SAY IT LOUD! WE SPEAK TO GUMBOOT THEATRE COMPANY ABOUT THEIR RECENT SHOW BY THE TITLE ‘CONFESSIONAL’ Tom: You guys are in the same space as Articulate and it’s really a typically small space. Throughout the show, we see you making use of, for example, the door or the entryway - people burst through. I’m really curious about what that was like in rehearsals. How did you make creative use of the space? What decisions did you have to make, when you were confronted with a smaller space like that? What changed about the show in this venue? Alice: We really try to play around with different ways of using the theatre. It’s written into the script that we’ve got a scene that happens from the audience… the show lends itself the opportunity to use the space in different ways. So that was a fun challenge with a venue that was changing a lot. I think we learnt pretty early that we have to, in this space, really acknowledge what the audience can see. There aren’t many backstage areas, and so we’ve had to acknowledge when the audience can see someone walking through a door, or someone standing in a corner. It’s not the most conventional theatre space, [but] I think we’ve risen to the challenge. Chloe: It was actually good as well because it really did allow us to have a completely new version of the play. That definitely helped me have a fresh set of eyes. Rossa: Because we didn’t get to see the venue ‘til quite late in the production, it meant that, in rehearsal, the main thing we were focusing on instead of blocking was intention and other great juicy acting bits. Josh: What were some of the challenges throughout this process? Lucy: I did the show in Perth last year and I found it hard bringing something new, especially since I’m the only person playing the same character for a second time… like, how do you make it entirely different and entirely new? It was helped a lot by [our] amazing cast and all of the scenes I was doing with new people – that automatically changes things. Yeah, not having my characterization be stale and like, “oh, this is just what I did last year.” Summer: I watched the rendition that happened in Perth and I loved it. And that meant I also had watched the character who I’m now playing in a different person’s portrayal. So when I began the process, I found myself often trying to repeat what they had done or make the same choices or similar choices as them. And it took me a couple of weeks to shed that external persona and try and find an identity within myself, within the character. I think there’s [also] something about having a show that has [a] live response… you can figure out what on a given day [a] certain group of people is reacting to. Tom: I have a question around the confessions themselves. Alice was working very hard before the show to find confessions from audience members, maybe people who weren’t even going to be in the audience. Do you ever have to vet the response? Have there ever been confessions where you’re a bit, like, “what is going on? What the hell?” Or do you ever have to give content warnings for the show? Alice: It’s tricky because the content of the show already tackles tricky topics. We’re working with religion in a very satirical sense. There are some confessions in the show that we acknowledge are actually really not that funny. The audience confessions - it’s really interesting because this is the first time we’ve done it twice in the show. In the original version of the show, we didn’t do it at all. And then in Perth, we picked three confessions per show… this time we’re picking six. When we’re selecting what goes in the show that night, we’re really thinking about tone. We work with confessions that are about grief, and confessions that are about religion… and some that are just really funny and light-hearted. When we’re selecting the six each night, we’re thinking about tone and we’re thinking about where they go in the show… like [having] a really sad 10
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI3ODI1