some
relaxation without inviting undue familiarity (there is nothing
wrong with a degree of familiarity providing the teacher/pupil
distinction is not breached) is by members of staff addressing
each other by their first names rather than Mr. X or Miss Y,
which is what most teachers would do in the classroom situation.
 My experience is that the kids pick up the signals quite
correctly and if anyone tries to take advantage, the others will
pull them up.



Another useful exercise (which is also a bit silly and usually
reduces everyone to fits of laughter) is to get them all to walk
around the room with their eyes closed and, when they bump into
anyone else, they are stuck to the person and must walk around
together.  This goes on until everyone is stuck together (and
they probably all fall down!).  Now this is a game in which
staff must remain outsiders: not only must they keep a close eye
on the safety aspect (you'll be running around like a mad thing
making sure that they don't walk into walls or furniture), but
you also have to be careful that you don't put yourself in a
compromising position ("Mr. X put his hand on my bum"!).



As far as trust exercises are concerned, these "blind" games are
very effective.  Start off by dividing the kids into pairs: one
is blind and keeps his eyes shut all the time, and the other is
the guide and must lead his partner round the room in complete
safety by guiding with hand on elbow.  Swap over and do it a
second time.  Then have them guide by voice alone.  Taken
seriously - and anyone who doesn't take it seriously must be
given the push! - this game engenders both trust in, and a sense
of responsibility to, others, two qualities which actors must
have.



Another good way of establishing mutual dependance is the
"shrinking island" game.  All gather in a tight group in the
middle of the room and a rope or something similar (I use
lighting cable, because it's there in the room) is loosely laid
on the floor around them.  Then they are told that, when they
step off the "island", it will shrink.  When they are given the
command to get back on, they must make sure as many people as
possible are "saved" and if anyone drowns it will be accounted a
failure on the part of the others: it is the duty of everyone to
make sure everyone else is safe.  You simply keep reducing the
size of the "island" and the game stops whenever there are more
"drowned" than "saved".



Games of this nature really do work well: they are also great
fun to do and there will be many shrieks of laughter and
dissolvings into giggles, but they will learn to depend upon
each other and inhibitions will go.



My favourite concentration exercise is one in which everyone has
to sing!  They sit in a circle (it's best on the floor - more
relaxed and informal) in groups of about half a dozen, and
everyone sings Baa Baa Black Sheep.  This in itself is often the
cause of great hilarity (especially since I usually sing it
first, just to get them going!), but that's only the beginning. 
The second time around each group has to sing it individually,
each person singing only one syllable: any mistake (one person
singing "master", for instance) and they start again from the
beginning.  Once they've mastered that (and keep them at it
until they do), try them on Humpty Dumpty - that's a killer!



These games are useful, important and fun, but they must not
take up all your time.  You must spend some time on acting
technique: the kids will expect, and want, it.  Concentrate
first on voice, and then on movement.  It's better this way
round, for voice flexibility and volume are generally the
weakest aspects of most kids' technique.  There are, again, many
exercises which can be used here, but remember that everything
to do with the voice begins with breathing, and if the kids
aren't breathing properly - and the vast majority don't - they
will never achieve the flexibility and projection which they
need.  So exercises and games to get them breathing with the
diaphragm are the first priority, closely followed by control of
the breath.  As all these exercises can involve the production
of a lot of silly noises, most kids will enjoy doing them. 
They'll need to, because it's no good doing them once and then
forgetting them: you have to keep coming back to these basic
exercises time after time after time.  My policy, once I have
started my Drama Club on this kind of r‚gime, is to devote
fifteen minutes of each meeting to voice exercises.



Again there is not the time to go into detail about the various
exercises you can use; in any case you can get a great deal of
enjoyment out of devising your own.  One or two suggestions will
not, however, come amiss.



Practising correct breathing is just that: practising.  Make
them do it time after time: by asking them to keep one hand on
their stomachs when they breath you can detect that they are
doing it properly - if there's no back and forth movement, they
aren't.  And as for breath control, try getting them to expel
all the air in their lungs in one burst, then in two equal
bursts, then in three, and so on.  Or ask them to expel the air
gradually - as slowly as they can - and count at a predetermined
rate.  The idea is to see how far they can count without having
to take another breath.  Make it into a competition, not only
between them but against themselves.  Each week tell them that
you expect them to be able to count at least an additional ten.



Some understanding of the mechanics of voice production is
helpful.  I find that taking a break in the middle of a set of
exercises and having them sit down where they are for a brief
(and I mean very brief) talk on one aspect of the subject is the
best way of getting this across.  Make particular play of the
wrongness of using constriction of the throat to increase
volume: get them to compare the strangulated shouts which
constricting the throat brings about with the much fuller and
rounder tone obtained by using the diaphragm.  Working with a
Music teacher who has some knowledge of singing training can be
very helpful.



The next aspect of voice to work on is diction, and for this
there's nothing better than the good old tongue-twisters,
especially I'm not the pheasant plucker...!  A real beaut,
however, is Sister Suzie:



		Sister Suzie's sewing shirts for soldiers

		Such skill at sewing shirts my shy young sister Suzie shows

		Some soldiers send epistles

		Saying they'd sooner sleep on thistles

		Than the short serge shirts for soldiers shy young sister
Suzie sews.



A good exercise, which only really works if you have in excess
of twenty kids, is to ask them to divide into pairs and stand
them at opposite ends of a room.  Those at one end have to pass
on some information to those at the other end - all at once! -
but without shouting.  The noise can be horrendous, but you'll
find they will automatically start forming their words properly
to aid communication.  If this proves to be too easy (and after
the first time it will be) exacerbate the problem by lining them
up alternately as listener/speaker/listener/speaker and so on. 
There are plenty of possibilities for making the exercise as
difficult as you like!  In fact the real test is not when they
shout to each other, but when they have to whisper!



Encouraging flexibility of tone can be done by getting them to
hold intelligible conversations with each other using only one
word.  There is usually some "buzz" word which you can utilise,
but if there are none around at the time use the name of a
pop-singer or something else which has meaning for them - "spot"
is one of my favourites.  Many years ago I used to use "spam"
but nowadays many kids don't even know what it is - gone are the
days of those awful spam fritters for school dinner, and I doubt
whether anyone (except the manufacturers) mourn their passing!



(But now it's back! being promoted as something exciting for
kids!  The days of pink lint are returning!!!)  



(This is probably only intelligible to UK readers.  Others must
forgive us for this foray into our past!)



Then there are movement exercises.  The aim of these is to help
the kids control their movement: we all know how many are
awkward and gangling.  The majority of these exercises consists
of slowing down normal movements to a ridiculous extent.  The
one I use most of all is picking up a coin lying on the floor in
front of you.  Ask them to do it a few times normally, and then
they should take a full minute.  Emphasise that they should be
moving all the time - no jerkiness or stopping-starting but
smooth, continuous movement.  Keep extending the time: one
minute, then two, then two and a half, then three, and so on, as
long as you feel that you can get away with it!  When I was
(very) much younger, I once managed fifteen minutes, and
afterwards I felt as though I'd run a marathon.



Training in one of the martial arts can be very useful,
particularly Tai Chi Chuan, but make the movements a slow as
possible.  Remember, you are not teaching self-defence but
bodily control.  Also useful are ballet barre exercises - and
they'll probably find them the most demanding of all.  Doing
this has the additional benefit of instilling in them some
respect for dancers' strength and endurance!  - Have you tried
doing a full pli‚ in first position?



For movement exercises proper clothing is essential.  Working in
their normal school clothes is to be avoided, especially by
girls who wear tight skirts!  Track or shell suits, jogging
bottoms, tee-shirts, all are suitable, and I find that the best
footwear for movement exercises is bare feet.  Those who suffer
from athletes foot, verukas or any infectious foot condition
should wear the lightest footwear they can find - it often seems
to me that many "fashion" trainers, as distinct from those
intended for sports, are as heavy as climbing boots!  Girls will
find slipperettes or jazz shoes very useful.



One last thing: make these sessions fun.  The exercises
themselves may not be, but keep it light, joke about what you're
doing, or they'll get fed up and that's no good to either of you.



But there's no getting away from the fact that acting starts
with the text, and it is on the text (and its associated
sub-text) that the bulk of your attention must be focused. 
Perhaps we should look at a few text-based exercises.



Incidentally, there is no better source of text-understanding
exercises than the work of Cicely Berry, Voice Director of the
RSC: her books Voice and the Actor and, in particular, The Actor
and the Text are, I think, essential reading for any would-be
actor or director.  The following exercises come from Miss
Berry's books (or, at least, are based on her ideas). 
Incidentally, the book by Patsy Rodenburg, who is the National
Theatre's voice coach, The Need for Words, is also a good source
of ideas, as well as being a good read in itself.



Like Cicely Berry and Patsy Rodenburg, I use Shakespearean texts
for many of these exercises - just to show the kids that he is
actually quite easy to understand - and I normally like to start
off with one of Helena's speeches from A Midsummer Night's
Dream, the one which begins



		O spite! O hell! I see you all are bent

		To set against me for your merriment.



I simply give each person a copy of these two lines, written as
normal speech, not verse, and ask them to read it aloud.  We try
to say them in all sorts of different ways: laughing, weeping,
howling in anguish, whispering, and - to finish with a flourish!
- we go outside and I tell them to run up and down shrieking the
lines as loudly and as angrily as they can.  



I once did this when, unknown to me, a governors' meeting was
going on in one of the rooms adjacent to the yard.  It appears
there was consternation with everyone thinking that the school
was about to be wrecked by a bunch of vandals when one of the
teacher-governors looked out of the window and said, "Oh, it's
just the Performing Arts Department".  Heads were nodded in
sympathetic understanding (not of what we were doing but of what
the Head had to put up with!) and the meeting continued when the
other teacher-governor volunteered to ask me to stop.  The kids
thought it was hilarious - and so did I!



Actually one nice exercise that I like to do here - it arose
from a rather drunken evening after a performance of Dream at
the St David's Arts Festival - is to get the cast to sing the
lines in a style of their own choosing (shades of Whose Line Is
It Anyway?).  I normally demonstrate by singing it like an aria
from grand opera (which is what I and the actress who played
Helena did at the Festival - for half an hour or until we were
chucked out of the room by the rest, whichever was the sooner!).
 



It sounds silly on the surface, but there is reason behind it:
it simply won't work if the style does not suit the words! 
They'll realise that soon enough and will have to hunt around
for an appropriate style.  Rap sounds pretty damned good!



The next stage is to look at the whole speech:



		O spite! O hell!  I see you all are bent

		To set against me for your merriment:

		If you were civil and knew courtesy,

		You would not do me thus much injury.

		Can you not hate me, as I know you do,

		But you must join in souls to mock me too?

		If you were men, as men you are in show,

		You would not use a gentle lady so;

		To vow, and swear, and superpraise my parts,

		When I am sure you hate me with your hearts.

		You both are rivals, and love Hermia,

		And now both rivals, to mock Helena:

		A trim exploit, a manly enterprise,

		To conjure tears up in a poor maid's eyes

		With your derision! none of noble sort

		Would so offend a virgin, and extort

		A poor soul's patience, all to make you sport



Each kid is to find a space and set himself two chairs about
six/eight feet apart.  They stand by one chair and read the
speech aloud until they come to the first pausing punctuation
mark (comma, semi-colon, colon or full-stop), at which point
they stop, walk to the other chair, and then read the lines to
the next punctuation mark, and so on to the end of the speech. 
The amazing thing is that you will find the vast majority - even
first years - will understand the whole thing without any
explanation.



We then play around with the emotions, with one directing the
speech at another who has to try to interrupt and defend
himself.  The speaker is to ignore the protestations of the
other, overriding them if they become too insistent.  In no time
at all a real scene begins to emerge - and you, as teacher in
charge, will not have given them any guidance about tone or
moves!



I could fill chapters with these exercises, but I'm sure you get
the idea.  Read the books; try out their ideas; devise your own.
 Change the texts: use modern plays, poems, anything.  The
important thing is that you should be driving the kids to look
at the text in depth and play around with its emotional and
intellectual possibilities.  



Move on from this to improvisation of similar or related scenes;
use hot-seating and thought-tracking techniques on these
improvised scenes; use forum theatre ideas to get the other kids
to change the direction of the scenes.  In short, put the text
through the wringer: use every possible approach to squeeze
every last drop of meaning from it.



Once your company members are used to looking at the text and
the sub-text in depth, then they can really start to think about
character.



Let's get one thing straight right form the start: most r“le
play exercises of the sort used in drama lessons, or PSE, or
even business simulations, are a waste of time.  They have
nothing to do with character, merely with r“le.  Get kids to
play a teacher and they'll come up with a caricature; what's
more, it will be a caricature that differs little from one kid
to the next.  Ask them to act out a classroom scene and the
"kids" will behave badly and the "teacher" will shout and thump,
or even wave a cane about.  What tbey produce will have far more
to do with the Bash Street Kids (UK reference again - sorry!)
than what they experience every day of their school lives!



What we have to do is to remind them (and keep reminding them!)
that, in their real lives, they all have the same r“le as school
kids, but that each of them is different from the others. 
Remind them, too, that each teacher is different, and that they
approach each one in a different way.  I usually pick the most
feared and the softest teachers and ask, "Would you behave with
Mr X the way you would with Mr Y?"  The answer is invariably a
heartfelt "No!"  Then I will ask, "Would you talk to me in the
same way as you talk to them?"  Again the same answer.  The next
question, of course, is the ubiquitous "Why?", and the answer is
always, "Because you're different from each other."



Once they are able to separate the r“le from the character, then
we can begin.  Until that distinction is clear in their minds,
real characterisation is impossible.



Taking on a r“le is so much easier than developing a character
that I like to do a number of improvisation exercises to hammer
the point home.  I'll set up ordinary events (arriving home an
hour later than told to, for instance, or being falsely accused
of some wrongdoing in school) and get them to act it out.  But I
won't just let it run: I'll begin the dreaded "why?" game to
force them to think of motivation.  I'll make the same people do
the scene a couple of times but I'll change their characters
each time.  If, in the falsely accused scene, the pupil acts
aggressively, I'll tell him he's timid and shy: sometimes I'll
even work backwards and tell them their reactions ("You're going
to burst into tears") and then ask why they reacted as they did.



Try some games.  I like to use "Masters and Servants".  They
divide into pairs, one of whom is to be the master and the other
the servant.  The servant must do anything the master tells him
(unless it's dangerous or immoral!) until the game ends.  The
masters will (usually) go mad, putting their servants in all
kinds of degrading situations - having them crouch on the floor
to be a foot stool is usually the least of it!  After a while
stop the game and question both about their reactions, then ask
the question, "If it's like this, why are people willing to take
jobs as servants?"  Don't, however, let them answer: restart the
game, but this time telling the masters that they've had
servants all their lives and the servants actually quite enjoy
working for them.



What we are actually doing here is examining the place that our
status has in our lives (there is a fascinating treatment of
this topic in Keith Johnstone's book Impro).  The unconscious
assumption of our status vis- -vis others is a good starting
point for our study of character, for it is our relations with
others that determine not only how they see us, but also how we
see ourselves.  With the lessons of the masters and servants
game under our belts we can start to look at character work much
more profitably.  Until I realised the importance of status
(thanks, I have to admit, to Keith Johnstone), I was never happy
with the character work I directed: now with the attitude that
character, relationships with others, and status are
inextricably intertwined, I find that we can probe much more
deeply.



As a real test (only to be used in the advanced stages of
character work, which not every kid will be able to achieve),
have them choose someone they know well (a parent or other
relative, for instance) and tell them to study their behaviour
and reactions in depth during the coming week.  At the next
meeting they are to be that person throughout.  Watching the
interaction is fascinating!



This is something like the way Mike Leigh created Abigail's
Party (Alison Steadman's account of that development quoted in
Peter Barkworth's The Complete About Acting should be compulsory
reading for all drama teachers, especially those who aspire to
direct shows!), but it is easier because the kids have a model
to build upon.



One thing that they will almost certainly have noticed in their
study is the small actions or mannerisms which characterise us
all - they are often the stock-in-trade of the impressionist. 
Point them out: get the kids to become aware of such small
actions.  They are much more important than you would think.  I
recently went to see a nativity-type play at one of our feeder
primary schools and this was brought home very clearly to me.  



You see, I didn't believe in Mary!  Yes, I know she was only a
ten-year old, but we do make allowances.  I was convinced by the
Angel Gabriel.  I suppose that what I really should say is that
I was able to accept that that this ten-year old boy was
representing the Angel Gabriel.  However I couldn't feel that
about the girl playing Mary.  There was little difference
between the two in terms of acting ability and so it took me
quite a while to see what was causing the problem.  When the
light finally dawned, it was actually very simple: she never
looked at the baby!  Here was a mother with her first child, in
this case the son of God, and she never looked at it once!



Now I am not blaming the child - I am not blaming anyone, for
this is a situation in which acting technique is of little or no
importance for the kids or the audience  - but I merely use it
as an instance of the importance of the little things. 
Inappropriate though my response may have been in the
circumstances, it is instructive, and tells us something of the
eye for small detail which both actor and director have to have
to create a realistic character.



I could go on and fill a book!  But I won't: all I will say is
that there is a vast literature to guide you, but my own feeling
is that the best exercises are those which you devise (or adapt)
yourself, to suit your own company.  Just don't lose sight of
the fact that you are developing acting skills: you are not a
psychotherapist, you're not trying to interfere in any way with
the characters of the kids you are dealing with.  Your job is to
enable them to see how people differ from each other, how they
can perceive these differences in the texts you work on, and how
they can bring out these differences in their performance.  The
depth to which you take any exercise will depend upon the kids
themselves, the time available and your own judgement as to the
success or otherwise of what you are doing.  But be clear of one
thing: unless you do force (deliberately chosen word!) your kids
to think about these matters, you will never get anything other
than a superficial performance out of the majority.  Playing a
r“le is easy: playing a character requires hard work.  Without
an understanding of character they will never act, they'll just
act out!



And no, this is not airy-fairy theorising!  It's what I do in my
acting training for the kids I work with.  It's part of
professional training, and it's what the best amateur actors do
too.  In acting as in everything else connected with the school
play, you have to aim for the very best, because nothing else is
good enough.



I'd like to finish this chapter by mentioning a few of the most
common faults amongst young actors (and the not-so-young, to be
honest!).  Watch out for them and nip them in the bud early:
most will show themselves at the first reading.



First is the dreaded pronoun stress!  You know, when unnatural
emphasis is placed on every pronoun - and by unnatural stress I
mean any stress at all.  Read the following sentences aloud:



		I fancy going to the pictures tonight.



		Oh yes, I remember Fred.



		Have you got change of a quid?



		Was she at home when you rang?



In normal, everyday speech we throw the pronouns away: they bear
no stress whatsoever and their vowel sounds are very
indeterminate.  The inexperienced young actor, however, will
give them their full vocal value, making the sentence seem
stilted and artificial.  Get them out of this habit
straightaway.  



And keep your ears open for its recurrence.  I was devastated
not long ago when I went to a performance of a panto by a local
amateur operatic society of which a number of our present and
ex-pupils are members.  One of the ex-pupils had a small
speaking r“le.  She'd been a very competent actor at school and
is very bright, but there she was, speaking her lines as if she
were a not-very-confident reader reading from an autocue for the
first time!  I could have got up onto that stage and wrung her
neck!



A second, just as common, fault is related to this: giving every
word equal stress.  With the less confident this can be a bugger
to get rid of!  The reason is that they are so concerned about
getting every word in (and right!) that they don't think about
meaning.  You need to mimic them - a little exaggeration is
permissible here, I believe - so that they hear how unnatural
they sound.  You should then speak the line naturally and ask
them to try to isolate what the difference is.  Don't just get
them to imitate you speaking the line correctly: they need to
know what they are doing wrong and what they should be doing. 
And pounce on every occurrence: only constant reminders will
eliminate it.  But make a joke of it and get them laughing at
themselves.  I've just come from a rehearsal in which I spent
nearly fifteen minutes working on one line with a rather
inexperienced girl who, at one point, was helpless with
laughter, but who finally got it right.  And she won't forget in
future!



Many kids are afraid of contact.  And by that I don't just mean
physical contact (although that is true), but eye-contact too. 
In fact, it's not just kids.  As an actor in an amateur company
many years ago, I worked with one very experienced man who just
would not meet the eyes of anyone else on stage.  He was hell to
work with!  Before I appeared with him I had seen him on stage
many times, and wondered why his performances never completely
convinced.  I knew there was something wrong but could never put
my finger on it.  It was only after playing opposite him that I
realised.



A good exercise to cure this: make them work in twos with a
member of the opposite sex, preferably one they don't know very
well.  Stand facing each other with toes touching; place right
hand on the partner's shoulder.  Now they must gaze into each
other's eyes without flinching or letting their glance slide
away for a full minute.  They can, however, blink: this is not a
staring exercise.  Do it as often as is necessary, changing
partners a few times.



Finally, for those intimate scenes (not necessarily of a
romantic or sexual nature) where they shy away from close
physical contact: have them play the scene sat on the floor,
leaning their backs against each other.  Then do it again with
backs and heads leaning against each other.  Then make them
exaggerate the feelings of the scene whilst remaining in the
same position.  If that doesn't work, grab the little ****s by
the scruff of the neck and push them together!



It really is these seemingly little things that make the
difference between a forced, stilted performance and one which
is realistic and convincing.  Remember the old saw: look after
the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves?  It's as
true in acting as in finance!  It's these little things which
will make for an effective, real performance.