After Everyman

The schedule prior to the first night of a show is usually fairly straightforward.
Monday - last tweaks, tech run.
Tuesday - last, last tweaks, dress run.
Wednesday - last, last, last tweaks, first performance.

The schedule for Everyman ran something like this:
Monday - 12.30am, get up with indigestion.
                2am, begin vomiting.  Continue vomiting/dry retching for five hours.
                7am onwards, try to sleep.
Tuesday - 11am, attempt food.  Nibble corner of toast.
                2pm.  Finish eating first slice of toast.  Sleep.
Wednesday - 11am.  Manage second slice of toast.
                1pm, get out of bed, start pulling props together for show.
                4pm, eat nourishing soup.  Shower.
                5.15pm, arrive at Guildhall.  Set up show.
                7pm, doors open.  Audience arrive.
                7.30pm, down some codine, begin show.

As you may have gathered, the gentle progress of running the show a few times, working on certain scenes, ironing out any remaining line issues, were completely blown away by a bout of gastroenteritis.  And yet, somehow, the show worked.  Did more than work, I think.
I was more than a little nervous about the show before the illness, because I wasn't sure if the audience participation was going to work.  To start with it didn't look like it would.  As the audience came in I asked them to write on a red shirt, my costume, a bad deed, and on a post-it note, a good deed.  Explaining this was a little messy - it really needed a team of people to help the crowd of people through it.  Not so much a problem the first night, where the audience arrived at neat intervals, but a rugby scrum on the second, when everyone arrived at once.  As it were.
The good deeds people wrote fairly quickly and are, as is the nature of anything that sounds a bit worthy, less interesting than the bad.  The good are interesting in terms of what people considered to be a good deed - from the abstract, to the concrete, to the occasional submission that frankly didn't fit the brief.  All are documented and the photos are at the bottom of this blog.
The bad deeds are more fun, the audience allowing their imaginations fly a bit.  Some are fantastical and cruel, some are truly wicked and yet also very human and believable.  It took some people ages to come up with a bad deed, some taking the task very seriously indeed.  My favourite raises an interesting question as to what is a bad deed?  "Not listening when someone is pouring their heart out."  Now, yes, perhaps this is bad, but it suggests the other person doesn't know you're not listening.  You're still there.  Really, what more do they want?  Is that truly bad?  Answers on a postcard.
The atmosphere in the performance space was very positive; as I talked through what the volunteers would have to do, there was lots of back chat and a sense that people were expectant, not uncomfortable with what was about to happen.
The show began.  The opening, a little dance of death which involved carrying a large tree trunk across stage, goes well.  Only the exertion has completely dried out my mouth, so that my first speech becomes a rearguard action of trying to get some moisture going.  I haven't run the show for nearly three days, so I have to get through the first long speeches well to feel comfortable in the show.  Bar one odd jump of a line, I do. We're into open country.  Death talks to Everyman and BAM.  Dry, epic dry.  What comes next?  What comes after next?  What happens at the end of the scene even?  Who am I?  What is my purpose in life?  Come on brain... give me a crumb, something to say, anything... and out comes the next line.  (I only find out it's the next line in retrospect, I believe at the time I must have jumped something - but always go forward, never go back.)  And now, the next hurdle.  Audience interaction.
The character Fellowship has been given to a chap I don't know - much of the audience is made of friends, but Fellowship is an unknown.  He seems enthusiastic.  This could mean he will attempt to do too much... he is first.  I indicate him to come forward, hand him a tankard.  I assume a stance, as his character, and he assumes it too.  And holds it.  Fantastic.  Then, when I talk to him as Everyman, he reacts.  Not a lot, just a little bit.  The man's a natural.  I relax a bit, this presentational device is going to work.  And so it does, even for the more complex stuff later on.
From then on, it generally goes well.  I have only one more big dry, at the end of a section, so I do some prop holding action stuff, before it comes to me.  The show ends.  Applause.  Generally a good response.  Audience members help tidy up and I go home to an egg.  I dearly wanted to have a natter in the pub with the audience, but I can't drink anymore and I needed sleep.
The second night was like the first, just different.  The audience was a bit bigger and the red shirt was now bristling with bad deeds from two audiences.  It also smelt terrible by halfway through the show, but that's what corruption and sin will do to you.
The Summoning of Everyman at the Lavenham Guildhall wasn't perfect, circumstances put paid to that, but it will be the basis for a beautiful show that I will perform wherever there is the right venue and audience for it.  This isn't the announcement of a general tour, because I will only perform it if the space is right, and that kind of scouting is time consuming.  I expect to pull together two or three dates for the autumn.  Perhaps I'll see you there, with your good and bad deeds.

And talking of good deeds...

"Be Helpful" - a useful general good deed hint.

One of these things is not like the other...

And now, your bad deeds!

To avoid going out for a meal...

The top two here are so very human...

Who hasn't coveted their neighbour's shed?

Odd cat theme developing here...

Don't want to know what was done to this toilet.  Just don't want to know.

Everyman - Beware Spoilers

Everyman, Everyman - you are a foxy little minx of a play.  Odd words to begin a piece about what is usually described as a somber play, a solemn play, a play that is - basically - about death.  But to me, as performer of the text, it is a foxy little minx, because it is teasing me with possibilities.
Now, before I go on let me just warn you about spoilers.  I know, this isn't the latest series of Homeland or something similar, this is a five hundred year old play, but the staging of it will be revealed in some detail throughout the next couple of months.  Or the possible staging - some of the ideas mooted here will be dropped or changed, but probably not all that many.  So, if you want to be surprised, stop reading now.
Also, if you want to see the show, book now.  I don't mean this in the usual "please book tickets to validate my life/cover my expenses" way, but in the "I've had to reduce the number of seats available and the show will probably sell out" kind of way.  At present my artistic side is doing battle with my business side, and the art is winning.  I have yet to measure precisely how many seats I will be able to sell, but it isn't going to be many.  If you listen carefully, you can hear my wallet screaming.

So, onto the play.  The Summoning of Everyman has been on the to do list for years.  It has everything I love about an old play - it's simple, it has few characters, it's short.  And it has a cameo appearance for Death, always welcome in any play.  You just can't fail with Death, the dialogue is always cracking - just ask Terry Pratchett.  But it also is a trixy play.  It looks like it is simple, but actually it gets a bit complicated towards the end, all these extra characters appear, and how do you make it connect to people today?  Sure, death is a universal theme, but the play is explicitly Catholic in doctrine, medieval Catholicism to be precise - so there are elements of the play that are alien to us today, even to Catholics.  (Everyman does scourge himself at one point, it's the kind of thing most churches have quietly dropped.)
I've spent years trying to find a route into the text, a way of performing it.  And last year, I found it.  I was in the middle of rehearsing Ghost Storyteller and I wanted a break.  I needed to do text work, but needed to get away from that text.  So, I picked up Everyman and started to read it aloud.  It is a brilliant text, it almost works as an epic poem, if it wasn't for some of the more fiddly bits.  But as I read it, I imagined what it would be like if I was performing it, not just to an audience of many, but to an individual.  If I took someone by the hand and said, they were the character Fellowship, say.  That I talked to them as Everyman, and spoke out as Fellowship to a bigger audience.  That way I could not only make it clear to the audience who all the characters were - there would physically be a person there - but also keep the humanity of it by talking to someone; that this connection would not just be a way of performing a multi-person play as a one person play, but be something that took the play further; that made the play moving and direct in a way that a normal production could not.  I had my hook - this is to be an immersive piece of theatre, interactive.
There will be four layers to the interactivity... as it were.
Firstly, the space will be arranged in traverse, that is the audience will be on two sides facing each other.  The performance area will be a thin catwalk between them.  At no point will the audience be able to escape the reality of the rest of the audience.
Secondly, I will ask the audience to help with something simple, something they can do as they enter the space, something that doesn't worry them.  I'm not sure what this is yet, but it won't be complicated or performed as theatre, it will be something personal.  I don't want this act make people afraid to come, if you just want to sit and watch that will be fine, but it would be nice to find something non-invasive that everyone can do.
Thirdly, I will invite a few people (volunteers) to stand and be acknowledged by the room to be a character in the play.  Literally all they will be asked to do is stand, when asked to, and I will talk to them.  And then sit down again.  This is for the less faint of heart.
Fourthly, I will invite a few people (again volunteers) to be guided by me, to be moved through the space, to sit and even (in one case) lie down on some cushions.  This will be for the enthusiastic and bendable members of the audience.
There is always a slight risk that no one will agree to do the third or fourth actions.  This would be a shame, but I have got a plan B.  But if you come to the show and are willing to give to it, then it will be ten times the show it would be if you didn't. As it were.
So, Everyman, you foxy little minx, what else have you got for me?

NEXT BLOG:  Introductions, Dancing and the performance of God in the play.