Inventing the Truth: Devising and Directing for the Theatre

There are as many ways of devising plays as there are directors, actors and companies that devise them.

It is equally true that every time I have devised a play for stage or television my working method has changed depending on the project, the actors, the time available for rehearsal and the nature of the story I find myself telling. So what follows is a rough guide, if you like, to how I do it and a general outline of the basic principles involved in creating a play through improvisation.

Improvised Plays

As far as I am concerned, there are two kinds of improvised play - those that start out with me having a general idea of the territory I want to explore and those where I haven't a clue what is going to happen. For example, the television play I devised for the BBC in 1980, Games Without Frontiers, was always going to be set on the midnight ferry between Harwich and the Hook of Holland, and I would imagine that Mike Leigh had Gilbert and Sullivan firmly in mind when he embarked on Topsy-Turvy.

On the other hand, A Bed of Roses, the play I am focusing on here, falls into the latter category, in as much as I had absolutely no idea whatsoever what the story would turn out to be. I only knew that it probably would be set in Hull because we were going to rehearse it in Hull. One would reasonably imagine that a journey into the complete unknown would engender more fear in the heart of the director than a play with even the most rudimentary predetermined theme, but, in truth, one always sets out with the same mixture of trepidation, exhilaration and abject terror.

In practice, the length of rehearsal time is a major factor in determining how much pre-planning I do. With the major Hull Truck plays I allowed myself twelve weeks' rehearsal, so I could start with little more than a glimmer of an idea. With the television plays I had between four and six weeks, so had to go into rehearsals with a certain amount of knowledge as to what the final tale might be. Either way, the story really begins with the casting.

Auditions and Casting Workshops

In the early days of Hull Truck I worked with pretty much anybody who would turn up, but even then I was aware that I was looking for actors and performers with humour, imagination and an ability to tell the truth.

They had to have a gift for observation and a willingness to set out into the unknown. They had to trust the working method, or it wouldn't work; and they had to realise that it wasn't about them. There are no star parts. It is a collective process. I recruited the later companies through a series of interviews and workshops.

After advertising in The Stage and Time Out, I sifted the hundreds of replies looking for people who seemed on paper to have the right attitude towards the work. After a couple of rounds of interviews, during which I chatted to the actors about their backgrounds and anything other than theatre, I set up a series of workshops. The actors had to arrive having created a character based on somebody they knew, who could be living alone in Hull or London or Manchester or wherever the workshop was taking place. The basic rule was that the character had to be roughly the same age, the same gender and the same pigmentation as they were. And not an actor. During the course of the day I would take them through an abbreviated version of the character-building process, allowing them time to work alone and allowing me time to observe how well they could concentrate. The workshop culminated in a group improvisation.

During the course of the day I had introduced the notion that each of these characters had seen an advert in Time Out inviting them to an introductory evening for a Lonely Hearts Club and decided to go along. The actors then went out in character through the streets of Hull or London or Manchester or wherever, and when they came back, the workshop space had become the Lonely Hearts Club. One of my company played the part of the organiser, introducing the characters to each other. There was a bar and dancing. The purpose was to see who could sustain character truthfully without either showing off or manufacturing some kind of melodramatic event.

The workshops taught me who I thought could do it and who I thought had the imagination to come up with something truthful and interesting. The actual selection of actors is the first determining factor in the shape of the play-to-be.

I am, of course, stating the bleeding obvious, but if I choose three male actors and three female actors there is a strong possibility that the play might be about three couples. This was the case with A Bed of Roses, the play I'm using as an example in this chapter.

If I were to choose two actors in their fifties, two in their thirties and two in their twenties, it's a fair bet that the final play might involve either family or generational conflict. If I have a more specific idea or theme in mind I will select actors that I think will be capable of coming up with characters who will fit into the general parameters of the tale I am going to tell. For example, I made a television piece for Channel Four called Chains of Love which I knew was going to be set at an Ann Summers party where women would buy sex aids. Accordingly, I cast six women who would create characters who could possibly go to such an event. If I wanted to set a play in Belfast I would cast actors who came from there or who at least had a working acquaintance with the city and the lives of its people.

Another factor in casting is class. This is not to say that actors are not capable of playing characters from different strata of society than the ones they grew up in, but if I were to make a play about, say, ex-public schoolboys, I would need actors with at least a passing knowledge of the psychological consequences of such an education.

Choosing the Characters

Before rehearsals start I ask the actors to come up with a list of people they know or that they have met, who they may be interested in playing. This is not to say that they are going to be asked to impersonate someone they know, but rather the selected character provides a target to aim at. I may provide them with brief guidelines - in the initial stages of A Bed of Roses, I asked Robin Soans and David Threlfall to choose characters involved in communication in some way - or I might leave the choice entirely to them. I begin working with each actor individually, in conditions of total secrecy. This is not for any wanky, holy or mysteriously conspiratorial purpose; it is totally central to the whole process that each actor only finds out information about other characters when organically necessary. Put in most simple terms: if you were to find out that you are playing a policeman and someone else is playing a villain, you would make a value judgement about what your possible relationship with the other character might be. If the actors talk to each other about who they are playing, it is inevitable that each of them will try to second-guess what the play might be about and their character's role in it. This can lead - and indeed has - to an actor trying to gear the improvisations in a particular direction to suit his imagined scenario for his character. Mike Leigh used to hang a wartime poster on the rehearsal room wall that read 'CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES'. And he meant it.

For the first few days I sit with each actor individually and we talk about the people on their list.

This is a time for storytelling. If an actor has a list of six people we will discuss six individual stories. In preparation for A Bed of Roses, Robin Soans was interested in, amongst others, a visionary architect, a Vietnam War photographer and a vicar. David Threlfall came up with either someone who worked in advertising/marketing or was a journalist who told jokes. It is not the profession of the character that is most interesting; it's the psychological journey of how they got to be who they are. Over several days we excavate their lives and find out what makes them tick, why they behave like they do. I am looking for something that excites the actor and the idiosyncratic kind of detail that I think might serve the drama, whatever that might turn out to be. If I have six actors and they each have brought six characters to the table, I am now juggling thirty-six lives and looking for possible connections and potential relationships and conflicts between them. The secret is not to panic and go for the first, easiest or most obvious choice; you have to trust your intuition and see where it leads you. Always go for what you find dangerous or unpredictable.

In the case of A Bed of Roses, the first choice I made was to go with Robin's vicar. This was partly because I was interested in examining the nature of vicaring, but mostly because of the duplicitous qualities of the man Robin wanted to base his vicar on. I also encouraged Kathy Iddon to develop one of her characters who had spent time doing Voluntary Service Overseas, as I felt that this would in some way connect with Robin's vicar story. These sort of decisions influence the choices I make about the characters that the other actors will create. I do not have a plot or even a plan in mind, but I am looking for the potential for future interaction between them. The next step is to build the characters we have selected. We start by creating life histories.

Life Histories

Again working with each actor individually and in secret, we create biographies for our by now fictitious...