Lovesong by Frantic Assembly (and Abi Morgan)

"Lovesong intertwines the lives of a couple in their 20s with the same man and woman a lifetime later. Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness.Lovesong intertwines the lives of a couple in their 20s with the same man and woman a lifetime later. Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness."


I can safely say we all left the theatre yesterday felling truly inspired and touched by this fantastic production. I found the use of physicality, movement and gesture particularly impressive but not overpowering. The biggest thing that stood out for me was the attention to detail in the piece. The younger 'Maggie' repeating gestures of the older 'Maggie and vice versa was a lovely use of repetition and represented the commonalities in the past and present self. The habits and everyday things we do (whether conscious or unconscious) are what makes us individuals so I really want to play with the idea of what it feels like to have someone else repeat or take on your unique gestures and movements.


Due to the piece we are creating being just 20 minutes long, as a company we feel that every second should count and therefore we want to pay particular attention to precision. The refining of the piece will come at a later date, I am enjoying the freedom of our initial devising process and really like Scott Graham's (Co-Founder of Frantic Assembly) idea of "throwing stuff at the wall to see what will stick"......


Michelle


(Movement Director)

Changing Perspective

As part of a physical warm-up in rehearsals we were using the wall to stretch and this led to some experiments with perspective.

It was strange when our eyes/minds gradually shifted the floor and the wall so that it looked that we were sat on the floor, which was actually the wall! We played about with how this might look on film and as a photo.

This reminded me of how memory can become distorted - we sometimes alter a memory, or remember something differently to make it fit with other things, for example other people's memories. I hope to explore more how this shifting in perspective can be expressed.

Emma

Ideas!

On Thursday we had a company meeting to discuss our many ideas and thoughts about our upcoming show. We covered a wall in colourful post-its - at this stage we didn't want to filter anything: everybody voiced whatever they were thinking/had thought about the piece. It was fantastic to bounce ideas off each other - the way individual thought processes develop from our associations is fascinating (and helpful!)

We then moved on to trying to draw what we were thinking. I asked the company to do this following reading about Lepage's practise of asking his performers to draw at the beginning of rehearsals, he writes "drawing and using images is a good way of finding people's inner visions" (Irvin (ed.) 2003 Directing for the Stage, RotoVision: Switzerland).

We each used different materials to draw with (marker pens, pencil and rubber, coloured crayons and ball-pen) which, I think, led to different styles of responses. It was interesting to see the common elements - lots of faces, books, moving figures - and also see the use of space on the page. I found I had drawn many more things than I had spoken about when discussing ideas with words. I was especially interested in how I felt able to express some of my thoughts in terms of lines and shapes (wavy or dotted lines and circles) but would struggle to express this in language. I hope to continue to use various ways of thinking about and expressing our ideas and thoughts - including more drawing, physical movement, creating or choosing music and use of space.

Emma

A thought from Lepage

Following an interesting session at CSSD about directing, I have begun some research into other theatre director's techniques and working practises. Today I have been reading some of Robert Lepage's thoughts and feel particularly inspired by this quote:

"You have to put yourself in an environment where you just kind of throw things, create chaos if you want some kind of order to find its way" (Irvin (ed.) 2003 Directing for the Stage, RotoVision: Switzerland).

This reflects how I have enjoyed working in the past - and has encouraged me to enjoy the chaos and the unknown because that is where creativity lies.

Emma (Director)

Frantic Assembly Workshop

I realised just how hard Diana, Michelle and I worked on Saturday when I woke up this morning. Oh how my  muscles ache!!!

What a brilliant and stimulating workshop, though! Frantic Assembly's Krista Vuori led us through an intense day of lifts, physical tasks and lots of press ups...We learnt how a series of neutral movements could be adapted and layered to create interesting characters and narratives. Playing with tempo, intention and eye contact stories evolved and we generated some really interesting raw material.

I can't wait to take what we have learnt into the rehearsal space and see how we can marry this with our existing ideas and kick start the creative process!

Frantic's motto is to always move forward and improve each time a task is repeated - something for us to keep in mind. We should probably keep the press ups in mind too...let's get physical Page92!

A name!

After much discussion, many cups of tea and lots of laughter we have decided on our company name - Page 92. It really feels like we are on our way now - timetabling our rehearsals, completing risk assessments and beginning many creative conversations. Looking forward to what the next eight weeks will bring!