Act 2, Scene 5: Islanders.

Sunny Landings.
Stepping off the aeroplane onto sunny Jersey soil with the other cast members felt like the beginnings of a holiday! We enjoyed an afternoon and evening off, giving myself, Alastair, Adam, Chris and Rach time to check into our lovely cottage in St. Clement, stock up on supplies from the local shops, build a big log fire, and share a lovely meal and wine. All before the topic of conversation inevitably led to the task ahead of us the next morning - the prison workshop. Chris would start us off with the 'eyes up, eyes down game' where you stand in a circle eyes down and when 'eyes up' is called you  look immediately up at another person in the circle. If they happen to be looking at you at the same time you're out. It's a simple game but a good starter. It focuses concentration and is a good one to do with a new group of people as you get the chance to have a really good look at each other and make a connection. I volunteered to lead a rhythm exercise. It's one that the wonderful actress/director Heather Williams taught me when I was with the Bristol Old Vic Young Company. I still love using it to this day. It involves everyone in the room, it gets people really listening and tuning in to each other and is just really good fun. Phil would then lead a 'status' exercise using a pack of playing cards before all of us showing the prisoners a selection of scenes from the play to discuss and workshop.
I went to bed that night rather excited about everything the next day had in store for us, the people we would meet, and our first performance at the Jersey Opera House.


A morning at HMP La Moye.
On Tuesday morning the cast, Alastair and the Opera House Theatre Director Jasmine Hendry, met at the theatre where we were collected by minibus to head off to the prison. On arriving at the H.M.P La Moye, our ID's were checked and we handed in our valuables at the reception area. The automatic door hissed and slammed shut behind us as if we were in an airtight container. Two guards then led us through a door onto an open pathway scaled by the barbed wire topped prison walls. I could feel the extreme height of the walls and buildings around me, starkly imposing in the bright sunshine and the visceral reality of being 'imprisoned' was suddenly very strong. We were then led inside to the education centre, a small carpeted room where we were shortly followed by the 26 male prisoners led in to meet us. As I made my way around the room shaking hands and saying hello to everyone I was struck by how young many of the men were - the majority being in their 20's to early 30's. Similar to the convicts we meet in the play, we later discovered most of the men had been locked up for 'low-grade' crimes that involved theft, drugs or alcohol related issues, and the maximum sentence any of the them would serve was about 7 years. There are also women inmates at La Moye, but only about 12 or so I was told by Bill Millar, the Prison Governor. As the men and women are kept separate it was deemed best to hold the workshop with the largest number able to attend.

Inside HMP La Moye

The prisoner's engagement with the work was staggering. They threw themselves wholeheartedly into the games and fell silent when we performed our scenes. Every single one had chosen to come along to the workshop - it was not compulsory - and it was evident in that they were some very astute and articulate young men in the room. And why wouldn't there be? Any assumptions or preconceptions I subconsciously had about they way 'they' would behave were blown out of the water once I realised there was no distinguishing feature about this group of men other than they were all individuals with their own stories and and circumstances that led them to ending up here. At the end of one scene, where Harry and Ducking go rowing, Alastair asked if they had any observations about the characters relationship. One very astute bloke of about 60 piped up "They both need each other but she's the one in control. It's a marriage of convenience". Alastair admitted that that was the most succinct description he'd heard and summed up perfectly what he and the actors had been picking apart over a 4 week rehearsal period! When we performed the Audition scene, their observations about Ralph and his status around the convicts were also spot on. We asked them to place the characters in a line according to who was top-dog in the scene and who had the lowest status. They placed Mary pretty low down in the pecking order, so it was interesting to chat to some of them afterwards about how Mary's status grows throughout the play as she discovers a talent for acting.


Our stint in the prison was already attracting a fair amount of local media attention, so although unexpected i wasn't surprised to see that halfway through the workshop a BBC camera crew walked in and proceeded to film some of the exercises (with the prisoners consent) and conduct interviews with a couple of the guys. It was fascinating to see some of the local coverage discussing whether the prisoners were 'deserving' of this kind of workshop. The play began to feel especially pertinent as the age old argument about punishment versus rehabilitation reared it's head.
You can have a look at the coverage on the links here:
BBC JERSEY       Channel TV news


I think it's fair to say we all saw a something of our characters in the prisoners we met. It was so good to have time to chat to some of the guys afterwards and to get an insight into how they'd ended up here and what their hopes were for the future. At the end of the workshop, a man named Dave (who you'll see in the interview) stuck his hand up. "I just want to say we all thought this morning was just a chance to get a bit of time off work. But it's been really enjoyable. I think we'll all take something away from what we've done today." That felt good. It was just a shame we couldn't go back and perform the whole play for them. I know we'd all have liked to.


Performing at The Opera House.
The Jersey Opera House is a beautiful old theatre, originally built in 1868, with a stunning auditorium crowned with huge sparkling chandelier. It really is a gorgeous stage to look out from, and could easily be compared in appearance to a West End theatre.
We had a fab opening night, and a good crowd, but sadly despite my hopes that the poor weather might draw in the punters, our numbers dwindled throughout the rest of our run there. This seemed at odds with the theatre's best marketing efforts and the copious radio, TV and newspaper coverage we had for the show.  On Thursday we had a visit from some local corporate sponsors who provided a lovely little reception afterwards where we got to mingle and like true cliched actors, raid the buffet table. They were very complimentary about the show and it was nice to get some first hand feedback as well as having a chat about Jersey's fascinating  history. Despite the terrible weather in the latter half of the week a few of us did take the opportunity to explore, and myself Rach Alastair and Chris enjoyed the long coastal walk from St Clement into town. I always forget how good it feels to breathe in some fresh sea air.

Chris and Phil wonder which way is out.

On Sunday we got up at the crack of dawn and headed to the airport fearful that after 2 days of heavy fog and numerous plane and ferry cancellations we may have been island bound for longer than planned. Fortunately, after just a 2 hour hour delay we took to skies, looking ahead to our next ventures to the somewhat less continental Newbury and Peterborough!




Something about Mary: Meeting Timberlake!

On Sunday evening, fresh from the plane, I attended a wonderful talk at the Freud Museum hosted by Timberlake Wertenbaker with actress Dame Harriet Walter. It was thrilling to see Timberlake in the flesh, she's a striking women, elegant but with a wild mop of white tightly curled hair and intriguing french/trans Atlantic accent. I was fascinated to hear her talk a little about her career so far, her time working with Max Stafford-Clark, and her thoughts on the relationship between writing and devising. The main body of the talk revolved around her fascination with the actors process of physically and psychologically inhabiting a character. Timberlake had decided to interview Harriet Walter as part of her research into this subject, and she described the actress as unique in her ability to read a writers mind, This was something that became extremely pertinent when Harriet was creating the role of Biddy in Timberlake's Three Birds Alighting on Field. Harriet described giving life to a character as a two way process. It's the writer who has the incredible task of imagining a person who doesn't yet exist, seeing them in their mind, hearing the words this person could speak, and writing them down. The actor then sees those words and takes the job of physically embodying that person and giving them life. It's a beautiful, almost spiritual image. Harriet talked with wonderful depth and clarity about her approach to the work, her innate ability from a young age to mimic and attempt physically inhabit people she would see in the street. "We only have one life, I'm often told, but some like me make a living out of resisting that fact."


For me the one inspirational nugget I took away was Harriet's mantra before stepping on stage. She looks at herself in the mirror and says "This could be me". I love the directness of that, as a mantra. It's certainly something I try to think about when playing Mary. It means that no character you ever play is beyond reach. It seems particularly poignant after meeting the prisoners this week. Everyone is a creature of consequence. So to put myself in Mary's shoes, if I was so horrendously poor, and had no family left able to support me, why wouldn't I steal to survive? Why couldn't I end up falling so deeply in love that I'd want my sweethearts name tattooed on my thigh? Why wouldn't the pangs of starvation lead me to end up selling myself to someone better off? It's a human instinct to make quick judgements about people. We do it in order to survive. We meet someone and think I don't like her, he's friendly, that man looks suspicious, they seem trustworthy and so on. When approaching a character I have to almost remove that instinct I have when meeting someone for the first time. If in rehearsals I'd made judgements on Mary based on my own lifestyle, or personality, or moral code I'd never be able to really understand why she behaves the way she does in the play. Why she takes the actions she takes. The action that springs to mind is when Ralph announces their first born girl shall be named after his wife Betsey. I had to think hard about Mary and her situation to get away from what my modern day reaction would be to Ralph upon this announcement. Probably a slap in the face! But Mary is silent. I have to think about why she chooses not to speak - whether it's anger, or bafflement, or (perhaps hard to imagine by modern day standards) simply a quiet acceptance.
It's always easy to think "Yes, but I'd never do that". We have to imagine that we are all capable of any human action given a certain set of circumstances.
I remember one day in the green room in Basingstoke talking to a few of the actor's about their methods and approaches to acting. Adam Best, who plays Ross and Ketch, summed up his mantra perfectly: "Nothing human is alien to me".


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