Well, I think I’d best start by saying Hi! I’m PAFidler, or as most people would know me, Tom.

It’s amazing how a couple of days can change things.

One day I’m sat there having a laugh and a joke with Paul about being his PA for the evening’s performance of Spaceboy – which for the record I thought was absolutely incredible – and within a couple days I’d taken on the role as part of Paul’s ‘Summer Internships’ programme!

I guess I’d better tell you a bit about who I am for those of you who don’t already know.

My name is Tom Fidler, I go to Riverside Youth Theatre and am a keen actor – though doesn’t necessarily mean I’m any good – and met Paul there nearly three years ago.

We’ve been good friends since.

It was really the idea of getting into play-writing that allowed me to help to help Paul in the position I am now, and I will, in the future, write some plays with added expertise from some playwright called PAFoster…

But that’s for another time, this is Paul’s blog and so from now on I’ll keep it about him and my role as his PA for the summer.

When my exams are finished I will have all the the time in the world and hopefully the added assistance of a Macbook Pro to help me along with assisting Paul and keeping you up-to-date with any progress either on new or existing projects.

With my (and Pete’s) internships underway, there will be some changes to the way things are done, so to keep up-to-date on projects and any important information on the play front then I recommend you become a fan of the facebook page PAFoster – Playwright and also follow @PAFoster on Twitter.

My friend Pete (*PW) and I (*TF) will be tweeting as well as Paul on all things PAFoster-Playwright related.

Paul’s personal twitter is now @FuckingMangoes which incidentally is the name of the latest play Pete and I will get a sneak preview of on 26th June, and not some sort of sexual fruit fetish, lol.

Oh, and you can of course follow me on twitter too if you like: @TomFidler

Anyway, be sure to look out for my posts and tweets in the future, but until then, this is it for my first blog post at PAFoster.com.

I have to say if you’ve read this far, you’ve done well (and so have I, lol) as in all honesty blog posts aren’t my speciality considering I’ve only ever posted two before.

Until next time, sayonara!

More news now…

In accordance with my beliefs in supporting and indeed encouraging the creativity and development of young people, I’d like to introduce you to Peter Williams and Tom Fidler.

Peter will be spending time during the summer assisting me and helping to build my playwright profile online in an effort to give PAFoster-Playwright a wider following and Tom will be helping me to organise things whilst out and about.

Peter is a member of the Riverside Youth Theatre and has always enjoyed writing and film-making and now maintains a weekly vlog too. He asked me a month or two back if he could shadow me and help out a couple of times during the summer to which I readily agreed.

Tom too is a keen actor at Riverside and a developing playwright in his own right who has always been keen to learn what he can from me. He has often joked about being my PA when I get to be a ‘celebrity’ and we are always making in-jokes about this. (The name PAFidler being one of them!) Recently though, he has become quite serious about it and has asked to help out too.

Spaceboy was a huge success and I am pleased that both of them saw the production and were equally as amazed with it as I was.

I think they were so totally bowled over by their experience that they have both been very keen to do more for me and help out wherever they can in an effort to learn more about the life of a playwright.

And as this fits in with my policy of helping young people to achieve all they can in this world, I’ve decided to take them both on as ‘Summer Interns’ and given them each important responsibilities, an real things to do in a mutually beneficial arrangement.

So I am pleased to tell you that Pete will now be my Publicity Officer (PO) and Tom will be my Personal Assistant (PA).

There is going to be a lot happening this summer, including a rehearsed reading of my new play, and I am going to need all the help I can get!

Pete will be responsible for upping my profile on the web. I am pleased to say he has already created a ‘PAFoster-Playwright’ YouTube account and will be uploading various short films he’ll be making about what is happening in the world of PAFoster- Playwright, including interviews, rehearsal footage, performance footage etc. Pete will be writing too; reviews, blog posts, and anything else that may come to mind.

Tom will be responsible for getting me organised when I’m directing/rehearsing or having a play reading or whilst working any other projects, of which there will be quite a few over the summer.

Both Pete and Tom will have access to my blog, (where their names will show as the author of any post they write and publish) access to my facebook fan page, where they be able to update the status and post things there too like photos or videos, and also access to the @PAFoster twitter account where both will be able to tweet on my behalf too.

If Tom tweets it will have *TF at he end of the tweet and if Pete tweets it will have *PW so you will know who’s tweeting based on their initials. I’ll tweet with *PAF so you know it’s me.

So, over to you Pete and Tom! And welcome to the world of PAFoster the Playwright.

Well, I’m back, for the time being at least anyway!

So here’s the news I’ve been wanting to blog about for ages.

Spaceboy is getting its first production this weekend! (4th/5th June) I am so pleased.

Yes, that’s tonight, I know, but depression isn’t concerned about time, so I guess I’m lucky I came back from the blackness yesterday. I have know about this production for well over a month now, but this is the first time I have been able to write about it! I was getting concerned that I wasn’t going to fully engage in the amazement of it all.

It was nearly a year ago now that the play was a given a professional ‘rehearsed reading’ by Actors and Writers London, and now finally makes its way on to the stage for the public to see.

Spaceboy is being produced because John Burgess, my mentor from the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group, put another writer, Nina Lemon, in contact with me. Nina has just started in the current Nuffields group; my group having completed the programme at the end of December.

Nina runs a theatre company called Peer Productions, based at the Woking Youth Arts Centre, a five minute walk from my house, and she asked to read some of my work.

Needless to say she loved Spaceboy and I was pleasantly surprised back in April when she asked if they could produce it.

I’ve now met both Nell King and Nathan Trapnell who will produce and direct the play as well as take the roles of Anna and Nathan. They have also cast Alex Paterson in the role of Hayden.

Alex is a member of the Peer Productions Youth Theatre, and is also at Woking College with my friends Mark Forest and Adam Amin from the Riverside Youth Theatre – Small world.

I recently saw Adam and Alex perform in ‘The Interview’ for part of their AS Drama exam at the college and having directed Adam before at RYT, knew he would be good. I was also entralled with Alex’s performance and am very pleased that he’s been cast as Hayden in Spaceboy.

For those of you who know the play and it’s origins, you’ll know that Hayden‘s part, played excellently by Tom Addy in the London rehearsed reading, is a very demanding series of monologues performed one after the other and lasting about twenty five minutes.

Hayden is my favourite of all the characters I’ve created thus far, and I’m pleased to say that Alex, having thoroughly researched his part, has just as much enthusiasm and understanding of Hayden and his issues as I do, which is fantastic and very gratifying for me as the playwright.

My play will be performed as the second in a double bill with the short piece The End Where I Begin, written and directed by Kirsten Hill.

The venue is The Black Box Theatre, a small studio style theatre in Knaphill near Woking where Peer Productions is based.

The 50 seat studio theatre is cosy and very intimate, which to be honest, as those that saw the London reading will know, suits Spaceboy very well indeed

The booking details for the show are all here and again, appologies for the lateness in blogging about this; as I say, depressive episodes are a law unto themselves.

Spaceboy
by
PAFoster

Part One – ‘If I Fall’

Single, self-employed Nathan falls for his next-door neighbour, thirty something Anna Walker.

But Anna has a painful past and a troubled teenage son; and when a local lad goes missing, Nathan’s new relationship is tested to the brink.

Part Two – ‘Moondust Will Cover Me’

Fifteen year old Hayden is a little confused and thinks he’s in love; and that would be fine, if his new found friend wasn’t hearing voices.

I am so pleased that a lot of friends are coming to support me and the cast by seeing this production.

I have also developed new friendships because of because of it, including Tony Chessman, an aspiring writer too, and Lewis Flude who was stood next to a Pet Shop Boys fan in a record store talking about the PSB references in my play! Weird or what? But that’s another story!

Lewis and I have both been following each other on Twitter for ages, but never realised we both knew a lot of the same people from different social groups – Spaceboy has revealed those connections.

Oh, and I nearly forgot!

I am honoured to have been invited to take part in an after show Q&A style discussion with the directors/cast, where we’ll be taking about the play and the writing of it. So get your questions ready, and surprise me!

Hope you can come; it’ll be good, very good. Come and see why, say Hi!

Best wishes!
A very (at last) happy Paul.

PS: Better introduce Tom (the ultimate) Fidler, a great friend and keen to learn writer from Riverside Youth Theatre, who has, since I’m now being referred to as a “minor celebrity”, lol, dutifully elected himself as my PA – After dinner speaking engagements, book store openings, breakfast show interviews, and indeed any other public appearance or product endorsement requests should be directed to Tom, lol. I’m far too busy writing!

Public thanks again to my close friend Tom Addy, without who’s care and support, Spaceboy would never have seen the light of day.

Thank you Major Tom xx

My Sunday afternoons are hectic again; I’m directing another play for the Riverside Youth Theatre.

My last production was Nick Dear’s poignant play Lunch in Venice. It went very well and was incredibly enjoyable to direct.

And I was delighted when three of my excellent cast were nominated for awards at the Elmbridge Drama Festival. No mean feat since there were over 50 young people performing in that festival!

This year I’m directing John Godber’s classic classroom comedy Teechers.

I have a cast of 23 young people and had to think hard about how I was going to stage the play.

The difficult thing with finding plays for youth theatre is there are so few suitable ones with large numbers of parts. And even then, most of the parts will be minor walk-ons which doesn’t give a lot for the young people playing them to do for the three months or so of Sunday afternoons spent rehearsing the play.

It’s a challenge.

I chose Teechers simply because although the play was written for three actors, it is highly adaptable for any number of them – though admittedly, I would have struggled to use more than 30 young people!

It is a very popular play and it’s highly probable there’s a production of it being performed right now as I write (and indeed as you read) somewhere in the world.

It was written back in 1987 and to be honest has dated a bit, so we’ve had to change some of the language and references to make it more current for my cast.

Cookery classes are now ‘food tech’ . O’ Levels are GSCEs, and the third year is now of course Yr9. We’ve also had fun with some of the northern phrases that don’t mean anything to us: ‘twagging it’, for example.

We’ve approached the text as a team, all pitching in when we felt a word or phrase needed to be changed.

Last week we finished blocking, and with (my) 41 french* scenes, it’s been pretty manic! This Sunday, I have asked the cast to come in school uniform so I can shoot some publicity shots, so should be a laugh!

For me, it’s about the young people involved. I need to make sure they are happy and have fun.

The main thing I am doing with this production is to have all 23 actors on stage all the time. We are presenting the play as part of a double bill, since Teechers is a short play, so we’ll perform both acts without an interval.

Normally, when I’ve seen other productions done with large casts, some of the actors play the teachers.

But I wanted to do this production differently and so I am having the all actors play pupils dressed in school uniform, with some of the pupils then acting at times as teachers by simply putting on a jacket and grabbing a briefcase, if you see what I mean.

This means I can keep everyone involved so if they are not acting as a teacher in a particular scene, then they’ll be acting as pupil in the class, etc.

I must admit, keeping all the young people in the cast focused is hard at times, but they seem to be enjoying the process.

Oh, and my set consists of 16 yards of yet to be acquired cloth, 16 broom handles to hang it all from, and 23 brown plastic chairs in a semi-circle.

Interesting, to say the least, lol.

Cast:

Adam Amin
Alex Alderson
Annabel Smith
Chloe Gay
Emily Doyle
Emma Heaton
Emma King
Georgie Palmer
Jack Simpson
Joe Welland
Lara Henderson
Luke Dowding
Mark Forrest
Matt Knight
Natalie Nanda
Nicola Legg
Pete Williams
Ryan McAndrew
Sherice Griffiths
Sophie Lee
Tom Addy
Toni Doncaster
Wesley Stephenson

Teechers (and Charles Way’s Playing From The Heart) will be performed 10-12 December 2009 at the Riverside Arts Centre in Lower Sunbury.

I’ll keep you updated on our progress.

–
*A ‘French Scene’ is a numbered division of a scene or act in which a major character/s enters or exits. Apparently this is how french drama is written. I always divide up any play I am directing in to french scenes and so helping with the blocking/rehearsing. The actors and I then have the play broken down into small chunks and can then work on it in a much easier fashion.

It’s been a while since I was last part of a drama festival entry, though I’ve seen a few productions over the past couple of years.

I’m pleased to report, however, that my Riverside Youth Theatre production of Nick Dear’s ‘Lunch In Venice‘ has been entered into the 2009 Elmbridge Drama Festival at the Walton Playhouse in Walton-on-Thames.

The play will be performed on Wednesday 4th March at 7.45pm.

Wow, what a feeling!

The first professional performance of a play I have written took place last night in Hammersmith, London W6.

Though having any performance of a play is a great achievement for any writer, it’s important for me as an aspiring playwright to move forwards from writing and directing my own work with local amateur dramatic groups to getting my work professionally produced.

I also had my first experience of directing professional actors, which to be honest was a bit daunting at first, but I soon took it in my stride. I had a vision of the characters and how they talked etc and as soon as I got this across to the actors, they responded well and their professionalism bore more than just fruit.

Because of the nature of the evening we were allocated an hour for what should have been a quick discussion and ‘table reading’, and then a couple of run-throughs. Sadly, the actor playing the teacher was delayed and we ended up with about 20 minutes of rehearsal time in which we had a discussion, reading and runthrough all at once.

There simply wasn’t the time for me to do my usual ‘I wont interrupt but will just bring it up in passing later’ – I had to get right on in there and ‘direct’.

The actors had their ideas, having studied the text for the last couple of weeks, but they were looking to me as their director (and in this case, as the playwright too) for guidance and of course ‘direction’ on wether what they had interpreted was right for the piece.

I’m actually amazed how much I learnt about myself as a director in the 20 minutes I had working with these professional actors. I’m so grateful for the experience and really look forward to doing this more.

There was a smaller than usual audience of about 50 last night, and when it was time for Room 20‘s debut performance I was at the back – with a small hand bell!

Although I had taken my ever faithful Mac with me, complete with a sound effect of a school bell ready and waiting in iTunes, it wouldn’t play.

I download the file from the internet a few days ago, and for some reason, although it is saved as an mp3 file in iTunes, I have to be connected to the internet to play it. Weird.

Luckily I discovered all this in the interval, and then had to think frantically about how I was going to do a sound effect of a school bell.

I managed to catch the eye of the building’s manager and beckoned him outside the room to explain my predicament. Thankfully he took up the challenge of a hunt and just as the play was being introduced a couple of minutes later, he appeared with three different bells – god knows where from – and I just grabbed one and rang it as the play started in front of me!

It was great to watch, and weird, in the sense that I was rather detached.

I’d spent a lot of time interviewing some of the young people from the Riverside Youth Theatre during the summer, from which the idea for the story and indeed the style of dialogue came, and after at least twenty hours of writing and editing for what was a short play of about ten-fifteen minutes (In my haste of trying to source a bell sound effect, I forget to time it.) it was now being performed and coming to life in front of me.

It had come from inside my head and was now ‘alive’ going into other peoples’ heads, and as such wasn’t mine any more. Very weird feeling.

There were a few ‘nervous’ laughs at the beginning, as always seems to be the case when watching an evening of plays in which you don’t know if what you’re going to see next is a straight play or a comedy.

You end up laughing a little even, if a line or action wasn’t particularly funny, just so that you don’t feel a pratt for not laughing if indeed the play is supposed to be a comedy. Then when you realise it’s a serious play, the laughter stops and hopefully by then your hooked.

This is what happened last night and I was so pleased with the subsequent deathly silence from the audience, not a rustle of sweets, or shift of position on the chair, or a checking of the watch, nothing – just silence. It was great!

By Act III, (Room 20 was written as part of my Nuffield Theatre Writers Group coursework and the brief was to write a ten minute play in 3 acts) the actors had really gotten into their parts, which was fantastic considering they’d only had 20 minutes of rehearsal with each other, and ‘Jase’s last speech in which he really shows his insecurities and the true reason for his bullying was very emotional for me.

You’d have thought I would have been fine with it, but for me it was exactly the same as if I had been watching a moving part of a film or another play. The fact that it was my play and I had written it and I knew exactly what was coming didn’t make any difference.

I was very surprised to have felt like that, which is a true testament to the quality of the acting: In fact a couple of members of the audience said it was ‘powerful’ – which was a great compliment.

Talking to the actor afterwards, he said he could really feel for ‘Jase’ at that point and had felt he had ‘got inside him’ which for me was an odd thing to hear, but I could see exactly what he meant, and it had definitely showed.

Brilliant.

I must thank the actors Lee Peck and Phil Gerrard for a great performance and bringing the characters of the bullying student ‘Jase’ and the caring teacher ‘Tim’ to life. It was great to watch. It really was a pleasure to work with them and to see the results of their hard work – Thanks guys!

Also, thanks to Mark, Adam, Fleur and Viv, from the Riverside Youth Theatre who came to see the performance. It was so great to have your support, guys – Thanks!

So, the first professional script-in-hand performance (rehearsed reading) of my work has made it from the page to the stage as they say, and boy am I pleased with the results.

It didn’t win the competition, but I’m not surprised given the high standard of the entries. I was up against professional playwrights all used to having their work performed, so it was really comforting to hear that mine was of an equal standard and didn’t stand out as being any different from them in terms of the quality of the work.

So, onwards an upwards. Time to get on with some more writing. I’m working on my next piece of coursework for the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group, a 44 minute radio play suitable for the afternoon slot on Radio 4. The third speaking character that I have been looking for but has held me up for a few weeks, came to me as I was waking up this morning, so I’m really pleased.

I now need to put in a lot of work, as it’s due by the middle/end of February, and the rest of December is basically booked up with event work in Coventry and a Christmas holiday with Rich in Italy. (Lake Garda with day trips to Verona on Chistmas Eve and Venice on Boxing Day! Lovely!)

Right, I’m off…

–

Oh, and a PS: My one act play ‘A Spade, A Clock and Pair of Bloody Scissors!’ (written in February 2006) will be getting performed in the New Year, (4th Jan) but more on that in another post.

Oh and a PPS: Happy Birthday, Dad!

Earlier today, clearing the office, filing and other such mundane things, I came across my folder for Lunch In Venice and realised I haven’t posted anything about the play for ages, and now of course, sadly, it’s over.

But I’m not going to let it go without saying a few well deserved thank yous.

It was great. Truly brilliant. In fact it was the best show I have ever directed. Such a pleasure. And that for me, is purely down to my enthusiastic and brilliant cast. Sunday afternoons have been so much fun!

Mark, Pete, Rianna, Tom, Chloe and Claire all took to their parts very well and got everything they could out of the characters and the script, and it showed too. Fantastic job!

It is a very well written and clever play and these guys jumped at the challenge of getting that across to the audience. It was a real pleasure to watch every night. Thanks guys and well done!

In addition I used five other RYT actors from the other two plays in ‘Triptych’ to play my ‘Troupe of Acrobats’.

Adam, Fleur, Luke, Daniel and Mike did a great job and even though they were only on stage for 90 seconds, they really put their all into it and enhanced the whole production. Thanks guys!

I also need to thank Carole, Alan, Sue, Clare, Kevin, Ian, Chris, Viv, Janette, Ellie and indeed the Tech Team (Zandr, Beth, Charlotte, Richard, Stephen, David and Sherise) for their work behind the scenes for great costumes, set, props, lighting, sound and stage management. Couldn’t have done it without them!

Oh and Rob too for recording the ‘Carnival of Venice’ on his accordian for us. Thanks!

And finally, a big thank you to Ian, Hels, Jon, Tommi, Frank, Mark, Ciara & Ciara’s friend for coming along and watching. It was great to see you and thanks for your support.

So onwards and upwards (though I’ll be hard pushed to top this one!), plenty more in the pipeline…

As well as the homework set after each fortnightly session at the Nuffield Theatre Writers Group, we are also given longer term projects that build on all the skills we have been studying in the sessions with the aim of writing a full length play at the end of the programme.

Our first such project was a short two scene piece (literally two pages) made up entirely of snippets of overheard conversation – I did mine after a trip to Morrisons! It’s here if you are interested.

Our next project (over the summer) was our first ‘play’. The brief was to write a 10 minute play (a popular format in the States, I understand) in 3 acts.

Why 3 acts?

Well, the brief goes back to the time our mentor, Director, John Burgess, was Head of New Writing at the National Theatre.

One year, there was a surpless in the budget and an idea was put forward to commission 10 writers to write a 10 minute play each. It was decided that to make the performances much more interesting for the audience, the plays would need to be written in three acts, that way Act I of the first play could be performed, followed by Act I of the second, and then of the third, and then back to Act 2 of the first play, etc.

The result was an evening of quite different plays, where you didn’t know which installment was coming up next, almost like a ‘soap opera’ with individual stories being played out.

Well, the summer is now over, and Room 20 has made it out of my head, through my MackBook, on to paper and down to Southampton (and in London by now!) and I’m happy with it.

Mind you, it’s taken long enough. I had no idea how much work could possibly be involved in writing a ten minute play.

There were a few last minute changes (including a character name which I knew needed changing, but was stuck on – Thanks Tom) but I have tried to include all the things I have learnt so far, and hope I have been able to write something good and worth reading; a complete play with believable characters and a plot and all in 10 minutes. Not easy, I can assure you.

Anyway, I handed it in last Thursday at our writers group meeting, and as soon as I had we were being set our next project. We now have until the end of February to write a 44 minute radio play.

44 minutes?

Yep, that’s the length needed for the afternoon play slot on Radio 4. We were given three examples, one of which was directed by John, and another was written by Sarah Daniels.

Time to study the format. Gonna be tricky. Haven’t got a clue where to start!

Umm, ideas anyone?

–

Must end by saying some thank yous.

Writing, I’m learning, isn’t necessarily a solitary job. Many people’s time and efforts have gone into Room 20.

I see things, I overhear things, I think things, I listen to things; and they all go into my writing. (Even a comment said to me in passing is now an important part of the end of the play – Thanks Mike.)

Sometimes, however I need somewhere to start. And for this play I ‘interviewed’ some of the young people from the Riverside Youth Theatre, and from that came the idea for the play and the inspiration for the characters and the plot.

So a big-massive-huge-gynormous thank you from me to:

Tom Addy
Mark Forrest
Peter Williams
Annabel Smith
Katherine Parkinson
and
Michael Smith

Room 20 is now here on my blog for downloading if you want to read it.

Any comments good or bad, very much appreciated.

I needed to buy a toaster for my Lunch in Venice rehearsals.

The whole cast eat pizza throughout the play and they will need to practice eating and acting at the same time. Not easy.

I had permission to splash out a massive £3.50 on a Tesco’s Value toaster, then decided to the blow the budget and get a 4 slice model instead of the 2 slice, so I could toast twice as much in one go!

Rich and I went over to Brooklands this afternoon and, having spent 15 minutes trying to get a parking space on the M&S side, (Credit crunch? What credit crunch?) we had a quick forage for the Tesco’s toaster.

No such luck. They had the 2 slice model, but the 4 slice had been discontinued. Oh well. I could have gone for the 2 slice, but something was saying said not to.

Anyway, off we went to Curry’s and Argos round the corner. Rich wanted to look at TV’s and guess what, completely by accident, I came across an Argos Value toaster complete with a ‘cool touch’, a ‘variable browning control’ and wait for it, a ‘cancel button’!

Whooppee!!

And to top it all, it was a white 4 slice model at a bargain £6.92!

Naturally I queued up with my little bit of gold coloured plastic and waited!

- Cashier number 5, please!

Two minutes later I was the proud owner of a FREE 4 slice toaster!

FREE????

Yep – courtesy of the marvelous Marks and Spencer!

You see, I bought some underwear there a couple of months ago – though now they are coming unstitched so I popped into the Brooklands branch after I’d parked and asked for a replacement.

They offered a refund, but I think the poor trainee must have got a little confused.

The underwear had come in a pack of three, and I had bought two packs. However, I’d left two pairs at home, since they were in the wash, and so she had four pairs in front of her, which I dutifully pointed out.

“Oh, four”, she said, and promptly typed x4 into her till, refunding me 4x£3 for two packs of value underwear at £3 per pack! So, £10 up since I had two pairs at a pound each at home in the wash, I was able to get a toaster effectively for free and still be £3.08 in credit!

Thanks M&S – RYT will be making very good use of their FREE value toaster, and I’ve got another £3 to buy some more value underwear!

Well, it was sunny yesterday. Not particularly warm sunshine – it being the end of September and our little planet being farther away from our star at this time of the year – but sunny all the same.

I spent the afternoon in the company of some great young people from the Riverside Youth Theatre. I’ve got to know them well over the past year and have the pleasure of working with a small group of six of them as we rehearse Nick Dear’s Lunch in Venice.

Having spent the previous week on an in-depth script discussion and detailed read through followed by some characterisation exercises, we moved on to blocking this week.

We started by watching a slide show of the various landmarks and views of Venice and it’s culture as highlighted in the script, then worked out all the french scenes in the text and looked a little at some of the beats, then after a quick run round to inject some energy, we started the blocking process.

Normally, I have to say, I tend to use the pre-blocking method, ie: plan everything – or most of it anyway – beforehand and then just tell the actors where they’re moving, changing things as you go along if bits dont work quite as you thought they would. Certainly easier with larger casts; and for smaller less experienced ones too.

Well, with this cast and this play, I have taken the decision specifically not to do any pre-blocking at all. A first for me, since I am heavily relying on the actors to know and understand their characters and the play enough to be able improvise the blocking as we go a long: Finding out what works and what doesn’t.

After a little awkwardness to start off with (where I was seriously questioning if I’d made the right decision: having only covered the first page in the first half hour) I was pleasantly surprised to find that the whole cast took it in their stride and postively relished in the idea of being allowed to be a big part of the blocking process.

Far from the usual: “Where do you want me?” or “I don’t know where I’m supposed to be.” I was generally getting the: “I think I should be here at this point. Is that okay?”.

In fact, it very quickly got to the point of some major discussions on the characters and indeed their status in the positioning on the stage at various times.

Ben: – “I think Harley should be like sat on the other side of Bianca. He’s needs to be on the edge since he’s like really on the outside. Of the group I mean. He’s like trying to fit in but it’s only the start.”

Bianca: – “Yeah. I agree. Also means my line to Conrad makes more sense that way since I don’t have to talk across Harley.”

There were times when I was wondering who was actually directing. But it was a really great feeling! A joint ownership of the production.

Brilliant.

When we put together the first half a dozen pages we’d worked on, and ran it through to see who could remember what, each of them did remember, and it looked a fantastic. Obviously I’ll be working on honing specific detailed ‘business’ but the general positions and moves of the characters looked great.

It was a joint effort and everyone had a say. Whenever we had conflicting ideas about a certain move we invariably tried both and found out which worked and which didn’t. The end result was that everybody felt they moved ‘naturally’, and not simply because they had to.

Bloody hard work, mind!

After a couple of hours of this intense way of working, I was shattered. (Probably why I have a headache today!) We all discussed how the afternoon had gone and everyone commented on how much they felt they had really got into the play and their characters, and so quickly too.

We were all surprised; most of all me, I think. Young people need to be given much more credit and be allowed to experiment more. I can honestly say the results speak for themselves.

This is going be a good production, and we’ve only had two weeks of rehearsal!

So, more actor-led blocking next Sunday.

Lets hope the sun is shining again so we can be down in the park by the river. Being outside was quite a new expereince for us all too. Since the play takes place in a square in Venice in the heat of a summer’s day, it’s very apt that we should be blocking it by the Thames in the sunshine.

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Lunch in Venice by Nick Dear will run from 4th-6th December at the Riverside Arts Centre in Lower Sunbury. I’ll be setting up a group on facebook to help promote it.

CAST:

• Harley – Peter Williams
• Ben – Mark Forrest
• Bianca – Rianna Dearden
• Conrad – Tom Addy
• Emmy – Chloe Gay
• Vivi – Claire Leonard

(Oh, and since Vivi only appears in the last third of the play, I have asked Claire to be my Assistant Director, which has already proved to be another excellent decision!)