Devising Theatre The Massive Way (Pt2)

Part 2: Devising and Rehearsing

SAM SCOTT

This is Part 2 of our blog series on theatre devising.

Welcome back to my next blog post on theatre devising with Massive. This one picks up where the last one left off, and is looking at the planning and devising process from November 2023 until we opened I LOVE YOU G on May 1st, 2024 at Te Pou Theatre.

Devising rehearsals were to begin on March 25th, 2024. We were to work full time 10am-5pm for three weeks and then Monday-Saturday 10am-6pm for two weeks. We would then move into Te Pou for a four day production period prior to opening night on May 1st.

There is lots that only the devising period in the rehearsal room can reveal. But before any of this can happen, one of my responsibilities as a director is to achieve everything else that can be prepared and thought through prior to this rehearsal room time. This allows for maximum use of that five-week period.

It’s a precious time, this pre-devising rehearsal period, where the show is far enough away to feel wonderfully exciting and full of promise. It is always with me every day, and I am ‘dreaming around it.’ I trust in letting things drop into my consciousness without trying to come up with answers, rather, see what presents itself. Like Mary Oliver says, ‘Love the mystery, don’t forget the mystery, be glad of it.’

I realise more and more with creating new work, and with devising in particular, that there is this wonderful juxtaposition between being extremely organised and prepared in order to allow for the unknown and the unnamed to really present itself. It’s letting space, time and knowledge be, so it can land in you. It’s all about trust. Trusting yourself, trusting everyone you work with, trusting the work you have done and the work that will come as a result of that. Trust is your best friend. If I feel scared or anxious I trust that we will find what we need. I love how it’s often like a puzzle to solve… and questions are great for helping you find what might not be working, what is missing, or whatever it is you need in order to make your show.

Between November and March, alongside letting my thoughts about the show develop and ‘land’, this is what we did in anticipation of our devising rehearsal time.

Finalising our creative team was immediately important. Jane Hakaraia, long-time collaborator with Massive Theatre Company, had already been confirmed as our lighting designer. Harmony Hogarth, long-time Massive company member, was confirmed as sound designer/composer.

We needed a set and costume designer, so after several interviews with recommended creatives, we chose to work with Lauren Millar, an emerging designer who had worked on our emerging artists’ production, Heart Go… BOOM! earlier in the year.

We then secured our stage manager, Chiara Niccolini, who I had developed a fantastic working relationship with on the Half of the Sky tour in 2023. Jamie Blackburn at Pilot Productions was our production manager and our General Manager Carrie Rae was going to produce the show. From within Massive, Kate our Marketing and Development Manager and Tane, our Marketing and Development Co-ordinator were marketing the show, alongside social media whizz Taran Maiava-Paris, who we had contracted in.

You can see that when we can, Massive likes to work with people we know and love, and then repeat. We love building on and developing that understanding, care and aroha for the mahi and each other. Complicité is a pou within our kaupapa and it’s key to all our relationships. We desire to have between us the way you are with a friend - that connection, understanding, belief, trust and aroha… plus a cheeky wink in the eye.

We had meetings with both Harmony (sound design/music composition) and Lauren (set and costume design), creating early ideas that later led to formalised ones.

We had a set design by the time we began in March and we had a sound/music ‘library’ of ideas to work with in rehearsal.

Scotty and I met weekly to talk through all manner of things pertaining to the show. Here is some of what we did over these meetings:

• We edited down all the written material we had to a smaller pile.
• We then created a potential narrative flow of the show and the material we would use to inform this.
• We collected photos from the cast which were to be projected in the show, and selected which ones we thought we would work with.
• We planned warms ups and skills to focus on.
• We planned devising processes to use to create material.
• We met with Lauren to design the set
• We met with Harmony to listen to her sound/music offerings and then offer ways to further develop these.
• We created a five-week rehearsal schedule, and included what we hoped to achieve within each week.
• We shared the narrative flow with the cast (they came in to see it and give feedback).
• We met with Chiara (stage manager) to discuss how we would work together and how she would capture our script as it manifested itself.
• We began production meetings with the creative crew.
• We worked on the creative contract with the cast.

MISSION STATEMENT

I LOVE YOU G will be a theatre production that combines heartfelt truths and dynamic physicality. We want it to be impactful.

It will explore the story of Dom, Neils and Beulah’s friendship, how it got fractured and how you worked your way back from this. It is as much about each of you as it is about your friendship.

It is a hard and sometimes uncomfortable love letter to each other. It will require great bravery. It will expose the loud, the soft, the gentle, the hard, the questions and it will always challenge bullshit. No stone left unturned.

We want to lean into all the ways we have made theatre before while remaining open to the new.

We will weave these threads carefully. We will listen, see and feel so as to be alive to what resonates and what we dream around, to create the tapestry of I LOVE YOU G.

We hope I LOVE YOU G will allow the audience to dream around, reflect and have insight into their own lives.

GENERAL TERMS

• All cast members must take full responsibility for maintaining a match level of health and fitness throughout the rehearsal and performance period.
• All members must arrive in good time for the rehearsal or company call unless reasonable excuse or fair warning is given to the stage manager.
• Members of Massive Theatre Company take full responsibility for maintaining the cleanliness of the workspaces.
• The use of alcohol and/or drugs will not be tolerated at any time, nor will the after effects of the same.
• Equipment: props and costumes must not be handled or acquired except in rehearsals or performances.
• The Director agrees to give fair notice of rehearsal calls.
• Artistic and casting decisions are the responsibility of the Director.

PRINCIPLES

I LOVE YOU G will be a theatre production that combines heartfelt truths and dynamic physicality. We want it to be impactful.

It will explore the story of Dom, Neils and Beulah’s friendship, how it got fractured and how you worked your way back from this. It is as much about each of you as it is about your friendship.

To work for open unbiased, constructive, and clear communication.

• To each day be focused, punctual, prepared, reliable, and committed to contributing to the work.
• To foster a fresh, supportive, fun, and creative working environment.
• To realise we are ambassadors of Massive Company and to act with integrity, honesty, and pride at all times.
• We will respect and honour the stories we’ve been trusted with and the script they will become.
• We will aim to create a supportive whānau environment where trust is paramount so that risk is encouraged and treasured.
• We will be brave, bold, disciplined, and work for excellence.
• We will care for our health and be responsible for our own wellbeing through the process.
• We will listen, be present, and see what’s possible.

Signed: (Everyone involved signed this contract).

For our Le Va piece, many devising layers and explorations fed into our final creation:

We got the boys to brainstorm ideas individually on big bits of paper about what le va was to them. We gave them these provocations:

Feels like?
Sounds like?
Looks like?
Elemental?
Physical manifestation?
Understanding of it?

• We restricted them by having timed moments to do this in. We often work in this way, to gather the instinctive responses.
• Explored movement qualities through a variety of physical devising prompts that might be of the Le Va ‘world’.
• We contracted the wonderful Tupe Lualua to lead some workshops in Siva Samoa. Tupe taught a beautiful chant Laumei Faiaga.
• We discovered that the chant captured so many elements of le va, so we decided we wanted to open the show with this chant, starting in the dark, so only the breathing and then the voices were heard at first. We wanted it to be mysterious, other worldly. We played with it being slow and whispered and settled on working with that as capturing the feel we were interested in for le va.
• Tupe encouraged them in another session to work from their own ‘storied selves’ in creating the movement they would use as they sang the chant. We played with this.
• Eventually we set each person’s piece so that the physical was uniquely theirs and rehearsable.
• We also played with the length of the piece by trying different lengths of the chant.
• Once we had this shape, we worked on creating the whole piece, setting it and rehearsing it.

As we came to each piece we were to make, we looked at what form might be best for it. Most of the time we already knew what it would be, but sometimes we completely surprised ourselves. ‘We,’ being the boys, Scotty and me.

We would then explore and play in this form to find the way of the piece before beginning to detail and get into the specifics of devising it.

Every day of our five weeks was a big day of richness, even when we didn’t always get what we wanted or were still searching to find it.

The more we created, the more I had to reflect on what we had, what we still needed and how we would devise this. I always feel that I can’t really relax until the show is made, complete. It’s not an anxious state, just an alert one where I keep seeing, looking, listening and imagining about what we have and what we don’t.

Usually after each rehearsal day, I stay in the space and spend about another hour thinking on the day’s mahi. I look at all the material that Scotty and I created a potential narrative flow with, alongside what we are actually creating, and see what we need. I do the same in the morning, about one to two hours before rehearsals start. This is when I think about music we might use for pieces and re-think the day, the order, and see what is landing in me.  It’s all part of completing the puzzle.

I spent a lot of time in the final week of rehearsal editing everything. How could we best tell this story, while still leaving lots for the audience to breathe into and experience? I loved this editing and being very particular.

It took us about three versions of creating the ending of our show, particularly the chunk that leads into Dom’s final piece and Breathe In Breathe Out.

We spent a day editing this piece on the floor and rehearsing it so that we only had glimpses of what Neil was feeling and also pulling back on what he revealed to Dom and Beulah, so that when he came out of the bathroom it was a shock to both the audience, Beulah and Dom. We continued to tweak this throughout the rehearsals and the season, as Scotty and I listened and watched how it was with the audience.

We completely re-worked/re-wrote the last pieces that Dom, Beulah and Neil did as ways of addressing their individual upset from the night. We realised the pieces we had were way to easy and made a mockery of the 18 months they had not talked about it. We had to really mine into and ask them to be courageous about the content in order for this to work in taking us to the end of the show.

It is full testament to Neil, Dom and Beulah’s courage and desire to ‘leave no stone unturned’ that they came up with the pieces they did. Neil speaking to his jealousy of Beulah, Dom addressing being a lazy friend to Neil, and Beulah admitting how hard it was to show his soft and vulnerable side.

We worked these on the floor to find the best dynamic for how they shared these with each other, and again we kept tweaking these through the season to keep them potent and true.

There was LOTS of material we never used, that was in the narrative flow line we had created prior to devising/rehearsals starting. This is often the case in devising a show.

Scotty and I had thought our show should be one hour long more or less. So we used the timing of our pieces and what they were adding up to, as well as the content we were creating to measure the balance of everything and the telling of this particular story.

I have a strong reaction to long shows and also to shows which have intervals. On the whole, I don’t like either. I want to make sure that everything in a show is justified and needed to being there. I would rather an audience was left wanting more, than wishing that they had had less.

We had our finished show on our final Saturday of rehearsals. We ran it, and it was the show we wanted and had been striving to create every time we had to go back and re-work, re-make, re-think. We had one of our long-time Massives watching that final run and as soon as it finished he came over to me and said, “I need a hug miss.” He cried in my arms, and this made me doubly sure we had the show we wanted.

There is lots I haven’t talked about here - there is so much to talk about when creating a show. But I hope this gives you some insight into devising Massive style.