The Fringe Maker
The infographic to the left explores a number of material considerations for the Fringe Maker. At the top, the pie chart highlights data from the final survey shared with the cast, after it had become evident that the show would make a modest profit. We held an online session to collectively explore how to handle this: I made the argument that a small individual payout might be of modest support, whereas a collective pot could help us to establish an ongoing system to provide training and longer-term development. It is interesting that the majority of the cast did not appear to share this view. There was, however, strong support for re-investing the money into creating a new performance, but less support for continuing with As You Like It. One comment contextualised this by saying that lots of people had small ensemble roles, so this was possibly a chance, particularly for cast members who had joined late in replacement roles, to reset the opportunity.
The middle section attempts to bring to life some of the personal commitments from those members of the cast and crew who lived outside of Merseyside. The travel and time figure listed here represents my Assistant Director who lived in Leeds. The extortionate financial and time costs really highlight the substantial effort behind attendance in a Fringe Maker rehearsal room. Of course, this is unique for each individual and not at all equally shared.
Taking a longer view of our eighteen years of working with 250 actors in this space locally, the next chart considers the longitudinal perspective of relative success.
Of all the performers we have worked with since 2008, only 7% are currently making the majority of their income from professional, ongoing paid work.
Of this 7%, only 2% have been able to achieve this whilst retaining Liverpool
as a permanent base. The other 5% have either moved (usually to London)
or relocated, perhaps having been in Liverpool as a student. Of the remaining 93%,
it is an almost equal split between those who have stopped creating altogether,
and those who are continuing to exist within the Fringe-Maker space, balancing other work and life commitments. There will be a mix here between those who
are still Fringe Makers through personal choice, and those who have not yet broken out into professional work. This data should be taken with a pinch of salt,
but provides a compelling overview of the difficulty, particularly
when making work outside of London.
The final chart shows the results of a survey with the CDG. When asked if they would appreciate further training to be funded by us, there was a strong preference for information about how to run a company, and unexpectedly, training in filmmaking skills. The less immediate personal development skills of Board and Carbon literacy training shows an interesting disconnect between what I felt might be useful and what the members themselves wanted to pursue.
Opportunity
Knocks
A selection of examples of the varied network of opportunities presented to the Fringe Maker. This is the web of complex choices into which the Fringe Maker is pulled, often either unpaid or at cost, in exchange for the intangible.
Appreciating Need
These videos are the fully-edited versions projected onto the stage during the production of As You Like It. From an idea emerging out of our initial workshops with the cast, the impact of these videos was effective at helping to centre the needs of the Fringe Maker into the fabric of the show itself. Watching the videos out of context also helps to draw attention to the emotional impact achieved through the editing. The video to the right, in particular, remained the length it did because we felt that the production had warranted the impact of this inclusion, at the very end of the performance.
'Barriers to the theatre
can include a creeping
feeling that I'm not
good enough.'
Cast Member
We started As You Like It with a series of workshops. This was quite unusual and isn't an approach we had followed in the past. The aim was for us to understand our ensemble's needs and wants, and to collectively figure out how we might frame the show around those needs. It was from these workshops that the idea of the videos above emerged.
The process behind this work is explored fully in Chapter 5, but it is worth reflecting here on the outputs and impact of some of those workshops. They were, in general, poorly attended, with at least one cast member leaving the production, in part, because they did not feel the attendance of others demonstrated an appropriate level of commitment to what the project was about.
The examples to the right are from our very first workshop, in which we explored the tangible wants and needs of the people in the room. The instruction was simple: to consider a personal barrier with regards to being an artist at this time, and to translate this into an equally tangible action or need that we might be able to help address.
The specific instructions to think about their position now (not to recycle a generic complaint but to think critically about their actual position today) and to not list problems, but instead to formulate active solutions, are notable for how often they were forgotten or ignored at first.
These represent the very first thoughts from the ensemble, and in several ways they again represent the individualism I noticed with the CDG. This was part of a longer process of moving from this towards something more collective, which I unpack in Chapter 5, but these early examples are useful to showcase here for how they reflect the personal sense of obstacle in the Fringe Maker's own words.
Towards Craft
'You have to believe in yourself and your destiny, you have to keep faith with your aspirations and allow yourself to be enslaved by them, and the bondage is everlasting. How dare you!'
The Dresser, Harwood, 1980
We made a significant effort to integrate skills development into each rehearsal of As You Like It. This was in direct recognition of the fact that none of the cast had been to drama school, and it played a large role in how we attempted to frame the production. It was also a response to the impractical and anti-theatrical spaces we often rehearsed in, and was an active way of ensuring the cast remained focussed on craft at all times during the process.
The rehearsal and workshop plans presented here highlight the thought we gave to making this aspect of the experience much more than a simple warmup, but something that would embed skills development in a way that actors could use and take forward into their future work.
This clip provides a nice example of how the focus on Shakespearean craft throughout the production resulted in clear verse speaking in the final show. This is significantly more capable than in our previous productions, with the relentless focus on language and the technical craft of delivering Shakespeare's lines evidently paying off in the delivery. It is perhaps in danger of being mechanical in how clearly the direction is being followed, but makes for a great example of how those lessons were embedded. The focus on the iambic is clear, as is my repeated instruction to go slower for greater clarity. The cesura and line endings are acknowledged, and the literary devices such as alliteration and antithesis are hit. This also represents a significant journey from first rehearsal.
At the same time, the dedicated focus on craft came at the expense of more time spent on stage work and "tidying." While we saw a definite improvement in the verse speaking, articulation and on-stage presence of the actors, the limited rehearsal time effectively saw that focus as a trade-off with some of the more basic stagecraft. This is also a consequence of having little time to prep in the theatre space before performance, or to rehearse in full-sized spaces. This is where the work exposes its lack of professionalism, and indeed, this is not exactly how the scene was directed.
Although this could easily be tidied with some more time, the issues of blocking, turning-up stage and not landing jokes was a repeated issue in this sequence, exposing how craft is a long-term journey and not something that can be "solved" in a single rehearsal process.
Sequences such as the opening of the play provided a really ambitious challenge for the actors. We probably spent 2 hours, in total, on this section, which would have had a dedicated movement coach and much more time in a professional context. To combat this, the second half of the sequence is actually a repurposing of a game. 'Shoal of Fish' and 'Collective Shape' are both ensemble games from Shakespeare and Lecoq (Woodall, 2024) in which an ensemble must follow a leader or form a shape at the shouting of a cue word. Approaching the sequence in this way was quicker for rehearsal purposes, but left a looseness that is still evident in the final sequence, and which takes away some of the precision you would expect the professional counterpart of this same sequence to show.
There is some more confidence in the finished performances, but what is striking to me is how much more relaxed the rehearsal video appears, really highlighting the difficulty of adapting to a performance space with such a short amount of available time. That this sequence effectively opened the play was also a real technical challenge to the actors to control their nerves, and to give the scene enough energy to land.
GETTING BETTER
As the play progressed towards more sustained runs, copious notes are my method of capturing where the show needs improvement. Of interest in the picture to the left, which were notes from an early run, is the primary focus on stagecraft, blocking and performance. These are my private notes, not seen by anybody in this form, and while they lack some nuance, they are useful for highlighting the core basic issues at that time, which underline much of the difference between a performance that is working or not landing.
In the clip from a note session below, which came at the very end of the rehearsal period, both myself and my co-director Anna have consciously shifted towards less prescriptive and more interpretative notes. This is not to confuse the actors, but to start to encourage them to think of the play as more than a set of simple repeatable steps to be followed each night. The clip also highlights some of the slight resistance to this approach, and how effectively building trust and handing over the reigns probably needed a longer period of time to support the ensemble.
Highlights of a warmup before the final run of the show. Refocussing the actors' minds on craft at all times helped them to keep it foregrounded and to ensure it wasn't forgotten. By making time to do this so often, it became a more usual part of the rehearsal process rather than something uncomfortable or "weird". Actors certainly grew in confidence, although as with all aspects of production in this space, this was somewhat undone by actors joining late, or missing rehearsals.
Much of the play changed throughout rehearsal, as ideas developed and as we understood what we wanted to achieve through our co-produced efforts. Given the practical challenges, it is normally tempting to somewhat premeditate this process, by fleshing out a 'vision' in advance and spending early rehearsals 'blocking' scenes. This has the added benefit of being more secure for the non-professional, who gets a clear sense of what is expected and the limits of their involvement.
We deliberately avoided this for As You Like It, following a much more traditional (or professional) rehearsal approach. This meant that ideas emerged slowly, collaboratively, and often changed. This also meant that things continued to develop throughout, often late in the day.
Almost the entirety of the scenes between Audrey and Touchstone were changed at the very last rehearsal, after we decided that the "business" we had attempted within the scenes was not working. In fact, it was obscuring the meaning of the text. It was a late change, and was difficult to bring our actors along with, particularly as they felt - not unreasonably - that losing some of the physical comedy was stripping away part of their character, and part of their role in the show. The truth is that the physical comedy wasn't working, and streamlining the scene helped to bring out the comedy more. But it was an interesting challenge to convince the actors of this.
The curtain call is always a prime example of where craft can be forgotten.
My observations around the role of the Fringe Maker in rehearsal touch upon fundamental questions around how we perceive the purpose of performance. As I have expanded upon at length in Chapter 3, many of the actors can talk in great detail about their method, character motivations and approach to acting, but in ways that do not always align neatly with professional expectations.
This is by no means a bad thing, and while it sometimes belies a lack of experience, in other ways it challenges our preconceptions of what effective performance can be, particularly when many audience members commented upon the narrative clarity and emotional impact of the work.
The same has been true for much of our work. The clip to the left shows the audience in our production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which we performed at Smock Alley, Dublin in 2022. Unusually, these paying patrons had no connection to PurpleDoor, and treated this production amongst the many professionally programmed shows at the theatre that season, despite the fact that the cast were entirely unpaid, un-trained Fringe Makers.
The consistent thing that all of these factors call into question is the role of the director. The decision to include structured, taught elements of craft and to scaffold this throughout the production, and the approach to directing generally, in many ways reflected how one might be taught in a student or drama school context, with a focus on the play but equally
on the learning that underpins it.
From a directorial point of view, this forces you to think outwards rather than inwards, and to focus on the development of the ensemble over the aesthetic or conceptual desires of the director. Where both can meet, this is success, but where there is a challenge, the development of the cast must always take precedence over ego, or a sense of knowing best. In this way, the ensemble respond to you as a guide, and it was often a challenge within our co-production landscape to balance this. But in general, viewing the process of directing as a vast web of personal journeys
rather than the realisation of a specific vision
is emblematic of achieving success in this space.
Understanding Rawness
'There's gold there alright. I've just got to find me a way of fetching it out.'
The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Cartwright, 1992
The three examples here further extend and contextualise discussion in Chapter 3 regarding the "raw" nature of performance in this space. Viewing these examples helps bring to life how effective these performances can be (despite the technical challenges included with capturing them) and are also instructive for how they highlight a difference between this type of performance and trained, professional work. The clip to the left, from King John, clearly channels a significant amount of emotion, sometimes at the expense of vocal clarity and stage awareness (two sides of the thrust don't get to see the actor enough, for instance). What is interesting about this clip is that the actress had trained, which gives appropriate pause for thought on where exactly the professional boundary is crossed.
The clip below, from our first ever show The Trojan Women also utilises a huge amount of personal emotion to drive the performances. This emotion is affecting even where they don't always work technically. Also evident in this clip is my very early propensity for ploughing theatre with music which is clearly overpowering and too loud. There is a technical lack of competence here, but also a broader commentary about not trusting the text, layering it with personal trauma and emotive music in order to hammer home the message. The effect is raw but unsubtle and is an interesting marker for me in assessing how my practice has developed since we produced this show in 2010. The learning of craft doesn't just apply to actors, but to directors, technicians, and all aspects of the crew..
The third clip comes from our 2015 production of Hamlet, set in 1980s Toxteth, Liverpool. This is a perfect example of where materiality and ambition don't neatly align, with raw performances, a strong concept, but a very different form of reception than if this same idea, even with the same actors, was presented in a larger professional space.