I’m currently sitting in a music room at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (listening to someone practising the oboe next door) and wondering what to blog about with regard the rehearsal process for liveartshow’s The Future For Beginners. As I’m a writer I’m going to write about…

The writing of the show. It's been a particularly interesting process for me. The show was initially devised as part of the WMC’s Incling scheme (the forerunner to Incubator) and has been developed with the help of actors Matt Bulgo, Bethan Mary-James, Oliver Wood and now Jennifer Adams.

It started life with a single sentence – about a couple who want so badly to end up together they plan the rest of their lives together in great detail. But there’s a problem…

In that first showing at the Weston Studio there were hardly any words. Afterwards we knew that we had an interesting concept but could we sustain it over the period of a whole show? How should the story develop? Last year we tried to answer these question and the upshot was another couple of performances in the Weston – this time, the script was semi-devised. Myself, director Martin Constantine and the two actors came up with the route that we wanted the narrative to take and then we evented it and got the story on its feet, continually refining until we had brought the scene to a place we felt was right.

This third stage has been very different.

In the intervening period we applied for – and got – funding for a national tour and a run at the Edinburgh Fringe. Lots changed with regard to the logistics and planning but there was also an artistic shift:

We re-examined what this story meant to the two characters involved and how that should be represented on stage. The clear, biggest change was that the female character wanted her life to be something other, something that is extra-ordinary. There was, I felt, only one art form that really represented that character’s wants, desire and personality – opera. So, she expresses herself through song – whereas the other character does not.

It was primarily an artistic decision to then write a script (rather than continuing to devise) but also a practical one. We knew that the libretto for the female character had to be set (or fairly set) when it came to rehearsals – giving composer Harry Blake enough time to compose and soprano Jennifer Adams to learn.

So, this is where we are at – second week of rehearsals with a script that has been through a devising and writing process and one in which we have the worlds of opera, ukulele music, video and sound combined.

And, to make things more complicated, the Weston Studio will be dramatically altered for the show…

Following this blog, my next task today is to look at a few bits of text that need changing. The composer and designer are with us tomorrow as is our choreographer, Kylie Smith. It’s going to be a fluid rehearsal process – just the way I like it.

If you want to see the show before it goes to Summerhall in Edinburgh it’s at the WMC next week (Thurs, July 24-26): 

The Future For Beginners at WMC

If you would like to know more about liveartshow:

liveartshow

Best, Alan