The Stute Theatre Blog

During drama school, I knew I wanted to make my own work, but what?

By the time I’d figured it out - BAM, the pandemic swooped in.

No Gradfest, no graduation ceremony and no goodbyes, we had to step out into this strange new world adapting and discovering innovative ways to produce theatre. It hasn’t been easy.

By Charlie Ellen-Ayers

Fables At The Kitchen Table, Graduate Theatremaker Opportunity

Yesterday I had my first day observing Sarah and Soph work on ‘Fables At The Kitchen Table’. It was amazing to be back in a rehearsal room and I loved seeing how they worked with the script and their process.

‘Fables At The Kitchen Table’ is a Stute Theatre production delivered in partnership with Manchester Libraries, Spot On, Tameside Libraries and Wirral Libraries, supported by Arts Council England and Big Imaginations.

We are seeking a recent graduate to participate in a 6 day paid work experience placement during February and March 2021.

After months and months of hard work, technical meetings, trials, rehearsals and over 200 live 1-1 performances, we’re now drawing to the end of a nine-week tour of our latest production ‘You Don’t Know Me But…’.

This 20-minute audio play explores real stories of care and, unlike anything we’ve ever tried before, is performed live over the phone to one or two people at a time.

I’ve been busy working away on some new storytelling videos with Spot On Lancashire and Manchester Libraries!

After weeks of planning and remote rehearsal, we were finally able to share our show with a live audience from a secure (socially distanced) studio. It was a nerve-wracking, exhilarating, wonderful experience.

When I think of the Brontë sisters working away at the Parsonage, I don’t imagine them silently scribing poems, isolated, lost in their own thoughts. I imagine them deep in discussion, testing ideas and forming arguments. I imagine Charlotte on her feet, pacing, as she pinpoints the precise combination of words to describe the rage flowing through her. I imagine Anne, elbow deep in soil, firing new points of view at her sisters, as she plants and plots to unearth a future narrative. I imagine Emily kneading dough, devising scenes and discovering her stories aloud. I imagine them travelling, hiking, teaching and crafting. I imagine them lifting, sifting, stitching and grafting. I see them honing their words out loud and on their feet.

Their world may seem isolated at first glance, but I think their work was shaped by an active connection with others.

Reflecting on adapting to working in this new way, I have certainly learned several things about my process. It became really apparent that clarity was king. When you are in the same room as the actor, often notes about physicality can be given through your own body language. Sometimes you don’t really need words at all when exploring some moments of movement because you are present in the space and there is an unspoken communication that is rich and alive. Being stuck behind a screen with a delay in the feed can very easily lead to a creative disconnect, especially given that Sophia has essentially been rehearsing in isolation. And so,it was language that because the primary tool to convey notes and ideas. Instead of using all the words it was important to choose only the best words.

I am a text fanatic. It is the absolute guide to all I do and I love work that arrests the audience’s ear as much as it does the eye. We live in an ever-increasing visual world; sometimes, I believe, at the detriment to the clarity of the story for our ears. Therefore, in true Elizabethan fashion, we are using our remote rehearsals to push how the play meets the ear and how the characters use and need language. Sophia has written an incredible piece of work; it is a playground for the actor, it has rich use of rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and punctuation; it is laced with punchy spoken word.

So… Here we are. Day one of rehearsing alone in my living room, connecting with Bryn Holding our Director via a video link and phone calls.

It’s been a challenging but rewarding day. We have managed to work in beautiful detail on the spoken word text in the show. There really is a lot of very valuable text work you can do over the phone! I’ve also been working through specific rehearsal tasks set by Bryn to get the show back on its feet and then filming them to send for notes. This has been more of a challenge due to the dreaded ‘wheel of doom’ rearing its awful head, as my sluggish internet uploads videos! But we will plough on, because it’s all actually starting to feel quite appropriate.