It is, perhaps, harder being in a devised piece than in any other kind of show. There are so many different things to fail at – can you improvise, can you write? Can you look at the subject, characters and story and make instinctive choices about what passages from the book will work well in the theatre? Can you play within the group, knowing when it’s your turn to lead, and when to follow?

And on top of all of this, plain and simple: can you act?

It is really hard at the moment. Stuck as I am playing a poet who people believe to be mad I feel no meaning. No nuance. I know Simon would like a degree of physical engagement, but it’s just not coming.

Ivan’s journey is an interesting one. From party-line poet, through trauma,  mistaken madness, incarceration and finally transcendence. Ivan’s passion seems very important to me – he does everything to the extreme.

One of the tools we use in rehearsals is known as ‘The Seven Levels of Tension’, and it’s a useful shorthand for degrees of physical engagement. For example, with no tension in the body, you are catatonic, perhaps, or asleep. That’s Level One. With the body completely overcome by tension you become rigid, petrified. That’s Level Seven – the level of great tragedy. In between one and seven are the points on the way. Lot’s of people give the levels different names: ‘Californian/relaxed’, or ‘alert/is there a bomb in the room?’.

Instinct would have me nudge Ivan’s tension all the way to Level Seven. The tragic.

When these tools work for you they free up your brain because you don’t need to make any clever decisions. You simply play the level you’ve chosen, meaning intellectual explanations can be explored later on. My problem at the moment is that in the higher states (Ivan spends quite a lot of time up in what we call ‘the passionate’) it can be quite hard to remain open and flexible in improvisations. Great performers are able to play at this level of intensity without it becoming heavy. Even in great tragic moments it’s as if they can still remember it’s a game, they can still play. They’re still reactive and proactive, reaching these levels of physical extremity and engagement while maintaining a sense of ease. This, for me, is essential. Children do this so instinctively. They can engage a level of play that is at once serious and playful. They’re always willing to take the game to the next level.

- Richard Katz

Devising Notes / WORKING ON THE TEXT 2

Over 28 years of theatre making, Complicite has adapted, created and been inspired by a variety of texts from a Steve Bell cartoon to Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

Working with the text was a major component of The Master and Margarita devising process, and often the most daunting part as in this particular case we were adapting an incredibly detailed novel with a cult following.

But the key is to just dive in. As scary as it may seem, there is no better way than to stage the chapter immediately after reading it.

1. Put the text on its feet: Split the chapter into sections and give small groups different sections to stage. Thread these sections together and see what you get. Can you already see ways to make the story clearer, or the images more exciting? It is important for everyone to realise that this is not the definitive staging. These are just preliminary ideas. In our rehearsal room, we went through heaps of ideas. Some of these inspired other ideas, some came to nothing – it didn’t matter.
2. Experiment with the text: In your initial attempts, notice how different readings of the chapter lead to different interpretations of the story. For example, give three groups the same chapter but ask them to focus on different things: one group stages just the dialogue; another just the narrative; and the last just the descriptions of people and place. Or perhaps groups could look at references to particular themes in the chapter, or a single character’s journey through that chapter. Completely different stories will emerge from the same bit of text – and again, no one of them is likely to be right first time, or perhaps at all. Think about how you might combine the most successful bits of each of these versions – be playful and bold.

Most importantly, don’t make decisions too early about what to keep in the show and what to discard. Keep digging into the text for different interpretations by doing as many exercises as possible. This will also be great training for your group. They will learn to create together, to use each other’s ideas, to be constantly alert and thinking about new ideas and storytelling devices. It doesn’t matter if at first the results of these exercises are unsatisfying. They will get better the more you do them.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Over 28 years of theatre making, Complicite has adapted, created and been inspired by a variety of texts from a Steve Bell cartoon to Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure.

Working with the text was a major component of The Master and Margarita devising process, and often the most daunting part as in this particular case we were adapting an incredibly detailed novel with a cult following. It sounds obvious, but the first thing to do when working with a text is very simple:

1. Read together: It is vital that everyone has had a chance to properly read and think about the text you’re using, so there is nothing better than sitting down in a circle and reading it together. Everyone can take a page or a paragraph to read aloud.
2. Talk about it together: Then it’s important to talk about what’s happening in the text. Even if someone thinks they understand everything about the text already, there will be unexpected insights in a group discussion, just by virtue of being together and thinking out loud. It is clear from Complicite rehearsals that the most powerful research is that which can be experienced and explored as a group. It is crucial that the group has a shared understanding of the central themes and images to be used.

As a starting point, we find this infinitely more effective than reading silently and alone.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Week three. Gradually we emerge from our early explorations – space, actors, chairs.

There is actually a great comfort in working without a text, but the time has come to leave the safety of those early wordless days. The book is starting to spread out before us, like spilt wine.

To guide us we have the help (hindrance?) of a variety of texts. Firstly, there is Bulgakov’s original – pretty useful, obviously. Then what we’re referring to as the ‘ripped version’ –a chapter-by-chapter distillation of the dialogue in the book. It’s also amazingly good. Bulgakov’s dialogue is first class. Of course, when I say Bulgakov’s original, I mean a translation of the original. There are, many translations, and we’re using several of them. This means that for each scene, exchange and situation there are at least four or five versions to play with.

We begin by sitting in a circle, different versions in different hands. We read a bit, compare a bit, discuss a bit. Some sections seem to fly off the page – Bulgakov was a dramatist after all – witty, dark exchanges. It’s muscular and funny. Other moments are confusing and disorientating. Of course, in so many pieces you’d probably want less and less of the disorientating. In this show we think it’s the opposite. It’s about confusion. Meaning, clarity and understanding explored through a lens of mayhem, madness and destruction.

Chapter by chapter we read. Re-read. Compare the translations, examine the dialogue on its own.

Then it’s time to try and put things on their feet. In small groups we split a chapter into sections, spend an hour trying to find what the meat is, the architecture. What are the greatest hits, the sexy bits? (Scenes which make you sit up and take notice: Hamlet visited by ghost of dead father? Sexy bit.)

Another hour or so is spent trying to utilize as much as you possibly can from what’s in the room. Some sound effects, furniture, a suggestion of costume. Each group, trying to sell their idea: we thought this bit was interesting, what about you?

Worlds begin to emerge. Characters and through-lines give a tangible sense of the movement of the book. We begin to associate actors with characters and spaces with places. This is a really important part of the work. If we’re going to flip from thirties Moscow to Judea 2000 years ago it’s really important for the audience to come with us.

There’s a great excitement in getting inside the skin of a situation as simply and cleanly as possible. What we do have – chairs and bodies moved simply and with purpose – can quickly conjure these changes in the dynamics of the space. Again, this leads us directly back to the early ensemble work. Take the idea of Herod’s palace on that baking hot day in Judea, or of that bench at Patriach’s Ponds, and we kind of know how they should look. How we might move simply from one to the other. So when we find something we like, we drill. Move from one to another, honing and arranging what we move, how we move. It’s not an exact science, but none of it is. We can only nudge. Find something that looks right and try and nudge it nearer or further away from the other bits we like.

It’s essential to create an inspiring environment to work in when making a piece of theatre. This means getting together everything you can find to help yourself when it comes to the hard bit: pulling a show out of thin air.

This is why the Complicite rehearsal room quickly gets covered in research pictures, books, costumes, sound equipment, reams of script and masses of props.

Research

When you’re making a devised piece, research is essential. Whenever there’s a silence or a blank, it’s incredibly useful to be able to go back to the research you’ve done and find more inspiration and stimulus.

When researching The Master and Margarita we did a few things which would be useful in any devising process.

1. Collect pictures of the time period, the author, the author’s friends, family, the kind of clothes people were wearing, what the country looked like then, pictures of every place mentioned in the novel, and any props mentioned. We stuck these pictures all over the walls of our rehearsal room. They were therefore constantly on view for the actors and creative team to look at. Pictures can trigger all sorts of ideas and impulses. It’s essential to always be able to reference a collage of pictures.
2. Read about the author. By reading the other books Bulgakov wrote, his letters and the biographies written about him, we were able to understand where some of his ideas in The Master and Margarita came from. We were then able to elucidate the more subtle passages of the novel and give them real meaning.
3. Learn about the book’s context. Bulgakov was writing in 1920s and 30s Soviet Russia. As a group of theatremakers living in the vastly different world of 2012 London, we had to try and understand Bulgakov’s world in order to do justice to the book.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

In a piece of theatre, the complex layers of meaning, emotion, sound and image should ideally create something as varied and magical as a symphony. Theatre and music have rhythm at their core and it is important to get a group to understand what rhythm is and why it is important from the beginning.

Picking up on cues

1. Choose any dialogue between two characters, we’ll call them A and B. Get them to sit facing each other. Ask them to read the text once through.
2. When they’ve read the text, ask them to do it again, but this time to run one line immediately into another leaving no pauses between each line. So as A finishes her first sentence, B will immediately start his sentence.
3. Make sure they don’t speak too slowly or inflect certain words. This exercise is not about acting, it is simply about understanding the rhythm of the dialogue. Also, make sure they don’t rush their sentences. The audience must understand every word.
4. After they’ve got the hang of this, look through the text and choose a couple of places to insert a pause. When they reach these points, A and B should pause slightly before picking up the rhythm they had before.
5. Get the audience to comment on what they hear. Notice how the dialogue between A and B becomes much more charged and present when they pick up quickly on each other’s cues, even without acting the lines. Notice also how the pauses in the text relay a meaning to the audience that have  been unnoticeable when they were reading ‘normally’.

This exercise is a good way to identify what’s important in a text. It privileges the rhythm inherent in any text, so you could use it when a scene feels flat or lacks urgency.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Devising Notes / SPACE 2

Space is the backbone of a piece of theatre. Learning how to use space is an essential part of the rehearsal process. The dynamic of an ensemble moving in space will create the atmosphere, narrative and emotions in the piece.

Complicite uses 6ft bamboo canes (gardening canes) in the rehearsal room as a tool for exploring the use of space. The bamboos should be as straight as possible and need to have smooth, unsplit ends.

There are a variety of games and techniques you can explore with bamboos. For example:

Bamboos – space between performers

1. Give out one bamboo between two people. Ask each pair to hold the bamboo between them using only their forefingers. A certain amount of pressure must be applied to do this.
2. Ask the pairs to move around the room silently, avoiding other pairs and maintaining their contact through the bamboo. To do this, they must have eye contact.
3. Explore possibilities of movement with the bamboo. Change direction and who’s leading by the exchange of pressure. The leader in the pair will usually be putting more pressure on the bamboo than the other person. To exchange leader, the pressure simply needs to swap.
4. After you’ve got the hang of it, experiment with different positions and journeys around the room. Weaving in and out of other people, going very close to the floor, rolling, turning, getting faster and more daring. Make sure the bamboos don’t drop.
5. To step it up a little, ask three pairs to become a group, joined by a bamboo on each person’s forefinger. Ask the group to move as one, interlace and create shapes using different rhythms. Can they create a story just by moving together in the space?

Practical application: devising from The Master and Margarita

In rehearsals, we used this exercise to develop the relationship between the Master and Margarita. Initially we worked with the bamboos, and then we took the canes themselves away, but retained the invisible connection, and the movement the bamboos had helped us create.

In one scene Margarita is the leader of the pair. As she walks round the room, she captivates the Master, speaking words from the novel he has written. The Master follows as if transfixed – keeping the same distance between them as if the bamboo was still there there.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Somehow it’s the end of week two.

The majority of the last two weeks has been spent slowly trying to crack the nut of this most strange book. And devising/adapting is not like doing The Homecoming. You can’t just have a read through, start blocking, talk about what your character had for breakfast. Suspending the intensity for a quick fruit tea and a Hobnob. Oh no. From where we sit at the moment all that stuff feels pretty far away.

Except perhaps the Hobnobs.

For now, there is one certainty at least. We’ll have to get to know each other really well because this kind of ensemble work will require every sinew of our bodies and every sinew between each of us to be strong yet flexible, light yet dynamic. Moving as one, thinking as one. It’s not really the kind of stuff you can take a short cut to.

Groups that move together well do so because they have an inherent understanding not only of themselves as individuals but of the group as a whole. The queue outside the Natural History Museum knows how to behave (hopefully) because they understand what’s required of them. They’re not machines. They are individuals who happen to want to see some big stuffed reptiles.

This is where great chorus and ensemble work should be heading. A chorus is a strange thing. You don’t want 16 people doing exactly the same thing. You also don’t want them all doing something completely different. It’s both things at the same time. If I look at the crowds waiting to go into a museum for instance, they are all individual, all of them doing their own thing yet bound by the single idea that they want to go and see the dinosaurs. Within that larger group there may be families, schools, lovers, tourists, perhaps someone in the wrong place. Individuals and a group. In the theatre it’s not quite as simple as this – we do, after all, have a story to tell – but it’s a good way of thinking about the chorus.  An audience can be delighted by this interplay between individual and group. Personal and politic. This play in particular seems to want this from us. It comes from right inside Soviet Russia where the ideas of group, individual, The Crowd, ‘toeing the party line’, are always present.

So, practice makes perfect. An hour or so of yoga together every morning. Then other exercises. Moving together, chorus work, bodies in space. Sixteen actors, sixteen chairs – endless possibilities of shape and structure. Nobody I have worked with spends as much time on this kind of training as Simon. On a bad day it can feel gruelling and drill-like, but the benefit of spending so long moving and thinking as a group comes much, much later. When the play starts to emerge. There, in your bodies, exists so much of the world you want to create. You need a funeral procession? Well, the group knows how it should be already. That’s the plan anyway. It’s also a damned fine way of tricking the play into being. Someone will do something off the cuff, you expose it, analyze it. Hopefully scenes will start to emerge.

Now, can I have another Hobnob?

- Richard Katz

Devising Notes / STATUS

Status is key to understanding how characters interact with one another and how they behave on stage. Status indicates the relationship between characters; which character has more authority, who is at the centre of the story at this moment, which part of the story should be highlighted and given priority.

Status is another tool that conveys the narrative to an audience and is something the ensemble must learn to play with.

Status card game

Status is often confused with hierarchy or authority. While they sometimes go hand in hand, status is much more about confidence and presence. This is a simple game to help you explore status:

1. Ask the group to walk around the room exploring varying status levels. Go from 1 to 10, where 1 is the lowest and 10 is the highest. When you are at status level 1 you should be shuffling around the edges of the room, silent, not making eye contact, trying to hide. Status level 10 owns the room and does as he wishes, shoving furniture around and shouting.
2. After this initial exercise, take a pack of playing cards. Remove the King, Queen and Jack. The number cards will represent the levels of status 1 – 10 (ace is 1).
3. Choose two volunteers, with the rest of your group forming the audience. Give your volunteers a playing card each, making sure that they keep the number secret. Next, ask them to imagine they are in an office. Ask them to walk towards each other along a corridor and greet each other, playing their status.
4. The audience must then guess each volunteer’s status. This is helpful for both the audience, who see how status plays out on stage, and for the actors – who might think they’re playing an exaggerated status only to find that they’re not nearly clear enough.

Practical application: devising from The Master and Margarita                    Chapter 13, Enter the Hero

In this chapter, the Master enters the story and tells Ivan all about his life. The story includes meeting Margarita, writing his novel, and then destroying it.

From our very first readings of the book, we knew this chapter was critical to the play’s narrative structure. We decided early on that we needed the whole ensemble to help tell the Master’s story.

The ensemble create the story as it’s being told by moving furniture, becoming characters in the Master’s life and by illustrating important events. In this way, the Master’s story is supported and lifted by the ensemble; it is given a high status and he becomes the focus on stage at that moment. Try this exercise with your group:

1. Choose a section of Enter the Hero. Choose a narrator who will play the Master and will tell the story as it is written in the novel.
2. The rest of the group is the ensemble. Find a way to help support the Master through his story, always focusing the attention on him but also keeping the storytelling dynamic and meaningful.
3. Once you’ve established a basic pattern of events, try playing with the balance of status on stage. What happens when the Master is at 10 and the ensemble at 6, and then at only 2? And what about if they switch? How does that change affect the audience?

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie

Believing Woland to be mad, Berlioz hurries to report him to the Foreigners’ Bureau. On the way, just as Woland predicted, he slips and falls into the path of a speeding tram. Ivan arrives at the scene just in time to see Berlioz’s severed head rolling along the pavement. As he chases the professor through the city, the poet is hindered by Woland’s associates: Koroviev, Azazello and Behemoth, who is a huge black tomcat. After a madcap race through Moscow, the hysterical Ivan takes a swim in the river only to have his clothes stolen. Nevertheless, half dressed and raving, he makes his way to the MASSOLIT headquarters.

The evening party at MASSOLIT is interrupted first by the news of their Chairman’s death and then by the arrival of Ivan, who rants about the strange professor but cannot remember Woland’s name. A fight breaks out and the police are called. Ivan is escorted to a psychiatric clinic where he is tranquilized and diagnosed with schizophrenia and alcoholism.

While the poet is kept in the clinic, Woland and his bizarre companions cause chaos in Moscow. They move into the Chairman’s former apartment, spiriting his roommate Styopa off to Yalta. Styopa is the director of the Moscow Variety Theatre, and Woland uses his absence to set up a hellish black magic act there, despite the objections of the managers Rimsky and Varenukha. During the show, Koroviev rains down money on the audience and hands out beautiful, exotic clothes to the women in the crowd. When the compere explains their tricks as ‘mass hypnosis’, Behemoth the cat tears off his head, and then screws it back on when the audience protest.

That night, a stranger enters Ivan’s hospital room. When he hears Ivan’s story, the stranger informs Ivan that the mysterious professor Woland is in fact Satan. Ivan’s new companion is the Master, who, with the help of his lover Margarita, has written a novel about Pontius Pilate – a novel that strangely echoes Woland’s tales of Pilate and Yeshua. The Master, who was admitted to the hospital after breaking down when his novel was rejected by publishers, now longs to meet Woland. After speaking to the Master, Ivan sleeps and dreams of Yeshua’s crucifixion. The dream centres on Matthew Levi, Yeshua’s devoted disciple, who steals a bread knife from a local shop, planning to stab Yeshua to spare him the horror of death by crucifixion. Matthew arrives too late and is forced to suffer as he watches Yeshua die, but is then able to cut down the body and steal it away.

The scene turns to the Master’s mistress Margarita, who, not knowing that her lover is locked away in the hospital, believes she will never see him again. As she walks sadly through Moscow, she hears gossip about the magic show at the Variety Theatre. Suddenly she is approached by Woland’s ugly companion Azazello, with his red hair and single fang – he quotes from the Master’s novel and says he can take her to a man who will give her news of the Master. She agrees enhusiastically and Azazello gives her a pot of magic cream, telling her to rub it all over her body at half-past nine that evening and wait for further instructions.

Margarita does what he says: the cream transforms her appearance and turns her into a witch. Her telephone rings – it is Azazello telling her to leave through the window on the broom that has just flown into her bedroom. When she arrives at Woland’s apartment she is met by Koroviev, who explains that Woland is holding a grand ball for the undead, and that she is to be the hostess. The apartment transforms into a tropical jungle, a ballroom and then a jazz hall before suddenly the guests arrive, jumping out of coffins that fall through the chimney. Margarita greets them and learns that they all committed terrible crimes when they were alive and are still being punished. One woman, Frieda, choked her unwanted baby with a handkerchief; the handkerchief now haunts her wherever she goes.

The night is exhausting, and at the end of it Margarita can barely stand. Woland tells her that she has done well, and that he will repay her efforts by granting her a wish. Margarita begs a pardon for the haunted Frieda, which Woland grants, but then offers Margarita a further wish – one that is just for her. She asks for the return of her lover, and to be allowed to live with him quietly in his old basement apartment. At her word, the Master is magicked into the room and they leave together, although the Master is shaken by his ordeal and is afraid that their reunion cannot be real.

Back at the apartment, the Master sleeps while Margarita reads chapters from his novel. They describe Pontius Pilate in conversation with a mysterious cowled man, Aphranius, the head of his secret police. Aphranius informs Pilate of a plot to kill Yehudah of Kerioth – or Judas Iscariot – the man who betrayed Yeshua. Although Pilate instructs Aphranius to take every precaution to protect Yehudah, his true meaning is that Aphranius should arrange his murder. The chief of police carries out Pilate’s secret orders, and Yehudah is killed. Pilate dreams of peace, a peace in which he walks along a path of moonlight, deep in discussion with Yeshua Ha-Nozri. Back in Moscow, Margarita finishes reading as the dawn rises.

That day, investigators visit Woland’s apartment but he has escaped along with his companions. At sunset, he and Koroviev sit on a hilltop overlooking Moscow where they are visited by Matthew Levi. He tells them that Woland must take the Master and Margarita with him when he leaves Moscow, and should give them peace. Woland asks why the couple are not being taken into God’s light, and Matthew replies that they have not earned light, only peace. Azazello is sent to find the lovers. He invites them on a trip and offers them wine which poisons them. The Master and Margarita barely have time to realise they are dead before Azazello sets fire to the apartment, and the three of them ride away on huge black stallions. They join Woland and his entourage on a mountaintop, where Pontius Pilate sits bathed in moonlight: he has been sitting in this lonely spot for thousands of years. But in this mysterious moment, Pilate is set free and is at last allowed to walk along the moonlight path, accompanied by his beloved dog Banga. As dawn arrives, Woland sends the Master and Margarita to eternal rest in a small house over a little bridge, along a sandy road.

As you walk towards a rehearsal room on Day One it’s impossible not to feel a little bit like you may just carry on walking and not go in at all.

Before you start, the possibilities are limitless. Safe in your imagination, the show could be anything – somehow, this time, the laws of physics will be broken. You can smell the awards.

But as soon as you set foot in the room, reality bites. The walls close in and the dreams of world domination come tumbling down. We will have a few chairs, a pile of old coats to play with, some people and ten weeks to turn words on a page into theatrical gold.

I could just carry on walking.

Another problem with any new show is that I always have a fairly ripe memory of the last one. And as you look back it’s impossible not to have just a little bit of romance about the past. How wonderful it was when I did that bit on the stairs, wasn’t it great when so and so made us all laugh night after night after night. Hang on – couldn’t we just do what we did last time? If only.

Still not too late to turn back and go home.

So. Week One. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. 450 or so pages of some of the craziest satire written. It has magic, murder, romance, insanity, about 100 totally believable, perfectly realised individuals with names that are impossible to remember. Oh, and a talking cat. The book they said could never be successfully adapted for the theatre. Well, they said that about ‘Carrie’ didn’t they? Oh.

- Richard Katz

For Complicite, the ensemble must be a water-tight entity; moving together, breathing together, using the same rhythm and tension, and always being aware of each other.

1. Get everyone in the room to walk slowly and silently around the room without bumping into each other. Ask them to pay attention to the breathing in the room and make eye contact with everyone they pass.
2. Ask the group to stop together without one person leading this stopping. After a few attempts, it should look like the group has decided silently to stop at the same time.
3. Divide the group into smaller groups. Ask them to move together as one. From the outside, it shouldn’t look like anyone is leading the group. Ask the group to change speed and rhythm, but always to stay close and in contact.

Gradually, the group should feel as though they are leaderless unit, totally together in making the decision about where to move.

In our rehearsals, we used this group flocking technique to create communal spaces in Moscow, e.g. the streets and trams.

Words: Sasha Milavic Davies/ Image: Sarah Ainslie