Becoming Ben: An actor’s development

‘Actors must reach out from their habitual selves towards a character, rather than imposing themselves on a character’ (Alfreds, 2014, 204).

Ben, one of the central characters to the narrative of ‘Suitcases in the Hallway’, was without a doubt one of the toughest roles that I, as an actor, have faced. The horrendous and vile act that has happened to Ben and the way in which he copes with it was something that I approached with considerable delicately. I initially followed John Abbott’s advice on how to begin the rehearsal process. On my first read through of the finished script, I followed Abbott’s advice of approaching it ‘as objectively as possible’ (Abbott, 2012, 61) and making ‘notes as you go along’ (Abbott, 2012, 61) to gain clear picture of the events of the play. I then compiled three lists from the quotes I gathered from the play to form a basis for my portrayal of Ben: ‘Everything my character has said about himself’, ‘everything other characters have said about my character’ and ‘everything my character says about other characters’. With these lists completed, I had a rough outline of how I would portray Ben. I therefore began to edit my script in the shape of units, actions and objectives, three key methods of annotating the script that allows us to ‘transform ourselves’ (Alfreds, 2014, 204) into the character effectively.

I then continued with my research into bringing the role of Ben to life. I began to read the stories of those who were survivors of male rape. A prime example of a story I read was of Stuart on the website Survivors UK, who stated that the thing that he was most scared of was ‘the shame the embarrassment what would people think of me, so dirty, disgusting and soulless’ (Stuart, undated). Stuart’s powerful story and the revelation as to why he would not tell anyone led me to pinpoint Ben’s through line, the overall object that informs ‘every scene in which the character appears’ (Alfreds, 2014, 56): Ben seeks to avoid telling Allie the truth in order for her to not be hurt and so that he is not seen by her in a negative way.

The further the process went on, the more I began to feel the angst and despair that Ben was experiencing. Through the writing of inner monologues, improvising ‘the subtext out loud’ (Abbott, 2012, 143) and ‘shifting balance of status’ (Abbott, 2013, 142) between fellow actors in rehearsals, I was able to alter my movement and thus fully develop the character of Ben. I and Catherine Hayes, the actress who portrayed Allie, also discovered more about our characters through our devising of the final scene of the play. Allie’s anger at Ben and the note that Ben leaves her were two pivotal points in the play that I and Catherine devised that allowed us to further understand the emotional strain that both of these characters were going through.

On the night of the show, I decided to write the letter which Allie reads on stage ten minutes before the performance started. This allowed me to effectively engage with and become the character while also giving Catherine (Allie) the chance to feel raw and true emotion on stage when reading the letter for the first time.

Bibliography

Abbott, J. (2012) The Acting Book. London: Nick Hern Books Limited.

Alfreds, M. (2014) Different Every Night. London: Nick Hern Books Limited.

Editing the script

‘Less is more’ (Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1947).

After being presented with the initial script by Alex, I began to edit the play with key points of our manifesto in mind. This was because I wanted our piece to firmly situate itself within the guidelines of our company in order for it to accurately represent what we, as a theatre company, represented.

As we were dealing with extremely sensitive topics, it was important that we as a company approached the subjects in a delicate way. This was especially true with the script. Here was the original monologue written by Alex for Ben, admitting the atrocious act that befell him:

Ben: We’d just left Sarah’s after the party, the cathedral bells had just started to ring. Allie and I were laughing about how drunk Sarah was, she was brilliant, it was a really good night.  We walked down by the river with the moon shining down separating the two paths with a silver carpet. We walked through the town and I held her so close to me, I never wanted to let her go but…after I said good bye at the door and told her I loved her, I…

I didn’t hear them behind me. They said something but before I could turn around then they were holding me. I could feel their hands on me. I could feel their breath on my neck…

…they pushed me against the wall…

…I couldn’t breathe…

…I could feel them…in…

While the monologue was interesting in the way that it depicted the traumatic events of that night for Ben, from an editor’s point of view I felt that I needed to change certain aspects of the speech. This is especially true in regards to the descriptiveness of the monologue. I felt that for the retelling of an event as traumatic as this, Ben’s speech should be more simple, and thus more effective. Therefore, I decided that Ben should struggle with remembering what fully happened that night, making it more ambiguous and thus a more terrifying thought for the character and the audience. In addition to this, I decided to add subtext in the form of Ben vaguely remembering someone else there that night, a recollection that links to Allie’s monologue regarding herself and Ben bumping into ‘his weird flatmate’. Here is the edited version of Ben’s monologue:

Ben: It was after Sarah’s party. I don’t remember much of that night but… I… I know Allie was hammered. We left before everyone else did. We walked by the river and then cut through the town. I think I remember someone else but…  I don’t know… I held her so close to me, I just wanted to protect her, to never let her go… I never thought that I… I said good bye at her door and told her I loved her, I…

I didn’t hear them behind me. Before I knew what was happening, I was against the wall… I could feel their… I could feel their breath on…

…I couldn’t breathe…

…I could feel…in…

Bibliography

Van der Rohe, L.M. (1947) Quote: ‘Less is more’.

The Arts Council: Creating theatre in modern Britain

‘Art and culture help us build better places to live and work, and improve our health and well-being’ (Arts Council England, 2016).

While we had established our theatre company and awaited for our first play to be completed, we of course had to look at the current policies of the Arts Council and make sure that the theatre we would create was relevant and ultimately eligible for funding. The Arts Council website states that art ‘and culture can help us tackle society’s greatest challenges. They bring us together as communities, helping us connect with one another to combat social exclusion and achieve great things’ (Arts Council England, 2016) as well as declaring that ‘participation in the arts can contribute to community cohesion, reduce social exclusion and isolation, and make communities feel safer and stronger’ (Arts Council England, 2016). For our company, this was vital. As we wanted to challenge taboos and look at issues within local communities, the belief of the Arts Council ‘that art and culture really do make a difference’ (Arts Council England, 2016) made us realise that our company was align with their current values.

However, we also had to look at the policies that the current government that was in place were in favour of with regards to the arts. The ‘Guardian’s Jonathan Jones claims that another five years of Cameron’s premiership will reduce the arts to a national joke’ (Battersby, 2015), making us realise that our company must strive to be fully align with funding bodies and create relevant theatre that can survive in what appears to be a dark time for the arts. This ultimately motivated us to further pursue theatre that was hard-hitting and dealt with relevant and serious issues and taboos.

Bibliography

Arts Council England (2016) Arts Council England website. London: Arts Council England. Available from:  http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/ [accessed 21 February 2016].

Battersby, M. (2015) What will happen to the arts under another Tory government?. The Independent, 8 May. Available from http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/what-will-happen-to-the-arts-under-another-tory-government-10237076.html [Accessed 23 February 2016].

Becoming Pushing Boundaries

“The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.” (Herman, 2001, 1).

 From the very beginning of the process, our group wanted to create a theatre company that dealt with issues that had an impact upon society. From satire to comedy to political theatre, the primary aim and style of our company was continuously changing through our collective and individual research. By looking at plays from Simon Stephens and David Hare, we became interested in producing theatre that focused on national political issues. With this in mind, we decided to call ourselves X-Pose Theatre Company, a company that primarily focused on the political matters of the nation.

X-Pose logo

With our theatre company formed, we then decided to designate ourselves roles that would suit our skills and ultimately benefit the company. As I have always been heavily involved with acting, I opted for my primary role to be that of an actor, with editor of the script as my secondary role.

While at first we were content with the route we were heading down, we quickly realised that in order to connect with the city that our performance would essentially be based in, we had to instead focus on societal issues that affect the Lincoln community. This view is evident within our manifesto as we want audiences to ’be able to relate and connect with the characters and issues’. In addition, after watching LaPelle’s Factory production CLOUDCUCKOOLANDERS (LaPelle’s Factory, 2016), a performance that focused on cinematic conventions and, most importantly for us, taboo subjects, we decided that our theatre company should additionally focus on issues that people are often too scared to talk discuss. This new route that we were about to go on ultimately led us to question the name of our theatre company. We felt that the name X-Pose was too unapproachable for a member of the public to express their true opinions and views. Therefore, after discussing a variety of names such as ‘All out’, ‘Limelight’ and ‘Subconscious’, we eventually decided on the name Pushing Boundaries. With this in mind, we decided to rebrand ourselves as a company that focuses on local issues as well as bringing to the forefront taboo subjects.

Pushing Boundaries logo.

With our rebranding in full swing, the group decided that going out into the Lincoln community to gather the opinions of both students and locals would be a great place to understand the issues that affect Lincoln. Through our group’s extensive research, we decided upon four issues that we wanted to hear the Lincoln community’s opinion on: drug/alcohol abuse, club culture, homelessness and unemployment. With this in mind, myself and Catherine Hayes created a questionnaire that we took out into the Lincoln community to understand what issues the Lincoln community were concerned with. Our results surprised us. Nearly all of the questionnaires that were completed stated that homelessness was the key issue that those who lived in Lincoln were concerned with. With this information, our chief writer Alex Marshall began to write a script that incorporated these issues. The research that we conducted within the community led to us adding a major point into our manifesto: ‘we shall do research into the communities that we visit so make every show relevant to each audience’. However, while these matters were indeed taboo subjects, we felt that there was a more significant taboo subject that we could approach within our first play. After discussions about club culture and the safety of women walking home from a night out in Lincoln, we realised that none of us thought about the safety of men. This therefore led to us wanting to talk about the safety of men walking home alone on a night out and the dangers that they faced. While atrocious crimes such as assault and mugging came to our minds, none of us seemed to think about the possibility and seriousness of male rape. This topic grasped our attention as we suddenly realised that this a very serious topic that is rarely talked about within society.

And just like that, we had it. A solid foundation for a play. And with this, Alex wrote Suitcases in the Hallway.

Bibliography

Herman, J.H. (2001) Trauma and Recovery. London: Pandora.

(2016) CLOUDCUCKOOLANDERS [live performance]. Performed by LaPelle’s Factory. Lincoln: Lincoln Performing Arts Centre, January.