RADA Blogs

It was a great experience to share the project after all that work; it really was a project that could have gone a thousand different ways!

Somewhere in the rehearsal process, I had almost forgotten that we would be doing it in front of an audience, so when the opening night finally came, it was a really weird feeling. I loved seeing how the piece changed every time we performed, depending on the audience and the energy and togetherness of the company. One evening for example, Matthew was doing one of his scenes where he screams at the audience and a woman stood up and screamed back! It was fantastic! It’s amazing to be a part of a piece that invokes rebellion in the audience.

The company sometimes had good and bad days as well. We had days where we were all loving and happy and in tears because we knew we would all miss each other so much, and then we had days where we were fighting like cats and dogs and just wanted to get on with it so we could go home to bed.

We are now five weeks (can you believe it?) into the devising process for our final show, The Ecstasy and the Ecstasy working with director Jon Stancato, who came flying in from America to share his insights with us. So far, it has been a very productive and interesting journey.

We started by getting used to Jon’s methodology in the first week, focusing particularly on the body and exploring the range of the human voice. The voice work was absolutely revelatory and really transformative; I discovered parts of my voice I had no idea existed.

For the last few weeks we in the Lab have had the honour of working with the brilliant Izumi Ashizawa, devising using the methods, techniques and principles of Asian theatre, such as Nôh, Kabuki, Butôh and those of Tadashi Suzuki.

I wish I could put into words how many windows and doors in my mind these weeks with her have opened. Each day was an incredible journey where we used our bodies to create stories devising short pieces and then using these as pieces of a puzzle to fit into other devised pieces.

The intensity, focus, discipline and physical precision of this work is incredible (even now, my thighs are burning just from thinking about the Suzuki classes...) and brought the MA company forward into a new place.

The life in the Lab is always a busy one - since coming home from Greece we’ve had a very eventful month (yes, it’s been a month already!).

In the last two weeks we’ve had the great pleasure of being visited by two amazing playwrights, Tim Crouch and Simon Stephens, both of whom are among my favourite contemporary writers.

Their workshops were extremely interesting and I feel like I have gained a new perspective and understanding on the role of the writer. The workshops also lined up very nicely with our Creative Writing classes with Tom Hunsinger, encouraging us to pick up a piece of paper and simply start writing. This is one of the things I really love about the Lab Life – how we are encouraged to make our own work as well as working on plays and scenes by other writers.

These last few weeks of the Lab-life have been extremely eventful. We spent all of the Easter holidays rehearsing for our performance of The Eumenides, a devised version of Aeschylus’s play, which we performed in Greece two weeks ago.

Our trip to Greece was truly a life-changing experience for all of us in the company. We not only got the honour of visiting this incredibly beautiful country with all its astonishing nature and beauty while being hosted (and well fed!) by an amazingly generous group of people, but we also had the unique experience of performing a Greek play in the 2500 year old Amphi-theatre of Ancient Messene in the Peloponnese.