Random

Inside random

All the bellow comes from this link 

What is the history of the play random? 

I think debbie tucker green wrote random in June last year or just before. Nadine first 

performed it as a rehearsed reading in the Theatre Upstairs in July for two 

performances. Following the reading, the play was then programmed for a full 

production in the main auditorium. 

How did you and Nadine approach the play for the rehearsed reading? 

We rehearsed for the reading for one week. Because time was short, we concentrated 

mainly on finding the different voices of the various characters, talking about who the 

characters were, their ages, backgrounds, jobs, etc. and looking at their different vocal 

qualities and rhythms. 

We also went through the text very carefully, noting when the shifts of character took 

place, when the locations changed, when the characters realised something new. The 

script is separated into two parts, but has a fast, fluid pace, and is not divided into 

different scenes. To make the stages of the narrative easier to follow for ourselves we 

broke the script down into small chunks or ‘units of action’ and gave each ‘unit’ a 

sequential number and mini-title. This was so that we all had a really clear sense of how 

the story moved forward moment to moment. 

Taking the time to do this really helped us to focus on the details of the story, and 

meant that when we came to rehearse for the full production this February, a lot of the 

basic preparation work had already been done. 

Can you describe how you helped Nadine build a picture of the environment
of the play? Was this process similar to other plays you have directed by
debbie tucker green? 

I have directed three of debbie’s plays and I think Nadine has performed in at least four. 

Nadine and I worked together on trade and in some ways the rehearsal process for trade 

was similar to the random rehearsals. On both plays we spent a lot of time working on 

the rhythm of the writing, concentrating particularly on debbie’s individual way of using 

punctuation and text lay-out. The big difference with random is that it is written for just 

one performer, with the emphasis on storytelling, rather than action and interaction. 

Neither Nadine or I have done a one-person storytelling performance before so for 

both of us random presented a new challenge, and the task of building up a picture of the 

play’s physical environment was certainly an important part of the process. 

In most plays, the set designer is the person primarily responsible for communicating the 

physical world of the play. However, when debbie wrote random she had a clear idea in her 

mind that the stage would be empty and the performer would have only the words to 

make us imagine the spaces and places the story unfolds in. 

For much of the play, Nadine is speaking directly to the audience, but it is important that at 

every stage of the story she has vivid, real pictures in her mind of the events, people, 

sounds, and objects she is describing to us. If she isn’t seeing the pictures she describes, we 

probably won’t either. 

To help achieve this, we spent quite a lot of the rehearsal time creating all the different 

locations of the play and playing the scenes out as if they were happening in actuality rather 

than simply being described. 

Can you explain how you did this in more detail? 

Well, for each scene we created a rough rehearsal set with furniture and incidental props. 

For example, when we rehearsed the final scene in the Brother’s bedroom we had a bed, 

posters, computer screen, chest of drawers with clothing etc.; for the earlier street shrine 

scene we collected all the objects the Sister mentions and placed them around an area 

fenced off with police tape, and so on. 

When we enacted the scenes for the first time, myself, the stage manager, and assistant 

director played the other characters. This was so that Nadine was free to concentrate on 

only one character at a time. We then swapped roles so that Nadine could play the scene 

again from each of the characters’ point of view. This helped Nadine start to picture the 

exact physical relationships of the characters to one another, and where her eyeline should 

be at every moment of the story. It also allowed her to enjoy the feeling of interaction 

between the characters, and hopefully lessened the loneliness of rehearsing a play with no 

other actors! 

What would you say was the biggest challenge on this production? 

If you ask Nadine, I’m sure she’d say the biggest challenge is being asked to hold an 

audience’s attention alone on an empty stage with only the words – no set, no music, no 

other actors. The other major challenge, of course, is to play so many different characters, 

to make them each real and distinctive and to have to switch between them so quickly. 

How did Nadine work on the physicality of the different characters?

Nadine is an incredibly versatile actress, and I think she finds it quite easy to imagine herself 

into other peoples’ bodies and ways of moving. When we did the reading of the play last 

year we didn’t do any work on the characters’ physicality because there wasn’t enough 

time, but even so you could still see the subtle changes in her body when she shifted from 

character to character. I’m not sure she was even aware she was doing it! 

For the final production, we have had a lot more time to explore the different characters’ 

ways of moving, and we used a very simple exercise to do it.  5 

What was the exercise? 

Nothing complicated. Nadine just spent some time ‘walking’ each character while I asked 

her various questions. Even though in the performance she stays almost on the spot, she 

found it easier to discover the physicality of the characters by ‘walking’ them around the 

room. As she walked about I’d ask questions like: 

• What part of their body does the character lead from? Their head? Their chest? 

Their groin? 

• What is their energy like – fast or slow? 

• Are their gestures and movements open or closed? Direct or defensive /

protective? 

• How does the character sit? Get up? Run? Lie down? 

• Where do they hold tension in their body when they are tired or under pressure? 

• Which parts of their body do they use to express themselves when talking – their 

hands? Their eyebrows? 

• How do they behave when they are cold? Hot? 

• What happens in their body when they are nervous or uncomfortable? How do 

they hold their body when they are bored or waiting? Angry or frustrated? 

• What happens to their mouth, their jaw, their hands, their breathing when they 

are upset? Nervous? 

• How do they laugh? 

• What happens when they receive a shock? 

• What about when they are trying to hold in or hold back something they want to 

say? 

• How does their physicality change when they are at home with their family? At 

work? With strangers? With friends? 

Often while we were doing the exercise Nadine would improvise a bit of text for the 

character or use some of the lines from the play in order to link the rhythms of speech 

to the physicality. For fun, and to help build confidence with the play’s quick transitions, 

we’d follow this with an exercise where I’d call out a character name and an emotional 

or physical state and Nadine would inhabit it. I’d then call out another and another and 

Nadine would make the transitions as quickly as possible. All of this was aimed to make 

sure that each character was clearly distinguishable with their own particular physical 

idiosyncrasies. 

You mentioned earlier the importance of rhythm in debbie’s writing. Can
you explain some of the ways debbie uses punctuation and page layout in her
plays? 

In each of debbie’s plays I have worked on the ‘code’ contained in the punctuation is 

ever so slightly different. In random for instance: 

A ‘–’ (dash) represents an interruption of thought. When a dash is at the end of the line 

it usually suggests that the next character who speaks has ‘cut in’ and stopped the 

speaking character from finishing their sentence. When the dashes appear within a single 

character’s ‘speech’ it is as though that character has had a fresh thought which stops  6 

them from finishing the one they first started. debbie describes this second example as 

what happens when your brain moves faster than your mouth. 

A series of ‘…’ (dots) at the end of a sentence tends to signify that the thought has trailed 

off, usually because the character’s brain has caught up with their mouth and they realise 

that they are about to say something they’d rather not. Dots at the beginning of a line are a 

bit different and on the whole mean the character is thinking, looking for a way to express 

themselves, or forming a new thought. 

A word in italics suggests that there is an extra stress. 

A beat suggests that the character has a moment of private introspection, or a sudden 

moment of realisation. 

Spaces between lines suggest that the pace of thought has slowed down and there is more 

‘air’ between the lines. 

All of this is a bit like musical notation – instructions on the page that tell the performer 

when to pause, when to slow down, when to speed up, what to give an accent and so on. 

It’s quite technical – but the performer’s job is to follow the writer’s instructions and to 

discover for themselves the emotional or psychological reasons behind the rhythm changes. 

Is there anything you would do differently if you could start rehearsals over
again? 

Oh yes – loads of things. You always realise how you could have done things better just at 

the point you’ve finished doing them wrong. If I were to pick one main mistake I make over 

and over again, it is falling into the trap of trying to solve too many things at once. When 

you have limited time and lots of things to do, the temptation is always to try and address 

everything using one just one exercise or one rehearsal. Nadine has so much to do in this 

play, so much to think about, and I often made the mistake of piling up too many different 

thoughts and questions in her mind. Luckily she has an in-built ‘notes overload’ system 

which constantly reminds me that it is much more productive to focus on one thing at a 

time, and to approach the final goal stage by stage, little by little. 

You are now in the last few days of rehearsals. What is your main focus at the
moment? 

In the last week of rehearsals, especially when we moved from the rehearsal room to the 

theatre, it became clear that our final and most important task was to think about the 

relationship between the performer and the audience. All the work we’d done in the 

rehearsal room on the locations and images in the play, the physicality of the characters, 

and the rhythm of the text was really necessary and useful. However, as soon as we 

arrived in theatre we realised that while this detailed work had certainly helped Nadine get 

‘into’ the play, it was just as essential to spend time thinking about how to connect with the 

audience and transmit the story to them in the most direct way possible. 

So, over the last few days the audience has been our main focus and we have re-rehearsed 

the play on stage, concentrating less on the private journeys of the characters and more on 

the task of communicating the story to the people who have come to listen to it. It’s quite 

hard to do this when the theatre is empty but from Friday, when the play opens, we’ll be 

able to see if the story we are trying to tell is reaching the audience it has been written for.