Persuasion – a sticky pasta play
Stagecraft’s production of Jane Austen’s novel Persuasion is a unique, devised theatrical approach. Starting without a script, the cast has played and used physicality and movement to devise a contemporary take that still remains true to the source material.
We wanted to find out more about the process of creating a play from scratch and went behind the scenes, finding the self-described ‘naughty kids’ of the Persuasion cast, Eva Lockhart, and Sean Farrell.
Eva - My name’s Eva. I play Mary Musgrove, the younger sister of Anne and the husband of Charles. I mean the wife of Charles. Haha I’m the wife of Charles.
Sean - My name’s Sean and I play Charles Musgrove, the wife of Mary, f**! (Laughter) The wife of Mary!
I like that. I think we go with that!
Sean - Yeah I’m playing the wife of Mary. Screw it. And Mr Shepherd as well.
Eva - Oh yeah I also play Mrs Elliot, who dies, in just one scene.
Ah yeah, the dead mum.
Eva - Yeah the dead mum. Yeah of course. But Mary’s my main character.
Cool! So how are you guys finding the process? Has anything been really surprising, how has it been with the group, just like any kind of reflections.
Sean - Oh it’s such a fun group.
Eva - Yeah the group is awesome. I’ve never done a show where all the cast were like in their twenties.
Haha I’ll tell Chris [Stagecraft President Chris O’Grady]. He’ll be thrilled!
Eva - Yeah there are a couple. I mean obviously Chris isn’t in his twenties. But most of us are. And so that’s really cool. Like all of the plays I’ve done before I’ve always been the youngest cast member so yeah it’s awesome to have so many people my age.
Sean - Yeah I feel like it’s been very fun. We all just come in and we giggle and laugh throughout the whole thing (Eva - yeah). And I mean that, it’s always nice even when you’re doing the work, like you want to, you know the most important thing is to have fun!
Eva - We have so much fun. I think, I think we probably have too much fun. (Sean - haha yeah). Like I think Anna would probably like us to have a little less fun.
Sean - A little bit less fun.
Eva - We’re definitely like the naughty kids of the class.
Sean - Yeah I got told I was the problem child.
Oh you guys are the naughty kids?
Eva - Yeah!
Sean - It’s like me, Eva and Margot I think.
Eva - Oh yeah Margot she’s, she’s like a problem child as well.
Sean - But yeah. I know it’s good because then the work doesn’t feel much like work, because you’re just collaborating on something. And you’re just chucking things together and seeing what’s entertaining and what’s cool. And yeah it’s a fun way to work.
Eva - Yeah it’s cool how collaborative it is. I haven’t done, haven’t really done anything semi-devised before. All the theatre I’ve done in the past has just been like pre-scripted. So it’s very interesting for me to work in this way where we kind of come up with stuff on the fly and are then like ‘let’s put it in the show!’ It’s exciting.
It’s exciting, yeah?
Eva - Yeah it’s exciting to see. I think, was it you who was saying there’s some like move that you kind of invited that’s now part of Act One? Or was it someone else that was saying that to me? Maybe it was Richard or Dan was saying that to me. They were like ‘something I invented was going to be in Act One!’ I don’t know it’s just like a little move.
Sean - Yeah it’s very validating when you’re doing something like that, and you’re like oh that’s stupid.
Eva - And then Anna likes it.
Sean - And then it’s like ok and Anna’s like alright we’re going to do that! And it’s like “oh cool!”
Nice. That’s awesome.
Eva - Yeah.
Cool. And how have you found Anna’s directing style?
Sean - It’s very um like, I don’t know, I don’t want to keep using the word fun (Eva laughs).
I mean it’s a good word.
Eva - Enjoyable!
Sean - No cause like we come in and it’s like alright what are we going to do today? There’s a lot of variation.
Eva - Yeah lots of variation.
Sean - You can tell that she really, really wants to like try new things. Which is very exciting. She’s like alright let’s see if this works. Which is an exciting thing to be like let’s just throw some pasta at the wall and see if it sticks.
Eva - Yeah.
Sean - I love a sticky pasta.
The show is sticky pasta.
Sean - Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously there’s a method to the madness but um I’m a big fan of the madness parts of it as well.
Eva - Yeah it’s quite cool. I think it keeps us in a good creative headspace that we have so much variation in our warmups and the way that we come up with Anna calls them like pictures or images, which is like yeah like a static image that represents the scene I guess and we kind of come up with those in all these different various ways. And this exercise we’re doing today, with the sitting and touching each other and what not.
It looked very cool.
Eva - We’ve never done it before but yeah it looked very cool! It was really fun. And yeah, today’s exercise is one I’ve particularly enjoyed. So it’s interesting cause in the future I would like to direct my own play and I feel like I’m learning a lot from doing these exercises, like things that I could myself use as a director, which is really cool.
Awesome, that’s very cool.
Eva - Especially like stuff that I never did in drama class at school, because obviously I know a lot of warmups from like just from doing drama at school, but yeah I’ve learnt some brand new ones from here which is awesome.
Sean - Yeah and the variation keeps you like switched on as well. Not repeating too much stuff from rehearsal to rehearsal, it’s like you kind of, you’re engaged because it’s like if you’re not engaged you’re going to be a bit like lost.
Eva - (laughs) Yeah that’s we get into (laughter) and then we like look at each other and are like wait what are we actually supposed to be doing?
Sean - Yeah, yeah, yeah it’s bad. Do my thing.
Eva - It’s also cool that she, Anna, like trusts us. You know trusts us to have some input and to make some decisions, which is cool you know. You don’t often feel like the director trusts the actor to like make decisions about staging and stuff like that. But she kind of encouraged us to think about that from day one. She was like, if you have any ideas for like the staging and the set, like let us know. And I was like wow. Like a director’s never said that to me before. Yeah so that’s really cool.
Persuasion runs at the Gryphon Theatre from 8 – 18 May. Book at iticket.co.nz
No actual pasta appears in the show.