Interview: University of Manchester Drama Society

Josephine Lane met up with Elisha Mansuroglu and Sophie Taylor to talk about their upcoming performance ‘Let Me Go Home’.  The girls competed through Drama Society for a slot at the Contact Theatre and have written and devised the play themselves.

Josephine Lane: Tell me about the show.

Sophie: It started off as a 10 minute exam piece that we did for a physical theatre module in the second year. It was the same characters and basic story. There was no dialogue and was outside in the geological gardens.

Elisha: Over the summer we developed it, we wanted to put some physical theatre on together. The story focuses on four characters: Michelle, the mum; Simon, the dad; and Lucy and Sarah, the two children. A month before the play starts, Lucy dies and the play documents how the family deal with that. Michelle doesn’t deal with it well at all, she gradually starts to go insane.

S: Lucy is a character in the play and only Michelle can see her, which is where a lot of the tension comes from, and gradually starts to go insane. It works well physically because it is a mainly visual idea.

E: We’ve used multi-media elements too such as projections and different types of music.

JL: How did you come up with the idea?

S: We were given the task to make our exam piece sight-specific, it wasn’t in a theatre. We had to do it somewhere in or around the Martin Harris Centre and we didn’t want to do it inside because it would have just been corridors and we weren’t sure what we could do with that that was interesting. We went outside and found the geological gardens.

E: It has four benches around some stones. It was April so was all pretty dead, grim and rainy and had a sort of graveyard feel to it. We asked ourselves what we could do with the space, and since it looked like a graveyard. We don’t know how we came up with the actual narrative, we wanted to do something we could relate to. In terms of why we’ve decided to direct and write a physical theatre piece, its because we’ve always wanted to do something together.  We built our friendship on it. We knew each other in first and second year but our friendship blossomed when we took this module. We found we had really similar ideas for plays and for the future and now we’re best friends!

E: Because we’re both interested in the naturalistic style of acting, we thought it would be great to try and fuse that and physical theatre together, because I don’t think that’s done very much at the moment. It’s either all physical stuff bordering on dance, which puts a lot of people off. 

E: Most of the physicals stuff we’ve devised are naturalistic movements in a physical fashion. You have to see it to believe it really.

JL: What is the rehearsal process like?

S: We direct the naturalistic scenes as if we were doing a naturalistic play but when it comes to the physical bits we choreograph certain bits we want to have it, show it them and then work with them, because we aren’t performing it, they are, so they have to feel comfortable doing it.

E: There have been a couple of cases where we’ve devised something and on that certain actor it doesn’t look as good or it doesn’t feel like they should do that. For example, yesterday we did one of the scenes with two of actors and it didn’t feel quite right. Obviously we wrote the script before we established character with them but now we’ve got to know them and they’ve got to know their characters.

S: we’ve done a lot of improvisation and the way they went didn’t exactly go with the script, which we’re completely open to.

E: So we’ve rewritten parts, which is exactly what we wanted to do in the first place. We wanted to do a completely devised piece and wanted the script to come from improvisation and working with the cast. We are also filming it and putting it on a Facebook group so the actors who aren’t in the scene or weren’t at the rehearsal can look at it to remind themselves. It’s like a video blog of the rehearsals, its nice to keep the actors feeling involved and included and its useful to look back at the physical bits.

JL: Why did you want to do this? Why now?

S: Being a student in Drama Society you get money, space, an audience, people to audition so I think it was a case of making the most of the opportunity.

E: At the end of last year when we did our physical theatre piece I found myself really optimistic and proud. It was something I wanted to show it to people and to develop. I felt I needed to develop because so far at university, there was nothing I’d found that I was 100% committed to, I was committed to most stuff but this was one thing I want to take further. This might be the route I take after university, it would have been stupid to waste something so good.

S: And we work really well together as well, we have quite different ideas and we talk about it and come to a nice compromise. The chance to work together was something we really wanted to do.

E: Our relationship is really professional and that might not work if we didn’t know each other as well. I know how she works so much because we spent our module and then the whole summer writing.

JL: What is your favourite thing about this process?

E: For me, the devising process and seeing my ideas develop in themselves. It sounds mushy but its really nice having an idea, telling people to do something and seeing how they develop and interpret it.

E: The thought of it being on stage at the Contact is scary but the best feeling in the world. We’d like to get agents to come and see it and NSDF and hopefully if they like it will take off.

S: What’s nice is that we’ve been given this trust to do it, it’s the first show the Drama Society have done at the Contact for 5 years and its something that they’re hoping to make an annual thing and the fact they have this opportunity is amazing.

E: I think our show and ideas for it are perfect for the Contact because they’re so relevant to young people, and they are so supportive. We didn’t know that much about there until we had a meeting with Bubba Israel, the artistic director. He was great. He showed us some of the things he was dong and the way he was talking about how he directs is exactly the same as how we are treating this process, a lot of his material has come up with is improvised and that’s how we want to make theatre.

S: It was so lovely to talk to him and validate our ideas. We all found theatre doesn’t have to be process where you have a script, read through and talk about the play really analytically and its so playful just being able to get up have a scenario and do it and that’s going to be how we want to work in the future.

JL: What was the competing process like?

E: It was an open proposal process. We had to fill in a form with ideas, artistic proposal, budget, technical requirements, script. It’s quite like being in the professional world.

S: it’s a good learning process for the future for anyone who wants to prepare a piece for the MIFTAS, Autumn Showcase, independent production, or the Contact which hopefully will continue.

E: If I could say anything to students Id say do it now. Having to do all this alone, after university and having no links, no budget, no additional help, it would be incredibly hard and demanding. It’s demanding anyway but it’s a good type, we have support and a mentor from Drama Society who checks up on us.

JL: What have you learnt and would you have done anything differently if you could?

E: This cant be helped but id have liked more time, this is our first go at everything together, maybe the timescale will prove to be a good thing, because we have had to whip ourselves into shape and be really committed and motivated and when shows have too much time it can get a bit slack and this timescale will make us be more on it. I’m always learning, directing is so fun.

JL: Why should Manchester go and see your play?

S: What do you think about physical theatre? We’re going to change it. If you think its rubbish, come with an open mind, its not going to be an hour of silence and dancing and actors with a really dramatic expression on their face.

E: We’ve got great cast members as well and it would be shame for people not to see how talented they are.

‘Let Me Go Home’ is on at the Contact Theatre, Space 2 on the 7^th of December at 6pm and 8pm. Tickets are £4.50 for students and are available from the Student Union Box Office