Video transcript
Drama Company 2023 - The Wasps - 02. Q&A

[intro music]

GENEVIEVE: We might start by introducing ourselves. I'm Genevieve. I'm the director.

OLIVIA: I'm Olivia. I play one of the guards.

ELIZA: I'm Eliza, and I play one of the wasps.

AFSANA: I'm Afsana, and I play Antimoti.

MAX: And I'm Max, and I play Tomoti.

KINGSLEY: Thank you. And I'm Kingsley. I did the sound design for this piece.

GENEVIEVE: We might start by telling you a little bit of a background of the show. And I was thinking Tomoti is actually a little Easter egg, actually stands for tyranny of misinformation on the internet. So it's an anagram. And then, of course, Antimoti is anti-tyranny on the internet, yeah, which is based off the original play.

So we-- well, I started reading 'The Wasps' by Aristophanes, an ancient Greek play, and was really struck by how much that the themes of that play were so relevant to today. So we started with Aristophanes' 'The Wasps'. We started to-- I started to deconstruct those kinds of ideas in the original play. The father is locked away by the son because he's obsessed with being a juror and can't see how his judgments are upholding a bit of a corrupt system.

And at the time-- actually, at the time, I was spending a lot of time on social media. And at the time, the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp case was being widely televised, and there was a lot of commentary going on. And it struck me that there was a lot of commentary going on with not a lot of information actually being shared-- or accurate information.

So that was the little seed, the idea. And then, of course, it grew into what it grew into. So I might start off by passing along and getting your guys' experiences-- --your guys, wow, good English-- getting you to tell the audience a little bit about how we made the show and where we went from that germ, how it grew into the show that it is.

OLIVIA: Yeah. So like the GP process, we had-- over a term, we had very limited time. We did 12 nights and then a couple full days, about 6. And then we got into the theatre. So it's that short bit of process where we had to start on devising work. And we did a lot of improv together to build up the ensemble connection because obviously being a Greek text, there's a lot of chorus.

And it's really integral with multiple choruses and then a big united one within the show, so we had to build up that connection as an ensemble first. And it was a lot of improv, a lot of running around a bit silly. But it does turn out into something really beneficial for the performance. So a lot of the things that you've seen actually did come from small, little devising things like soundscapes that we have developed into the actual show, which is really cool.

ELIZA: Yeah. So this entire show was devised by us. We took these different improvised scenes, and then Gen collated it into a working script for us to play with during rehearsals. So we went with the original text. We looked at the summary of it, and we looked at the overall structure.

So those are the main things we stuck with. We also thought it was important to have some hints to Greek theatre. So the chorus, as Olivia said, is really important in Greek theatre. And also the Marlene voiceover is our friend Ethan saying things like paribus. So that kind of structure is also very inspired by the original Greek theatre structure. Did you have anything?

AFSANA: Yeah. So the first thing that Gen got us to do was a lot of exercises to build up our spatial awareness and make sure that we could work and function as a chorus. So stopping and starting is one, something simple like that. And from there, we would-- she would add something in, and we'd have to be wasps or something.

And a lot of material came out of that. And so at some point in the process we had devised all this material, and we looked back. And we selected what we needed, what served our purpose for the play and what we wanted to convey. And then we put it into a play and made it all nice.

MAX: Ensemble connection-- that is the most important thing when you're doing a performance. Everyone needs to be on the same wavelength, and you all need to be working together. And I think that's what we did. We had a lot of improvisation games, and we also recorded a lot of stuff. So we logged it. We had a classroom, and we had really good communication.

So a lot of the foundations for a good performance is being well connected with the ensemble but also having good communication. So anyone heading into GP, have good communication with your ensemble members.

GENEVIEVE: On that, one of the big things that we've done focused on in performance is we have removed the word wrong. No one gets anything wrong in this show. It's just unexpected. So if something unexpected happens in the performance, we've laid that foundation as almost like an improv troupe that someone else will pick it up. Someone else will jump in, pick up the line.

They find the path forward. And it's been good because it's also removing that blame from the actor who has-- it's not doing something wrong. It's just that it's unexpected. People get thrown off for a whole lot of reasons, and that can be multitudes of things that can happen-- can go wrong. In our opening night, actually, one of the flats broke, and so one of the hinges broke off it.

And these guys did a phenomenal job jumping in, making it work, to the point where when they come out for that humming scene, they all had to duck behind that window because there was a big gap in the set. So they're all literally crawling along to make sure that they're not seen by the audience.

So all of that flexibility in performance is really, really important, that no matter how you've rehearsed it, no matter how perfect you've gotten the lines in rehearsal, it's still a living, breathing thing. And the audience only sees it once. So if you can have that flexibility, that's really important in laying down the foundations then for a good show every time.

ELIZA: Yeah, absolutely.

GENEVIEVE: Thanks.

ELIZA: Yeah. So about the whole ensemble connection, improvisation thing, improvisation, like anything else, is a skill that we have to build up over time. And so we weren't creating 50-minute shows within the first rehearsal. It took time for us to get to know each other and-- because a lot of the play we use some absurdist movements. We're doing some things that seem a little weird or out of a lot of people's comfort zones. So it takes time for us to build into that and get familiar with each other. But now we're all really proud of the work that we've created.

GENEVIEVE: And one of the integral things in the very start of the process was that idea of play. We did a lot of, here's a quick improv. Let's not take it too seriously. We're not even writing the show yet. And even though we weren't writing the show, a lot of what happened in that early improv play sessions ended up as lines in the show itself. So if you're starting out on a devising process, we can't recommend that enough, getting in and doing-- physically improvising, physically seeing what happens with movement and also laying the culture.

We spent a lot of time laying down the culture before we even started that so getting physically safe with each other. We did a lot of grid walking, where you have to walk in straight lines without running into anyone. We would start with that, and you don't even have to be touching anyone. But it's that stopping, and starting, and making sure that everybody feels comfortable in the space to even lay that group culture of safety and support before we then enter that sense of play.

We just do little exercises, 2 minutes of in pairs. OK, it's Antimoti, and it's Tomoti. And they're arguing about-- there's 2 minutes to improvise what that feels like, and then we would build that into a scene. And we would get everyone to build it into a scene and then pick out the lines that we liked. And that's how we put it together.

I will mention as well, though, this has changed a lot in the last 3 weeks. There's been a lot of things that have been added. These guys have been absolute champions. We were still editing the script up until about a week ago, so that's also something to be prepared for that you can actually make changes right up until that performance. And that flexibility has really helped that the actors were prepared to make changes to serve the overall purpose of the play.

We're going to jump over to design. One of-- obviously, one of the main parts of this show is the sound design. This is called a launch pad, and we can program things into it and press it in live performance. This belongs to my brother. Thank you, Andrew, for lending that to me. But this is also what sparked some of the design in the set.

So you'll notice all the squares. That actually was our brilliant, brilliant set designer, Tom Bannerman, took this as his starting point and created this. And actually, at that point, we didn't even know if the launch pad was going to be in the show itself. And then enter Kingsley, stage left.

KINGSLEY: Thank you, Gen. If I was going to ask any of you-- and you don't need to answer this, but feel free to. What does the internet sound like to you? Yep. Unless something's playing on it, unless I'm mistaken, it's a silent medium, isn't it? [imitates typing] What's happening? It's out in the ether, isn't it? So my task, when I was given this, was, what does the internet sound like?

All right. Here's a launch pad as an idea-- a launching pad literally. So I thought, OK. To me, when I'm hearing the internet and what I'm reading and what I'm seeing, to me, they're all voices. They sound like voices in my head when I'm reading back someone's comments, or someone's writing, or the way someone opinionates. To me, even if it's my own voice in this thing, I'm hearing it.

So I thought, well, what if we were to improvise with the cast around, recording some of their lines, and then grabbing those and starting to find and look for musical rhythmic structure? Because rhythm's a big part of this piece, isn't it-- if not literal rhythm but ensemble rhythm. And we also wanted to use this great set as a resonating structure as well. So you would have noticed the stamping and a lot of the dynamic sounds that came from it. Well, we didn't want to leave the set as an unadorned piece of set dressing. We wanted to actually activate it as well because it's theatre. So we wanted every part of it to be rhythmical.

So we would grab these little lines, and I would chop them all up into little rhythmic structures. And then the cast-- we wanted this thing, this piece of technology to be representative in some way of that idea of comments being activated by our voices. So at the beginning, when all of the cast were coming out and commenting, we wanted those to be little things that were indicative of what happens online, even if it's put to a beat and all that sort of stuff.

And so therefore, that became our launch pad and our starting place. And everything else, all the wasp textures and all the stuff that was underlying was all these guys. It was them doing all that buzzing chorus work. And then I take that, and start doing arty stuff with it, and then feed it back in. But most of it is always in check with what the chorus and, in fact, what these characters were attending to in the play. So hopefully, we got that mix right. I'm not sure. You can tell me.

GENEVIEVE: We were very lucky. Kingsley's an amazing professional sound designer, and we spent a 2-hour session with-- the whole cast went up to a microphone and did a couple of lines. And some of those lines were improvised and end up again put into this mix of the show in that rhythmic structure. So most of what you hear over-- even that buzzing is actually the voices of our cast, which was also a really cool way to keep it organic.

We don't know if the buzzing's coming from overhead or if it's coming from the stage of the actors, which was a really important thing that we had a lot of conversations about. How do we keep it feel like it's connected in the medium of theatre, where you don't necessarily want to have external things coming in? Yeah. We might now open up to a couple of questions.

Oh, sorry. I might point out also the costume design. Suzanne Wilding-Hart has done an amazing job. She hand stencilled all of these. But this is binary code that we had also coming up the legs and arms. And Tomoti's has-- you might have noticed-- few more happening. So we're playing with that idea again of being overtaken by that temptation of the internet. We might open up for some questions. If you guys have some-- yeah.

AUDIENCE: What people in culture have you seen, obviously apart from you mentioned the Andrew Heard-- Amber Heard case. What other regular people have you seen in culture being cancelled, did inspired you to make this play? Did you feel any sympathy or empathy for them?

GENEVIEVE: Great. So the question was, what other people in culture that have been cancelled inspired this idea of creating empathy? These guys--

AUDIENCE: And especially just normal people.

GENEVIEVE: And normal people. For me, there was a case a few years ago, Yasmin Abdul-- I can't remember her last name, sorry. But she's a journalist, who was cancelled for a tweet, and she's written a few articles about her experiences. She actually had to leave the country due to the level of hate, and she was fired from her job.

And there was 4 words that she wrote in a tweet. For me, that was one that really stood out to me as someone who was doing their job. And then something on social media has had far-reaching consequences for that person. Do you guys have any-- you might have responses to this as well.

OLIVIA: Obviously, we have the scene where we say, that publication, that brand. We wanted to leave it open to the audience because obviously we have in mind who maybe that author is. And maybe a lot of you would have the same one. But there's definitely different interpretations of who that person is for you. I know that we have these people that definitely resemble certain aspects.

We have our-- in 'The Wasps', we have certain internet groups, and you go, oh, I've heard somebody like that before. Ryan, playing Doggy Woof Woof, to me, I think it's the exact same as KSI. I'm like, cheese, Prime. It's lined up. So you definitely see the resemblances with the real world, and you're allowed to pick from that what you interpret, though, which is the really good thing about this is it's not like it has to be this person.

And this is the way it's been for everyone. With that open experience, it can be personal, or it can be really up there in some place that you actually don't connect with in reality. So it leaves that open. Anybody?

ELIZA: Yeah. Also, I'm not sure if we mentioned this. But because this is such an ensemble-heavy piece, we didn't always have 2 main characters. And so even before we had Tomoti and Antimoti, we were improvising as different internet groups. So we had the soccer moms, teenage fan girls. We had conspiracy theorists and stuff.

And so initially we had moments where the wasps would be in separate groups, but we thought we wanted to have it more as a collective hive mind. It's a very fitting name. And so you can still hear those personalities coming in throughout the different sections.

MAX: Like Olivia said, it was open floor, so I don't want to express my personal opinion on you guys. We want to let you guys think of who that person is that's being cancelled.

GENEVIEVE: I might just add, we had a lot of discussions, especially JK Rowling was a name that came up quite a lot. And you can-- and honestly, it doesn't really matter what you think about that particular cancellation. We were talking about, what is the group pile on that starts to happen? And when do we cross a boundary where that group pile on starts to enter death threats, the things that is that reasonable for what-- yeah.

So that was the questions we had. And we had some really rich discussions because, of course, it was quite hard for us to look at, how do we keep cancel culture funny? So we had to think about, how do we put that into bit of an absurd situation to point out what is actually happening in those moments, and what information are you basing those judgments off? So it's actually not about the judgement itself.

It's really about, where has that judgement come from? That's what we were trying to pull apart a little bit, especially with mediums that are so swift, and you have so many different people and their different opinions. How are you maybe entering an echo chamber and maybe not doing that critical step back? That's really-- that's the place that we were hoping this show would live.

JANE SIMMONS: And do you want to talk about the eyes?

GENEVIEVE: Oh, yes. I will-- yeah. The eyes and the hands came from a film that I watched when I was 14, where this character, this horror monster, puts his eyeballs into his hands before chasing someone. And I thought it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. But we were thinking-- when I was originally conceptualising of this play, I started to think about Greek masks.

And so we had decided really early on that we would not have masks because they blocked the faces of the actors. And in modern acting, it's very hard to get that characterisation across. So then we started to play with this idea of the eyes being a bit like a mask and that seeing without actually seeing. And that's where that started. And a lot of our early experimentation with movement was a lot of-- yeah. We drew eyes on hands, and you could do that really low budget too.

You could-- I think initially we tried it with some Glad wrap, with some Sharpie, and had Glad wrap on the hands with the eyeballs. Yeah. Yeah, so that's where that started out as well so thinking about, again, how could we represent those-- that chorus in a way where we had elements of mask but not fully blocking? Other questions? The back there.

AUDIENCE: What was the script writing process like?

GENEVIEVE: What was the script writing process? That was the question. I might get-- do you guys-- did you guys want to jump in?

ELIZA: Hello. They go to my school. So, again, as people said earlier, we take our improvisation activities, and then Gen collates them into a Google Doc. And it was a very collaborative process. The Google Doc script was open to everyone. Sometimes, I'd open the document at 10:30 at night, and it would be me, Liv, Gen's profiles on the Google doc, frantically typing away. And it's also really rewarding to get to see lines that we wrote get to be said by our friends on stage. That's really fun. Yeah, she has a lot more lines. I'll give this to her.

AFSANA: So basically, we-- Gen came in with 'The Wasps' by Aristophanes. She's like, hey, here's a purpose. Here's an idea that we can explore. So we-- the first couple things we did was some improvisation. But we did sit down with the script, and go through it, and look for lines that really served our purpose, and then think about how we could adapt that to fit a modern context. That was very fun, Eliza, I'm sorry.

ELIZA: I forgot about an activity that we did. We got prints outs of the original script. And then she said-- and then Gen said, OK, take this couple pages of lines, and transform it into a modern context. And so a lot of the guard scenes, that introduction came from that work that we did.

OLIVIA: Yeah. The dog and the cheese is in the original script. So that big plot point was from one offhanded joke that we wanted to incorporate in from the script. So it's-- the dog's put on trial for taking the cheese, and it's part of the ridiculousness and absurdity of the fact that-- in the original text our-- that Tomoti is so willing to try him as guilty. They're a jury, and they really want to convict. So we took that, and it became this whole character.

So from there, we had to really rescript because we realised Doggy Woof Woof needs to be a bit more fleshed out. And within the past couple of weeks, especially-- before when we walked into the theatre the first time, Ryan didn't have any of those window scenes. It just came from there, and it keeps evolving as you go on. The script writing never stops, and you always have to keep changing little things. Something's always going to come up again in the development process.

GENEVIEVE: I might also mention a couple of things that were specifically helpful. We filmed a lot of our stuff. So any improvisation performance activities we did, I would film it, and then I went away with that script and matched to the original script, using lines from our improvisation.

So I watched the videos, be listening to the lines, and then used the original script as I guess the bones of where we would then write the script. But a lot of those script changes did happen quite late in the game. We would come in and play test it. And one of the really crucial parts of that was we actually had Jane Simmons, who is the drama performance officer, she came in to give us feedback at about 4 weeks before we went on.

And that key feedback is the reason that Doggy Woof Woof exists. So you can see what a huge part he's become and what a huge comic moment he is. To allow us to have that really nice moment and that connection at the end, we realised from Jane's feedback that we actually needed him earlier in the play.

So I would also really encourage that any time you are making work, the more you can share that work along the process with people who you trust but also people who have maybe a teacher, people who have an understanding of theatre-- that feedback, while it can be quite hard to receive that, it feels like criticism.

It's actually about, how do I then look at-- especially when you spent so much time with that script and you're too close to it, how do I look at that and maybe kill some darlings along the way? So things that you feel really connected to that might have to be chopped in the final edit. So I'd really encourage any time you're making theatre, make sure you're getting that feedback in the process.

That's about all we have time for. We will say that if you have further questions, I'll hang around in the foyer if you want to come and ask me any other specific questions. But again, thank you so much for coming. We hope you've enjoyed it, and we'll see you again some other time.

[applause]