Download the particular challenges of writing for outdoor

Writing for Outdoor Performance.
‘The rain is pissing down, some moron in front has the biggest golf
umbrella in the world, and the actors are just shouting at us’
The first play I wrote for ‘the outdoors’ was for London Bubble. I knew
nothing about the differences between making plays outdoors or in. I
phoned up Sue Hill who had plenty of experience with Knee High and
their splendid outdoor work in the south-west.
She gave me two bits of advice. ‘Use music and use less words.’
Sue’s advice was invaluable, and I pass it on.
I’ve been working on two outdoor shows this summer (‘Beauty and the
Beast’ for The Dukes and ‘Scratches in the Earth’ for Action Transport)
and when the weather is doing its worst the question does come up,
‘Isn’t this why we build theatres?’
But the glory of outdoor work is the space it is in – or should that be the
space it is out? Just as intimate studios allow a particular type of play, a
particular type of performance, so the same is true when you are on
location. The first ever outdoor play I saw was ‘Hamlet’ at Ludlow
castle. I can’t remember the play or the actors very much but I do know
it was a sublime theatrical event - because the stuff about princes and
inner turmoil fitted perfectly with the castle walls and the temperature
dropping and the ravens wheeling and calling as the darkness fell upon
us all. This is just the generic value of quality outdoor settings though.
This isn’t site-specific theatre – because I’m sure the ravens and the
castle have given a boost to lots of other plays in search of a backdrop.
So, for me, the extra juice from the lemon is when an outdoor play
becomes specific to its site. Both shows I’m working on now started
with walks around the park. They are both promenade pieces, and it is
the interconnection between the content of the scenes and the landscape
they are in that is important. For me, the plays could not be written until
the specific locations (and also the journey from location to location)
were integrated into the journey of the stories. The Action Transport
play, about a world without oil is in sight of Shell’s refinery. That helps
with meaning.
Of course, it would be silly and precious to say this scene can only be
played here. But it would make a mockery of it all to move the scenes
to other places. In ‘Beauty’ the journey from man-made environment to
the wild wood is central to both the plot and to the inner state of Beauty
herself. And the journey to find inner beauty fits with taking the
audience to a beautiful place - an environment that surrounds, wraps
round it, so the audience is itself inside beauty.
In ‘Scratches’ the walk taken by the audience is a loop around the
Edwardian house that is both at the centre of the story and the hub of
the audience’s journey.
Both shows have live music. Both plays have seen a process of dewording going on in rehearsals. The sparer, the simpler, the richer is as
true now as when Sue Hill told me it was. Some lessons are hard to
learn though; a week before opening in Lancaster the delete button on
my laptop was very busy. The same place in ‘Scratches’ (about fourfifths of the way through) needs similar economies to keep the audience
on the tightrope to resolution. How often have we seen outdoor plays
where the actors are gesticulating madly to pump up the visuals? Note
to self: outdoor theatre is not the place for verbal landscaping.
It probably won’t rain, but it very possibly will. Note to self 2: don’t
write action or events that need cleanliness and dryness.
There is a different contract between audience and actors in outdoor
shows. Sometimes this doesn’t make for the best theatre. OK the
audience is having a picnic as well, but it is still a play and not just
some accompaniment to a sandwich. Without getting precious, we can
still write outdoor plays that move and influence and change our
audiences. One of my very favourite outdoor performances was by
Jennifer Rigby who played Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice.
She effortlessly filled the huge outdoor space with her voice; she was
clear and open physically; she was engaging and welcoming to a large
audience; she could move furniture and be funny; she moved easily
from character to narrator and back again; but also she retained a
psychological truth and depth of character that is often lost in outdoor
work.
Sure, some large scale spactaculars don’t attempt a character’s
individual personal inner drama, they are going for visual grandesse –
and I love those huge events. But the plays I try and write are emotional
journeys made by characters, actors and audience together.
Scene changes. The price you pay for ‘added value’ from a location is
the problem of changing set. It’s also about convention. When a
company is doing the ‘travelling player’ non-promenade model – bring
on a raised set and change scene by narration or simple props and a few
chairs, the audience get the convention very early. Fine. It’s the same as
studio theatre but outdoors.
At The Dukes and at Whitby Park the ‘deal’ is different: that this place
where you are watching this scene ‘is’. So I can’t (easily) jump time,
and I definitely can’t jump place – well not until the audience move to
somewhere else. That is, both plays say ‘what you are watching takes
place here’. I ask the audience to accept the specialness and importance
of ‘this place’ - these trees, this ground, those birds on these branches.
They ARE the same things in both the play and in the real world. All
the time as a playwright I am trying to make an audience really believe
in something. The real outdoor world helps. And that is why, to my
taste, flats and built stuff that we see in theatres can appear just that, flat
and sham outside.
Hooks. In outdoor prom plays, you do a scene, and then the audience
gets up and goes for a walk. I have to hook the scenes together very
strongly. Narrative and suspense are vital to the play’s success. The
audience has to want to know what is going to happen more than in a
theatre – because the gaps between scenes can be 10 minutes long, and
there are many more opportunities to walk out and go home.
Entrances. There are, often, no ‘wings’ in outdoor theatre, and this
means ‘instant’ entrances are very difficult to achieve. Saying that, it is
easier to ‘sneak’ a character on outdoors. But when I don’t give
Beauty’s dad an entrance line in Scene 4 I do make it very difficult for
him – and the danger is that, if they don’t notice him come on, some of
the audience will fall off the story. Also I have to plot the beginning of
every scene around the arrival of the audience. Who arrives first?
Performers or watchers? What difference does that make?
Towards the end of scene 1in ‘Beauty’ two characters called Darke and
Titus enter with a cart and a drum. On day one of rehearsal it took them
a minute to get from first-sight to the centre of the action. I hadn’t
allowed for this. So I shifted some dialogue from elsewhere in the scene
and I wrote another bit too, to ‘support’ their entrance. By the second
week Titus and Darke were making the entrance twice as fast – so half
of that dialogue went in the bin.
Space. Meaning and dialogue work best when in tune with the spatial
relationship of the actors. Expanded scale, which can be achieved in
few theatres, is a gift to us when we write outdoors. Putting big space
between lovers is very powerful visual storytelling. It heightens the
audience’s desire to bring them together. And as the audience twist and
turn their necks to see one then the other they are active in a way they
rarely are indoors.
Does all this theorising work? Not sure, i’m just struggling to
understand the craft - and each outdoor space has its own problems and
potentials. I’d be very keen to receive further advice and thoughts on
how to write outdoor plays – to add to Sue Hill’s wisdom, and to help
me do it better the next time.
Kevin Dyer’s new version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is on at The Dukes
Lancaster from 3rd July till August 9th.
He is dramaturg on ‘Scratches in the Earth’ a play for Action
Transport’s youth theatre written by Anne Wynne, Darren Simon, Dee
Shepherd, John Moorhouse, and Sarah MacDonald Hughes. It is on 24th
to 26th July in Ellesmere Port.
www.actiontransporttheatre.co.uk or
www.dukes-lancaster.org