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School
& Youth Theatre
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"Doing Godspell"This was originally part of a series of guides on various aspects of school theatre, which could be downloaded from the School Show Page. They were intended to encapsulate my experience of school theatre built up over about thirty years. They are reproduced here as web pages for the first time.They are long!Why did I choose to do Godspell? Because I like it. I do think Jesus Christ Superstar is a better show, being much more dramatic with stronger music, but we just didn't have the boys, and anyway, I am not sure that kids are capable of doing it the justice it deserves - although it has to be said that they are capable of doing much more than we credit them with. I also did Godspell because it's a good show for kids to do: it's mainly ensemble playing, which kids are far better at than adults (not having yet learned to hog the spotlight and upstage each other!); also it doesn't matter whether you've got loads of boys or not (we had four); it can be interpreted in a way which suits kids down to the ground, and - this may seem strange, but it's absolutely true and we proved it - it doesn't even matter whether Jesus is played by a boy or a girl. (The interesting thing is that no-one - and I mean absolutely no-one - commented upon the fact that our Jesus was female. True, she was an extremely good actress, but the Jesus of Godspell is, in any case, somewhat androgynous.) And of course - an important reason - it has such good music! Let's go through the whole process of getting the show ready, from start to finish, and that will give some indication of the approach to the school play which works for me. I can't stress that point enough: it works for me but may not for you. On the other hand, you can always learn from other people. In my time I've been lucky enough to watch a large number of directors in action, from the first ever to direct me in a show (Les Jolley, employed as a Biology teacher at Bede Grammar School for Boys in Sunderland but known mainly for the amazingly high standard to which he raised Bede Drama in the fifties and sixties) to Michael Bogdanov (he did the infamous Romans in Britain at the National Theatre which attracted the opprobrium of Mary Whitehouse and many others) who led a couple of courses in direction which I attended, and I have learned something from all of them, even from a couple of dreadful amateur directors whose productions I suffered in. No matter how good or bad the show or the director, you can learn something that will will increase your own knowledge and understanding of theatre and direction. I have watched John Blackmore direct Barbara Windsor in panto at Newcastle's Theatre Royal and Bill Alexander direct Anton Lesser in Julius Caesar with the Tyne-Wear Theatre Company, and have used what I saw to great advantage, so, even though I am a million miles from being the world's greatest director, even of school plays, perhaps something I have done may give you an idea which you can develop into something of great value. Perhaps you saw that BBC TV programme some years ago which followed Dustin Hoffman rehearsing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice? It taught me a hell of a lot. And I learned as much, although in a totally different way, from spending three days with Bruvvers, a Community Theatre company in Newcastle, as they devised and prepared their Christmas pantomime. Incidentally this was a so-called industrial placement, a kind of Work Experience for teachers. I'd always looked on this sort of scheme as being aimed at Business Studies and Technology teachers - after all, it is usually called Industrial Placement - but I was able to get one of our Year 11 girls a week with Bruvvers and thought, why not me? So I contacted the Authority's placement officer and found her very enthusiastic about the idea. The company was keen, too, and I had a very good three days in which I learned an awful lot which has proved useful both in play production and in Drama lessons. Grab every opportunity you can: you can't spend too much time learning from others - even if all you learn is what not to do! The decision to do Godspell was arrived at by discussion between the M.D. and myself. You know the kind of thing: "What the hell are we going to do this year?" "God knows, 'cos I don't!" The first thing, once the decision was made, was to decide how we were going to cut down the numbers of kids who wanted to take part. I had seen an amateur production of the show not long before and they had an enormous cast, which really limited the on-stage action. I didn't want that sort of restriction. Now the school choir always has a part to play in our main productions: that's a policy of which I approve 100% because I want to see the barriers between the performing arts broken down in kids' minds as much as possible. Then there was the Dance Club, for I really did want some good dancers. And, of course, there was the Drama Club, and whilst there was obviously a considerable overlap between the three, it seemed that we had a potential company of some sixty kids. Clearly that was far too many to be able to do anything other than stand them all on the stage and sing! On the other hand, I didn't want to discourage anyone. However when you are dealing with kids there will always be some natural wastage, and so it proved this time. I next had a chat with the choreographer (a girl from year 11) and asked her to select those dancers she thought were up to taking part in the show. The only guidance I gave her was to say that I didn't want more then six who were not already members of either the choir or the Drama Club. In the event she chose only two of these "extras". Then we discovered that the last night of the show clashed with the first day of a skiing trip to Austria and a couple more were forced to drop out. By now I was left with about fifty so I had to settle down to do some serious thinking about how I could use thirty people more than I could comfortably fit on the stage! Of course, all this time I had also been seriously thinking about what direction the production was going to take. I first read the script three or four times without any attempt to do any interpretation or impose any structure, and then I forgot it for a week or so to let it, as it were, ferment in my mind. Gradually the idea began to take shape that all of the characters, with the exception of Jesus and John the Baptist, were very childlike. There was a quality of innocence there, in the first act at any rate, that reminded me of young children. Parts of the script called to mind something we had done as part of a Carol Service a year or two before, when we had presented a Nativity Play with the kids playing the various parts as if they were five and six year olds. There was, it seemed to me, the same innocence and na‹vet‚ that you find in an infant's Nativity. This gave me the start I needed and the ideas began to flow. The cast would be little children, and the setting would be a children's playground. I put up a notice in the staffroom asking for someone to loan us a climbing frame, swing, seesaw or anything similar to help set the scene. Poeple were very helpful and I soon had what I needed: a two-seater swing and a climbing frame. Then the next little bell rang in my head and I decided it would be an inner-city playground, next to a building site or a derelict building propped up by scaffolding. We could then divide up those who wanted to take part into two parts: the Company, who would be the actors and dancers, and the Chorus, who would be singers only, and the Chorus would be on the scaffolding which I envisaged as surrounding the stage on three sides. This way all those who wanted to take part could, and I would not have to disappoint anyone totally, something I hate doing. Behind the scaffolding would be a blank wall covered with graffiti. (I left the kids to do this themselves, insisting only that there should be no obscenity. Newcastle United FC got an awful lot of mention!) But where would we get the scaffolding? It would be very expensive - prohibitively so - to hire. So I went to see the Head. I suspect that her heart sinks when I walk into her room when we're preparing for a show. You can see the "God! what mad idea has he got this time?" expression come across her face! This dates back to the time when I insisted, for the Awards Day entertainment, that I needed an eight foot by sixteen foot hole in the middle of the stage for the lion's den in "The Daniel Jazz". She had visions of the local MP falling backwards off his chair and vanishing down this gaping hole! He didn't, but it might have been fun! Anyway, that defensive look came over her face when I asked, "Do you have any influence with the Public Works Department?" "None," she said, "but we can always try. What have you come up with this time?" When I mentioned a fifty-two foot run of fourteen foot high scaffolding I rather think she regretted having asked the question. She certainly did when I mentioned the fact that hiring even a ten foot run was way beyond anything we could afford and we'd have to have it for free! However she bit on the bullet and said that we couldn't lose anything by trying and that she'd get back to me. And, by God, she did! Less than an hour later she told me that one of the big-wigs from the Public Works Department was coming to see me to sort out exactly what we needed. He did, and we got it, everything I was after. They'd come and erect it when I wanted and take it down when I wanted. They could not have been more helpful if we'd been paying a thousand pounds a foot! (As an aside, the next problem I presented her with (when we did Anouilh's Antigone later that year) was a coffin. She found that, too - free of charge, of course! The kids were quite horrified. "Is it a real coffin, sir?" I was asked. I told them it was OK, they had nothing to worry about. It had only been used once!) So one problem was solved. Now I could really get down to work. Most of the company were to be young children, so they had to learn to be little 'uns. For the next couple of weeks in the Drama Club we played children's games: my Assistant Director, the Head of English, was very helpful here. She had two kids of just the right age and knew all the games, so she organised it all. Everyone had a great deal of fun, and it got very, very noisy, but it was an invaluable beginning for it got the kids thinking about how they were going to play their parts weeks before the scripts arrived. Yes, as often as I can, I have an Assistant Director, who keeps The Book, the copy of the play in which every move, every lighting and sound cue, every nuance of the production is carefully written down - and who, incidentally, does the actual writing because my scrawl is illegible even to me. She (and it usually is a woman who volunteers for this job for some reason; I don't know why) will also take rehearsals when I am unable to be there, or, when I want to have two rehearsals running at the same time, she'll take one of them. And of course she's there to take over if anything should happen to me. That may sound rather pessimistic but in fact twice in one year recently I was taken into hospital (via Casualty) for a couple of operations on my knee and, had that happened at the wrong time, it could have wrecked a production. Now I know that, should it happen again (and I no longer have the same belief in my personal invulnerability I once had!), then someone I trust can take over with the minimum of disturbance. I felt that we needed to establish, right from the start, that these were little kids, and so I decided to send the Company on stage and into the audience, in character as little children, half an hour before the show was due to begin. There they would play the children's games and involve the kids in the audience. They actually - as kids will - went further than I intended, and on one night I was amused (no, I fell about laughing!) to see an Assistant House Tutor playing Ring-a-ring of Roses with a group of Year 11 girls! To say that the audience was bemused was an understatement! But it did get the point across and faded so naturally into the play that most of the audience were not even aware of the transition until the first lighting change. Re-reading the script with this idea in mind, I realised that it was fine for the first half but that it would be wholly inappropriate for the second. The opening song of the second half, Turn Back, O Man, is very definitely adult. But then it occured to me that the interval could easily be taken as the passage of time and that they children could have grown up in that time. But they were not to be fully adult: Turn Back is a bit of a send-up of sexy songs, but it could also be taken as an adolescent view of sexiness, so I decided that they would be adolescents, with the adolescent's occasional lapses into childishness, right until the dawning realisation that something terrible is about to happen. The attack on Jesus by the Pharisees would be followed by a regression to childhood as a kind of reaction against the fear provoked by the hostility. It would not be until the Last Supper that they would really grow up. Thus the overall pattern for the show was established and my next task
was to see that everything fitted into it. It is worth pointing out
here, however, that you should never try to impose any pattern on a
play that is not, first and foremost, supported by the text, and - and
I believe this is equally important - does not illuminate the text in
some way. Every theatregoer has suffered through plays where the director
has In this case, I felt, the idea I decided to use was supported by the text - it was the text, in fact, that gave me the idea in the first place. I also felt the maturing of the children would be a reflection of the maturing of Jesus' Disciples (and, by extension, of all Christians) as they came to understand what his message was. The final growing up, brought about by the crucifixion, reflects both the effects upon the Disciples and the fact that we do mature through suffering and pain. It is difficult to explain what comes next: so many things seem to happen at once. The moment the basic idea for the show takes root ideas start flowing fast - if they don't, then the idea isn't a very good one; it'll seem very forced if you continue to use it. So the order I mention things may not have been the order in which they actually happened. Working on a show of this nature is very different from doing a straight play. Then you may have no one to consult at this stage except, possibly, the designer. And I say "possibly" because in most school productions, as in most amateur shows, the director is almost always the designer. In a musical, however, you certainly have a Musical Director and, almost certainly, a choreographer. They need to be put in the picture straightaway. At my previous school I used to hold production meetings with all of the various heads of department: M.D., Choreographer, Stage Manager, Designer, LX, Sound, Wardrobe, everyone who had an input. But that was back in the seventies: education has changed so much in the interim that finding a time when they would all be available for a meeting takes longer than seeing each individually, so that is what I now do, meeting each on an individual basis. The first, in this instance, was the choreographer, our Year 11 girl. She was a good choreographer in that she had good dance ideas and was able to get them across to the dancers, but she was not experienced enough to be able to go through the show with nothing more than my outline approach, and produce the kind of ideas someone of more experience could. So I made a list of those songs for which I wanted dance routines, added notes on what effect I was after in the routines, and gave her David Essex tape to work from. It would, obviously, have been better to have the M.D. make a tape but, as always in schools, she was up to her neck in another musical event and I was unwilling, at this stage, to put any extra burden on her. The show was, after all, a number of months away. The notes I provided were fairly sketchy: the first routine (for God Save the People) was to be based on the same sort of children's games that were to be played during the half hour before the actual play started; a solo ballet for Day by Day; a hill-billy routine for Jesus for the second verse of Learn Your Lesons Well; something wild and full of movement to close Act I (The Light of the World); a Tiller Girl routine for the final chorus of Turn Back, O Man; and, for All for the Best, a tap routine to accompany Jesus and softshoe for Judas. My initial request was simply for her to listen to the music, look at what I wanted, and let me know if it was possible. In the event she agreed with everything except the softshoe which she wanted to replace with a Charleston. That was no problem - in fact, I thought it would probably look better - so I gave the go-ahead. Next was the lighting. I had two Year 10 lads who, in the previous year's show, had rigged and operated my design under the supervision of a member of staff. After that they had borrowed every book I had on stage lighting, and all the catalogues, and virtually learned them off by heart! One was even basing his GCSE CDR. project on the subject. I had decided that, for this show, the lighting was to be kept as simple as possible, unlike the previous year's show in which we'd had over a hundred lighting cues, so when I met with them I gave the most basic of instructions and said I'd check back with them on the day they started rigging. All I wanted, I told them, was an open white full-up state for most of the play with an area centre front which could be lit separately if necessary, a red state for the crucifixion (concentrated mainly on Jesus but with spill onto the rest of the stage), and a single narrow beam profile spot as a special so that we could isolate a soloist during Turn Back, O Man but I couldn't say where because I didn't at that stage know who the soloist would be. Sound was even more easily dealt with: two radio microphones, one of which would be on a low stand centre front and the other looked after by a member of the chorus on the scaffolding stage left; one omni-directional cable mic on the scaffolding where Jesus would be crucified; another centre front for sound reinforcement, and a cardioid at front on either side for soloists, the mixer to be placed at the back of the theatre, the better to balance the vocals against the band which would be at stage right, but off-stage. In the event the centre front omni proved to be more of a nuisance than a help so we got rid of it. Equally easy was the discussion with the stage manager. Although no furniture was required as we had the swing and climbing frame; we would need a lot of small hand props but the actors would position most of them and all she would have to do was make sure she collected them after every show and handed them out at the right time during the next one. I don't have meetings of this nature with the M.D.: she and I are in constant communication throughout the period of a play, from the moment we decide upon what the play is to be. This sounds great, but it can be very dangerous, for you often think you've told each other things when you actually haven't. No, that's unfair: I often think I've told her things when I actually haven't! Fortunately she knows me well enough now to expect this kind of thing and her reaction is, "The silly bugger's done it again!" and there's no animosity. I do try, though, if for no other reason than that I don't like being reminded that I am a silly bugger! Now the next stage is a reflection of the way I like to work as a director. Some people sit down with many sheets of paper and work out and write down the moves; others do the same, but with a model of the set and counters for the actors; I simply read through the script and scribble down notes to myself as I do so. Often ideas occur to me when I'm doing something else and, wherever possible, I'll jot them down, often on a cigarette packet or one of the pages of my diary, or just a bit of paper I happen to have with me. Then when I get home I get out all these pieces of paper and, after rejecting those ideas which on reflection prove to be no good, I put them into a special Notes file on the computer. I'll print them out every now and then, to remind me of what they are, and leave them lying around, altering, adding to or scrubbing out. Since normally I start work on a show two to three months before rehearsals begin, I manage to accumulate a lot of ideas. Incidentally, I've recently modernised this approach and, instead of using scraps of paper which I have - I confess it! - been known to lose, I now carry around a mini cassette recorder which fits into my pocket and I just speak the ideas into it. With a straight play (or, for that matter, with most musicals) I would have decided on casting at an early stage (and, of course, told the kids), but with Godspell, which can be done with a cast of eight or eighty, I merely cast the parts of Jesus and John the Baptist (who, by tradition, also doubles Judas) and arrived at the first rehearsal with very little idea of who was going to do what. I had, of course, talked to the MD and got a list from her of who could sing so I wouldn't make any silly mistakes in that area, and had promised that, wherever possible, I would leave the choice of singers to her. So, there I was at the first rehearsal, with Jesus and John the Baptist/Judas cast and a list of possible singers in my pocket. What I did not have, however, were my, by now, three pages of notes. I'd forgotten them! But, I reasoned, they were only meant to guide, not to be definitive, and anyway, I could remember most of them. Any I couldn't remember, I further reasoned, would be no good anyway, because if they hadn't made sufficient impression for me to remember them, then they wouldn't work. It was only afterwards that I remembered that I do this every time! With a straight play the first rehearsal would have been a read-through, interrupted by comments about how I saw various characters, followed by a little chat about my interpretation of the play, but with plays like Godspell I always think it's best to start straight in with the process known as "blocking", setting out the basic moves, which in this case would include the allocation of lines. By the way, don't fall into the trap that many amateur (including school) directors do, of thinking of the moves set during the blocking rehearsals as sacrosanct. They're not: they are the basis on which you build, nothing more. When we move in real life, whether in relation to other people or when we are alone, we are prompted to do so for a reason, either because of something external (the movement of other people, for instance) or something internal (an emotion, perhaps). Once the actors begin to build their characters and relationships, it is inevitable that moves will need to be changed. I always find, too, that, no matter how careful you are in trying to reproduce what the stage will look like when you're working on a rehearsal room floor, things won't look the same once you get on the stage, so you'll almost certainly have to change quite a number of moves. One of the reasons for the stilted look of many school or other amateur productions is a too-close adherence to the preconceived notions of the director which fail to work when the characters develop or the play transfers from the floor to the stage. So there I was, on the open floor area of my Drama room, a swing and a climbing frame set up in position, the Assistant Director sitting there with pencil poised over the as yet virgin prompt copy, and a company of twenty waiting to begin. I think we'd better leave what happens next to another article, because this is already far too long!
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