The Kindom & Getting Lost

We love a good rehearsal game, especially if it benefits our process as creators of theatre. Whilst researching the context of the Tempest, we realised that the place that the characters come from (Tunis/Milan/Naples) is very different to the place that they end up (the island.) This generated a lot of questions, and our inquisitive minds wanted to understand how the characters must have felt going between such contrasting places.  Naples is a hive of activity, with twists and turns and sun drenched piazzas, dark alleyways hiding secret meetings, secluded courtyards, pillars, dusty streets and busting market squares, and, most importantly, everyone wanting to become that bit more powerful, but not quite knowing how to do so. In opposition with this, we see the small island as a craggy, desolate place, with dense pine forests in the middle, leading to mountainous sea faces and rocky sand-dunes, with shrubbery and cave dwellings scattered across the terrain. To really get to grips with these places and to help them settle within us, we became embroiled in two quite different games. The first:

 Game One:
The Kingdom

17^th Century Naples. We are all citizens living under the rule of the King, with secret ambitions to gain his level of power, or to meet someone who could help us on our quest to power. Two citizens, however, work for the King, and these people’s positions are unknown to the others. The whole of the building was our playing space, and the main objective of the game was to form allegiances, working together to create power that could overthrow the King. However, if the King’s workers discovered any plans of revolt, they could inform the King of this and the King could take them out of the game. What followed was a series of chance meetings in corridors, doors closing just as you turn a corner, whispered conversations, unsteady gazes and uneasy exchanges. There was a heightened sense of distrust amongst everyone; the two who sought to defend the King had to wait for their chance to pounce, forming counterfeit alliances in order to find out information. The others felt that they could not trust anyone, in case they said something that could get them into trouble. The environment was toxic and heated, and the whole experience heightened the sense of being in an enclosed space, distrust in everyone you come into contact with, or just missing something important.

Game Two: Getting Lost

After our experience of The Kingdom, we wanted to experience the complete opposite to this, just as our characters do. They end up on an island, lost, with no idea which direction to go in or if they will ever see another inhabitant. So, we got into three teams, and each created a list of fifteen instructions/directions to be given to another team. These could be anything, some examples being:

-          Walk backwards until you bump into something. Turn right.

-          Walk for one minute, turn left, walk until you reach a tree.

-          Crawl until you reach an obstacle. Climb over it.

-          Walk in a northern direction, until you see another person.

-          Wait for a bird to pass overhead. Follow its direction for two minutes.

-          Go up at the next opportunity.

-          Jump off the next edge you find.

And so on.

We were lead into the woodland area near our rehearsal space, swapped our directions, and then set off on our separate adventures. My team found ourselves climbing through a dense, leafy bush, before climbing up a muddy slope, finding an interesting landmark, climbing over barbed wire fences, tiptoeing through streams and walking until we could find an edge to jump off. We saw another group a great distance away, who had to walk until they saw another human being, and it felt like they were unreachable.

Our sense of being lost in a space that we were quite unfamiliar with was heightened, and we were faced with new challenges due to the tasks given in the directions. This meant that we could end up anywhere, and could not pre-empt our end point. This helped us to understand the characters on the island, as they walk for days and cannot find another human, feeling that they are wandering endlessly with no end-point in sight. It made us listen to our surroundings, and take in everything around us that we may otherwise have missed; we also had to work together to find our way to the end of the list (something the characters have to do when they reach the island and look for Ferdinand.)   

Both of these games created the realisation in our minds of the two opposite worlds that the characters in The Tempest are forced to inhabit, concluding that the sense of unease and feeling of being lost could be heightened when the life that they have experienced (the city landscape) is taken away from them....and the games were a bit fun too!