Starting points

We started this project with an idea and a set of desires.

The desires were to do with processes of making new theatre.

1. We wanted to develop a form of devising which some of us had already been exploring. This is improvisation-based, but involves the generation of a 'set' show by the end of the process. It also involves working with technical and design elements from the outset of the project, so that these actually shape the fabric of the piece.

This involves a couple of questions:

How do you devise with a company,

rather than stage the ideas of a single writer or director?

And why?

What are the benefits of this approach?

2. We wanted to extend our previous work in developing multilayered narratives which deal with contemporary themes. That's to say, we wanted to tell a story, and do our best to make it fresh, complex and fun for our audience.

The questions:

what sort of storytelling is appropriate to theatre audiences in the twenty-first century?

How do you develop that kind of story if it's not written by a single author in advance?

3. We wanted to use media technologies in imaginative ways within live theatre. We were particularly interested in the interface between the live and the recorded in a multimedia performance environment. We wanted to explore ways of combining live performance, live and electronic music and sound, and live and pre-recorded video imagery.

The questions:

Can different media (such as video and electronic sound) be made 'theatrical'?

(For example, can video be used in a way which could only work within a theatre environment, and which has a lot less to do with the aesthetics of TV or film?)

As for the idea:

through a series of chances, we discovered that three French intellectuals had died as a result of road accidents in and around Paris. There was immediately something interesting here. These three figures, brilliant though they were, were snuffed out through acts of fate over which they had no control. They were very loosely connected through the manner of their deaths, although they did not know each other. And the fact that their lives and work spanned the end of the nineteenth century to 1980 meant that we would instantly have an epic scope to our show.

The working process

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

This part of the project was been enabled by an award from the Research Fund of Central School of Speech and Drama.

Phase 1 17-29 July 2000

Creation and exploration of a series of live/recorded sequences, developed in relation to the following:

We worked for two weeks in one of the studios at Central School of Speech and Drama. This work comprised an intensive devising process, during which we explored and created material around:

major 'works' of Roland Barthes, Ernest Chausson and Pierre Curie;

the various road accidents that relate to the piece;

the Parisian setting;

the central storyline involving a man going to Paris (a fateful journey).

After a week, we generated a rough scene structure, which formed the basis of the work of the second week. We rough-edited this as we went, whilst Dan Rebellato, the writer, scripted material on an ongoing basis, largely in response to the actors' improvisations. We decided on a long traverse as the configuration for the playing area, which encouraged us to think hard about projection surfaces (we deliberately wanted to avoid the use of fixed, flat screens, if possible). The fortnight concluded with a work-in-progress showing to an invited audience. It established a basis for ongoing technical, design and creative discussions and preparation in advance of Phase 2.

Some examples from our first fortnight's devising:

Roland Barthes is at his desk, writing, and talking to he audience about the act of writing. His pen (a Pencam) relays a video feed which shows the texture of his words, and as he lifts his hand from the page, catches the audience watching. We are all caught up in a moment of representation.

Ernest Chausson cycles his bicycle in the French countryside. His bicycle is fixed on a stand. A projected backdrop shows a moving cyclorama of trees and fields, which creates the impression of the cyclist moving. Chausson, absurdly, plays his violin as he cycles.

Later in the piece, after the death of Chausson, we see his face speaking to us, a video projection in the spinning wheel of his bicycle.

Pierre Curie holds a lecture note. He begins to describe his own death. As he does so, his paper 'magically' shows a large-scale street map of Paris, as the paper picks up a previously invisible back-projection. The map traces Curie's final movements.

David, our contemporary character, begins and ends the show with a recorded voiceover. In between, he meets people who fleetingly evoke the three intellectuals. A scene in which Chausson plays the violin, for instance, transforms into one in which David asks directions from a busker in the Paris Metro.

Phase 2 30 October-4 November 2000

This phase took place in the concourse areas of the disused Strand tube station in London, a prospective site for the project's eventual full production in 2001. We spent the week concentrating on the design and multimedia aspects of the project, developing and refining key effects and ideas. We looked especially at means of projecting video images. We arrived at a system where we would bounce the image onto parts of the station wall via mirrors held in another part of the station which the audience would not be able to see. We also explored back-projection on to a free-standing screen, with the projector in one of the station's lifts, and ways of projecting images on to the large metal shutter at one end of the space, and on to ceilings and floors. We developed a scene in one of the subterranean rooms in the building, which will be relayed live to the audience by way of CCTV monitors.

We explored an altered concept for the sound design, where much of the sound will be played via ghetto blasters, giving a more raw and urban quality. We also discovered that the station's tannoy system still works, and developed ways to use it.

Phase 3 11-17 December 2000

Further development of the project in situ at the Strand tube station, recombining the material and developing it further. This phase concludes with three work-in-progress showings to an invited audience.

PRODUCTION

Phase 4 April/May 2001 Final preparation, rehearsal and presentation of a multimedia production

The story

Here's What I Did with My Body One Day tells of the respective last days of four figures (three historical and one fictional) connected only in the manner of their deaths. The show is about the unknowable relationship between human agency (genius, even) and blind chance.

Here's What... begins with a man who is on the Eurostar to Paris. He tells us that a number of his ancestors have been involved in road accidents which caused the deaths of French intellectuals in and around the city to which, unavoidably, he is now travelling. Shortly after arriving, his wife goes missing. He spends the rest of the day on a quest to find her.

The show runs along a single time line, from 7.30am to midnight, and tells of the final day of four of its characters, including three historical French figures, all victims of the road. Sometimes we see four different time periods simultaneously, showing what different individuals are doing at, say, 3.15pm on the last day of their lives. Death comes at the end, but not, perhaps, in the way that we expect it.

The French intellectuals

Ernest Chausson

Born 1855. Died 1899.

Violinist and composer, whose best known piece is the Poème for Violin and Orchestra. A noted Symbolist, one of a circle of artists and musicians which included Claude Debussy and Cesar Franck. Killed in a cycling accident at the age of 44.

Pierre Curie

Born 1859. Died 1906.

With his wife Marie, discovered radium in 1898 in the physics labs near the Collège de France, enabling the eventual development of radium therapy and nuclear arms and technology. The pair are commemorated on the French 500 franc note. Killed by a horse-drawn munitions cart on rue Dauphine, which runs down to the Seine.

Roland Barthes

Born 1915. Died 1980.

Philosopher-critic, pioneer of structuralism and deconstruction. His books include Mythologies, The Pleasure of the Text and A Lover's Discourse. Noted for theorising 'the death of the author' in 1968. Run over by a laundry truck in front of the Collège de France, after a meal with François Mitterand and others. Died as a result of his injuries.

The structure and staging

Here's What I Did with My Body One Day proceeds through a series of scenes and episodes. It focuses on the journey of its central character and the series of obstructions and revelations he encounters (a quest structure).

It also revisits moments during the last day of the three French intellectuals. Roland Barthes is working on a book called The Art of Living (factual the book was uncompleted). Chausson is attempting to compose a string quartet (factual the quartet was unfinished). Pierre Curie goes shopping and attends a lecture by Madame Blavatsky (factual at least, the bit involving Blavatsky).

Here's What I Did with My Body One Day tells the story of four people's destinies. It has a contemporary setting but also looks back across the last century. It glancingly evokes central questions in music (the nature of composition), science (the nature of unstable elements) and critical theory (the nature of writing, reading and making sense of things). It deals with notions of creative genius and blind chance. It is about the casual violence of road accidents, the modern emblem of death as the great leveller. It is about living, and dying.

We use live and pre-recorded video material, graphics, live music (one of the performers is a gifted pianist and violinist) and sound and lighting appropriate to the piece. We figure the creative acts of the three French intellectuals theatricalising the swoops and cadences of the late-nineteenth-century violin solo, the transformation of matter and the idea that an author is merely a 'guest' in her text within our telling of their final day. We also explore the substance of presence and liveness, which apart from being major aspects of theatre are naturally suggested by the material. The nature of the Strand tube station (a 'dead' space where people once journeyed) helps us here, with its different rooms and hallways allowing for effects to do with glimpses and noises off.

Our main design scheme places the audience along a long run (one half of a long traverse, perhaps) which means that we can place scenes in different parts of the space, deal with video projection in unusual ways and keep the action shifting in relation to the spectators' viewing positions.

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The last sound you'll hear:

Resin on a horsehair bow

The scratching of a calligraphic nib

The bubbling of a cauldron

Pitchblende or gooseberry jam

The ticking spokes of a bike wheel running down

The wind moaning

Tuneless tuning

Pizzicato and string fingering

Trouble with an unfinished quartet

A scratchy recording

The audience applause

Or the rain upon leaving a lecture

The spokes

The chiselling of a stonemason

building a dry stone wall as you cycle by

The screech of a laundry van

A heart monitor

The indicator tick

As you turn right instead of left.

The last sight you'll see:

Signs (Waterloo, Paris Gare du Nord)

Fingers on violin strings

A shopping list

A foot pedalling a bicycle

Words - forwards, backwards, downwards but not upwards

Writing with a beautiful fountain pen

Pastis spilt on a table top (the downside)

A cyclorama (cycled past)

Reflections

Shadows (jam-making at the Curies')

A painting underground

Hands mending the brakes

Glimpses of the loved women

Faces (in repose?)

Eyes (a reflection)

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