Category: Michael Woodhall

We did it! The performance has happened and I’m still on a high! I can’t help but keep looking at photographs from our dress rehearsal and smiling, I’m just so proud of what we have achieved as a group over the last few months.

Leading up to the performance we had the technical and dress rehearsals. During these rehearsals my role was less vocal, it was as if I had finished creating the piece and handed it over to our stage manager to run the show and likewise to the performers to fully engage with the piece. Due to this, I was able to sit in the auditorium and make notes on what needed changing, minor issues with the technical elements, set and props and the blocking of the show; it was essentially my job to ‘maintain a sense of positive calm, methodically working through each problem that occurs, all the time ensuring that the integrity of the production is not compromised.’ (Foreman, 2009, p. 37) In general, everything ran smoothly; there were only a few minor changes made to the lighting and we decided to discard the props table. On another note, after four months of rehearsals, it was a fantastic moment getting to see the full production on stage with all of the technical elements. I was pleased with the dressing of the stage; the boxes looked wonderful, they were a simple touch that fitted with our narrative and left enough room for all of the physical aspects of the show.

(Michael Woodhall, 2015)

I was very happy with the performance itself. There were no major issues; a couple of performers stumbled on lines and some movement was a little out of time but overall the performers were great and in terms of energy, focus and believability, it was easily the best they had performed! It wasn’t just me who enjoyed the performance; we also received some fantastic feedback. I personally found it overwhelming that so many audience members were emotionally invested in the piece and that it even moved some to tears.

If the piece was to get developed further there are certainly elements I would like to work on. Firstly, I think the unison movement in the section where The Wife decides to leave The Man could be adapted. Due to time constraints, some of the choreography had to be repetitive and I think it would be nice to see that section go on more of a journey not only with the movements but similarly with the acting (body language, facial expressions, dynamic changes through movements etc.) It would also be interesting to look at the live music element of the piece and develop that further; it is touched upon during one scene and then forgotten about for the rest of the show. If the piece was to be extended that is definitely an element I would like to develop.

(Phil Crowe, 2015)

Speaking of developing the piece, I would love to think that this is not the end of The Man Whose Memories Fell Out. I think the piece has such huge potential and believe, after hearing responses, there is an audience interested in a piece such as this. This experience has certainly made me more determined to create work as a theatre company and I certainly want to carry on working in a physical and visual way. I’m excited to see what the future looks like for the talented members of our company and the fantastic work we continue to create, whether that will be together or on separate projects.

Works Cited

Foreman, G. (2009) A practical guide to working in theatre. London: A & C Black Publishers.

Attached to this post are some notes I have taken throughout this process. They mainly explain what scenes I wanted to work on each week, what I neededto work on/figure out as well as a couple of texts we used as starting points.

Rehearsal notes week 1 – 16.02.15

Rehearsal notes week 2 – 23.02.15

Rehearsal notes week 3 – 02.03.15

Rehearsal notes week 4 – 09.03.15

Rehearsal notes week 5 – 16.03.15

Rehearsal notes week 6 – 23.03.15

Rehearsal notes week 7 – 06.04.15

Rehearsal notes week 8 – 13.04.15

Rehearsal notes week 9 – 20.04.15

Rehearsal notes week 10 – 27.04.15

Rehearsal notes week 11 – 04.05.15

As the piece has developed, I have come to realise that a large amount of the material has been heavily focused on either the emotional impact encephalitis can have on a relationship or the science behind the illness. The emotional and scientific elements are always merged throughout the piece, for example, the ‘Ribbons Sequence’.

(Alice Dale, 2015)

This visually represents the connections in the brain and how, when suffering from encephalitis, these connections don’t match up. During the sequence, The Man and one of the female performers have a duologue, expressing The Man’s confusion about entries in his dairy which he does not remember writing. This shows his emotional state as a result of the malfunctioning brain.

Much of the show currently consists of this format and although it is essential that the style remains similar throughout, I have felt an urge to interject scenes with a different mood to change the dynamics and pace. This resulted in creating a couple of ‘happy memory’ scenes. These are mainly made up of movement sequences using small gestures, props and subtle moments of eye contact which express the mundane lives this couple had before the illness struck. A piece that influenced me for these sections of the piece is Theatre Ad Infinitum’s Translunar Paradise (2011).

What I found captivating about this particular piece was the subtlety in the movements and the connection between the performers. This was something I really wanted to emphasise in our happy memory sequences. It has been more difficult to have these subtle moments in our piece due to the size of our cast and the fact that all of the female performers are constantly overlapping as the character of The Wife, To get around this, I have inserted moments where the couple embrace or are alone on stage which furthermore ensures that the audience understands who is portraying The Wife in these scenes.

In general, I have seen myself as an editor of the performance; I ask the performers to create a scene, movement sequence or write text, all of which are based on a scenario or text that I bring in to the session. I have then gone away and worked on the movement with Rachel, selecting elements that fit together well as well as adding in our own input. Similarly with any text the cast have written in rehearsals, I have then taken it away and put it into context, re-worded and organised it all to flow with the rest of the scene. However, there have been occasions where Rachel and I have had a clear idea of what we wanted for a scene, for example, the scene where The Wife decides to leave The Man. This was a choreographed sequence which we rehearsed and taut to the rest of the group.

After completing these scenes, I have been in a position to start piecing the show together, deciding where scenes should go, what transitions need creating and essentially the flow of the entire piece.

(Michael Woodhall, 2015)

(Michael Woodhall, 2015)

As you can see from these two photos, the piece was constantly changing. Scenes such as the ‘Office Sequence’ did not fit into our narrative and was eventually cut from the show and the order of scenes has also been altered throughout the rehearsal process, even after we began running the entire show. Even at this stage, I am unsure of how the show will end which is both exciting and frightening at the same time!

Works Cited

Theatre Ad Infinitum, (2015) Theatre Ad Infinitum. [online] Available from http://www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk/ [Accessed 25 May 2015].

Over the past few weeks, our show has gone on quite a dramatic journey and has developed into something I wouldn’t have expected when we first started out. Our original concept was based on ‘Bucket Lists’ – we wanted to speak to the public with the aim of exploring what people find most important at various stages of life. Whilst our show was still in research and development stages, our focus began to shift more towards the themes of memories and regrets as opposed to goals and ambitions.

During my research on memories, I came across this video which fascinated me.

The video essentially describes a pill, on the verge of being released, which can erase the fear we hold to our more unhappy memories. I thought it would be interesting to consider how we would function if our bad memories could be erased by taking this pill. Would we learn from our mistakes? How would we feel if we kept our bad memories but were able to associate it with something much happier? How could this effect the way we feel emotions? And although this pill is essentially for people suffering with PTSD, depression and anxiety, how long would it be until this is a prescribed drug for something less serious? These were all questions I thought would be useful to explore in our workshops. This inspired the company and we were set on having it influence the show but we still hadn’t found our central idea; we were still in search for our stone!

So we went out and had conversations with many members of the public; we visited a youth theatre, met with peers on the University campus and asked people on the high street about their ambitions, memories and regrets as well as their opinions on the pill itself. After receiving a variety of responses, it was encouraging to know that people were interested in the topic of memories and wanted to know more about the pill, however we still hadn’t found a story strong enough to be carried through the entire show.

I then began reading some more philosophical writings about memory and came across Oliver Sacks’ book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1986). In this book I discovered many stories of patients who had suffered from damage or an illness affecting the brain essentially leaving them with no or little memory – ‘I have no memory of the present. I do not know what I have just done or from where I have just come . . . I can recall my past very well, but I have no memory of the present.’ (Sacks, 1986, p. 33) These stories seemed to link everything we had been discussing about memories and regrets but now I saw the possibility of a narrative. Additionally, I thought it would be interesting to think of these real-life accounts in relation to the pill; people who choose to have their bad memories removed against individuals who have no choice in their memory loss at all. What I also found fascinating about these stories was that many of the patients suffering from amnesia who were talented musicians, still had the ability to remember how to play music, something which I discovered further in Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophillia, ‘Remembering music, listening to it, or playing it, is entirely in the present.’ (2011, p. 228) It seemed fitting to incorporate live music into our piece and we have recently been playing around with the piano in rehearsals; this has influenced some of our physical work too!

(Alice Dale, 2015)

Along with music, many of these cases have involved these men remembering their relationships with their wives but because of the illness, the extent of what they remember is minimal. The strength, compassion and love that these wives show is something that I am passionate about portraying in our piece as well as the struggles that these couples face. This has given me the idea to tell much of the story through the viewpoint of a wife, a supporter and an unconditional partner. I have cast a different female performer as The Wife for each scene we do to represent different points in The Man’s life as well as showing that this story is not about one couple in particular, it is inspired by many.

I am incredibly excited to develop the relationship/story between The Man and The Wife and to learn more about the connections in the brain and the science behind amnesia.

Works Cited

Sacks, O. (1986) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. London: Picador.

Sacks, O. (2011) Musicophillia. London: Picador.

This past week, I have been leading some creative workshops to get ideas flowing and to get the company comfortable working as an ensemble. Some of the workshops have been focused on the stories we hold as a group. As we are interested in interviewing the public and visualising personal stories, specifically related to memories and regrets, I felt that it was important for us share our own stories first. This would then make it easier to know how sensitive we need to be when dealing with external material.

One exercise I gave our actors was to write a letter they would like to send to someone but for some reason, they can’t. They then paired up and picked one of the letters at random and each pair physicalised the narrative of the letter. I asked the performers to think about the emotion behind the letter; apart from that, I had no direct instructions for them as I felt I needed to give the performers opportunities to have a creative input, ‘by setting tasks you allow your performers to offer much creative input into the devising of choreography without burdening them with the responsibility of creating the whole show.’ (Graham, 2014, p. 15) I then merged some of the sequences together and played around with music which resulted in a short physical piece which myself and Rachel, our choreographer, can carry on developing further.

(Katherine Copley, 2015)

The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre has been a key tool which has inspired a couple of my workshops. At the beginning of their devising process, Frantic usually divert from the topic of their piece as they feel it can restrain the imaginations of the performers. This is something I wanted to implicate into some of our workshops, a good example of this is when I asked our designers to gather some props together; the performers all chose a prop at random and were asked to create a short improvised piece where they were to use these particular props but not for their original purpose. This exercise has been essential for the development of our show as I am particularly interested in using objects and props to aid us in our storytelling. Additionally, the exercise has allowed the performers to spend time being playful and expanding their imaginations which I feel is essential at the beginning of a devising process as ‘it’s when you’re most playful that you create the best work.’ (Mcdonnell, 2015)

All of the material from the workshops has been recorded on film and has begun to inspire me with more creative ideas resulting in a stronger framework. I cannot wait to see the piece develop further over the next few weeks!

Works Cited

Graham, S. and Hoggett, S. (2014) The Frantic Assembly book of devising theatre. Second edition. Oxon: Routledge.

Mcdonnell, J. (2015) Career advice from The Paper Birds Theatre Company. [interview] Interviewed by Michael Woodhall, 12 February.