With the rehearsal process for HERE beginning last Saturday, just a week before the performances, co-directors Richard Copperwaite and Rob McGough have had a hectic but exciting few days. They took time out to talk to TNS about what sets HERE apart from more traditional theatre – and why they think their piece will have audiences coming back for more.
Can you explain what ‘immersive and interactive theatre’ is?
Richard: Immersive theatre is a style of theatre where you try and destroy the fourth wall. The audience are no longer just sitting in an auditorium, they are actually in amongst the actors, so you get a chance to take them away into a completely different world.
Rob: What we’re planning on doing is setting up this whole world, this new environment, which is going to be quite strange for the audience. There’s lots of different ways in which they can interact with the action; we’ve got some silly things going on, which should be fun, but also some other things which are genuinely quite shocking. There’ll be choices which the audience will have to make, which will actually affect how the characters interact with each other. They’ll be able to find out about the characters by looking around them and taking in the scenario they’re in, as well as physically chatting to them and working out their personalities.
So it is quite a big challenge for both ourselves and the actors, but it’s one which everyone has been embracing so far.
So will the characters be improvising during the performance, or have you tried to prepare for a few different storylines?
Richard: Of course we can’t possibly prepare for every eventuality, but the best thing we can do is to give the actors the tools they need to be able to deal with as many situations as possible. It really comes down to building up very strong characters, to the point where the actors are able to respond intuitively to whatever the audience is giving them.
The methods we’ve been using to achieve this include things like ‘hot-seating’, which is when the actors try to really ‘become’ their characters, and the rest of us then ask them all sorts of questions about that character’s life – what they do in their spare time, things they enjoy doing, their opinions on certain issues, stuff like that. Some of the questions get really quite personal about the characters, as we encourage them to really probe into their personalities. We’ve presented them with a few nasty moral dilemmas, which can get quite tough for them.
Rob: A lot of the rehearsal process has been just talking about the world that we want to create, as well as the kinds of characters we want to place in that world. We didn’t actually come up with our idea for the environment until the end of last Saturday, which was the first rehearsal day for the piece. The characters then didn’t fully come together until the end of Monday. It all just came out of a discussion between ourselves and the whole of the cast.
Richard: It’s been fantastic because it’s actually gone off in an entirely different direction to any of the ideas which we originally started out with. We thought we knew certain things about how it would probably turn out, but because we’ve sat as a group and discussed the pros and cons of every single idea anyone’s had, it’s ended up going off into completely wild and unexplored territory.
How did you start the devising process?
Richard: We literally started with the ideas people had, and built on what everyone said they liked or disliked about those ideas. Everyone’s been brutally honest and just said if they think something’s terrible, but that’s been what’s made it such a great process, because every time someone has said they don’t like an idea, it’s developed into something better than it was before. We kept going ‘till we found an idea that everyone was comfortable with, and then we started setting everyone’s characters in stone. Again, some people had issues with the characters we were asking them to play, so we were able to change them until they felt happier with them. That’s the beauty of devising a piece, because obviously with a script, you just have to play what’s given to you.
What do you consider to be the most important part of the devising process?
Rob: In this case I would definitely say characterisation, because they really need to be unbreakable. In order to maintain this world, we have to ask of the actors that they don’t break from their characters in any way. In a normal theatre, when the actors have a hundred people looking at them, you have to heighten everything; it has to be exaggerated, compared to the way you would behave in real life. The thing about immersive theatre is that they’re so up close and personal with the audience that they have to be realistic and down to earth - completely believable – and that’s asking a lot of the actors, that’s asking for a lot more detail in their characterisation than they would normally need.
Richard: It’s definitely a challenge - but if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth doing.
Do you prefer co-ordinating a project like this, or directing a more traditional scripted piece?
Richard: I think this production has definitely been more exciting for us. With a script, it’s much more of a set, regimented process; it’s a slow development towards the finished product. With this sort of show, it’s been much more intense, but also much more satisfying to literally see these characters coming to life before our eyes. It’s really been everyone’s creation; everyone’s contributed to it.
Rob: For everyone working on it, it’s their baby, it’s their piece, they’ve watched it grow. I was lucky enough to direct The Pillowman, Theatre Group’s Halloween production last year, which was scripted. It’s almost impossible to compare the different styles of direction, they are so far apart from one another, and they’ve both challenged me personally in very different ways. With a scripted piece it’s a lot more about leadership, whereas this is a lot more about working with people in a team.
Finally, on the production’s website, you claim about HERE that: ‘It will make you laugh. It will make you sick. It will break your heart.’ Do you expect each individual audience member to have a different reaction to the piece?
Rob: There’ll be different stuff going on in every corner of the space. Your opinion will probably be based on how long you spend talking to a certain character.
Richard: Absolutely. In fact we expect that audiences coming along to different performances will all have a different experience – so we think it’s worth coming more than once!
Performances of HERE will begin every two hours at the Student Union this Saturday, with the first performance beginning at 1pm and the last at 9pm. Reserve tickets by emailing here@theatre-group.com.Interactive theatre is the next step on from that - what I like to call breaking down the fifth wall - where the audience actually have a chance to interfere with parts of the story. This is a very new type of theatre; it’s very experimental, and quite risky in many ways, but it’s also really exciting.
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