Strike a pose: using physicality to bring productions alive

Yoga, walking tours of Dublin and washing the floor may not be conventional methods of preparing for a play, but for these theatre groups, they're as essential as learning lines, writes GEOFF POWER

DISCUSSING the text in a play seems appropriate during rehearsals.

Fittingly, the actors from Performance Corporation's Power Pointare talking about words that could be lost on a Finnish audience.

“Rashers, hmmm, might have to change that to sandwich,” says Lisa Lambe. Alan Howley counters. “No, how about reindeer baguette?” The cast participate in refresher rehearsals at the company’s residency in Castletown House, before jetting off to the Tampere Festival, in Finland.

It is almost a year since Power Pointwas last staged, but the same four cast members are back, and the same unorthodox methods, too.

The rehearsal space is a shoe-free zone; yoga mats are placed on the floor, positioned like five points of a star.

Director Jo Mangan leads the four actors out. It’s 10.18am. “Smack the intercostals and coccyx,” she goads. “Warm the muscles; wake them up and release the lower back, the buttocks and the thighs.”

The actors simultaneously stretch their vocal chords, producing discordant tuning noises akin to territorial monkeys. Rehearsals always start with a yoga-related warm-up lasting 45 minutes.

“Okay, let the stomach out,” Mangan urges. Howley responds: “Oh, the belly’s already hanging out.” Next, he assumes a compromising position before contorting his body sideways. “I’m going to have to bring incontinence pads with me tomorrow,” he exclaims.

Although no yoga expert, Howley enjoys the camaraderie and joined-up rehearsal time with Mangan.

“The bit that makes Jo very skilled is that she makes rehearsal really safe – a place where you can play and try things out and even look like a tit, if you have to. I’ve done rehearsals with actors who’ll start with a cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other and then go straight into it.”

The association that alcohol has with theatre has been a cause of regret for Mangan. “The tradition of drink goes hand in hand with acting. I’ve a problem with too many hangovers. I’ve seen it affect performances and energy levels on the floor during rehearsals. I would prefer to instil a different ethos,” she says, “sweating out liquids rather than taking them in.”

Yoga is also more in tune with the kind of work that Mangan wants to produce. “It’s a physical starting point for the characterisation. We would spend the first few days of rehearsal not even going near the text.”

Annie Ryan from Corn Exchange is another director who firmly believes in the ensemble. The company is at the Edinburgh Festival now with its most recent, award-winning play Freefall.

“[Ireland] has a very text-based theatre tradition,” she says. “We’re not improvisers here. There are great actors because there are great plays, but it’s not that rich on the training side – that’s only a recent thing.”

Ryan points out many professional actors in Ireland have never been trained. “In particular,” she continues, “the relationship with their bodies is still very new for people in Ireland. I still see performances on stage where the actors barely move.” Corn Exchange has developed a distinctive style of theatre using physicality and space to bring productions alive.

"With Freefall,we use the vocabulary from the Commedia dell'arte tradition. The actors move before they speak. They have to think about gesture and stance."

Aside from yoga, Ryan added an additional dimension to rehearsals with this play. "In the past, I used to have actors wash the floors, Japanese style, in other words taking care of the space. We brought it back for Freefall.

“I thought there’d be resistance, but there wasn’t,” she smiles. “Every day we washed the floor for about 10 minutes, pushing wet tea towels across the stage. Then we did yoga for about an hour.”

She trusts this kind of work brings people together.

“It’s a way of being grateful we’re in such a beautiful place, and grateful for the work. It weaves itself into the story of the play. Freefall is almost about yoga. It’s about compassion and appreciation for what you have.”

Some actors have struggled with Ryan’s approach.

“Andrew Bennett does [yoga] at home now, but he was very stiff at the start. Another actor still finds it a bit torturous.”

But she stresses it has nothing to do with attaining the perfect body. “It’s about waking up, gaining access to yourself. These actors need to have an awareness of where other actors are and where the audience is. It’s about having an articulate body.”

Jim Culleton’s directing style would be considered more traditional. Nevertheless, like Mangan and Ryan, the artistic director of Fishamble: the New Play Company, understands the importance of the cast as a unit.

"Different plays have different needs," he says. "Some of the recent plays we've done were set in Dublin – Noah and the Tower Flowerand Sebastian Barry's The Pride of Parnell Street, for instance.

“We walked around Dublin and got a sense of the characters and location of the play. Field trips are part of the rehearsal process.

"For Pride of Parnell Street, we also spent a lot of time reading the script – a third of the rehearsal period was sitting around talking about it."