The Other Way Works

Two great actor/devisers helped Katie and I in the afternoon to begin to play with the instructional side of the piece. Gareth Nicholls and Lucy Ellinson listened, in turn, to both the male and female sides of the story – we also gave them specific, physical instructions to carry out.

Watching from a distance, we were able to see at which points the two participants interacted and where they were disconnected from each other. Afterwards we quizzed Gareth and Lucy on their experiences. They both expressed a greater desire to connect with the other participant. Currently we have not created many opportunities for interaction. The actors felt as though they were very much in their own world however there were a couple of ‘tingly’ moments as Gareth called them. He liked watching Lucy walk away from him at the very end of the male story. How do we make this ‘tingly’ for the female side of the story though? There is lots more to play with here and having physical bodies there really helps us with this.

We spent some time having a go at different actions which the two participants could do around the bandstand. A bit of eye contact and subtle flirting through the railings is a particular favourite. Anytime the two participants come closer together, the energy is raised and the stories really seem to take off. So some real potential to create powerful moments in these interactions.

The trick will be connecting the text with the actions in each story and then connecting the two stories with each other as well as the two different sets of actions. Sorry, did I hear someone say, ‘Well The Other Way Works always does like a challenge? Us? Nah!

Bandstand, development blog post by katie. Tags: west park