Tribes Performances and Directing Workshop

Tribes by Nina Raine, directed by Kate Hewitt.

https://www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/tribes

"Billy was born deaf into a hearing family. In the arguments and jokes around the kitchen table, he has never been treated any differently to the rest of them. But when he meets Sylvia, who teaches him sign language, he starts to wonder if his family have ever really listened to him at all.

Deeply moving and shockingly funny, Tribes is about the need we all feel to belong, to speak and to be understood."

1st Viewing

I first went to see the play on the 30th June and I thought it was amazing. The staging, lights, tech, characters, their development and the development of the story was all portrayed so well done brilliantly by Kate Hewitt, especially since half way through I realised that it was closed room.

Staging

My first impressions of the staging was that it was very simple but effective. There were 6 chairs around a table, a single chair by itself and a small bookshelf. On the raised back was a piano with a stool and another single chair. 

The whole set was wood up which immediately gave it a homely feel and you felt like you were immersed in this family's household and their lives. When you originally walk in, the actor who is playing Billy is sat at the head of the table eating which immediately draws you to him and as an actor myself, I would have found it so hard to not react to any of the audience or keep as concentrated as he did because he never looked anyone in the eye and someone's phone rang and he didn't react to that either.

I thought that the director did an excellent job of making sure that wherever you sat you had at least one person facing you so you could see their reactions and the first time we went to see it we could see Dan's facial expressions more but how the second time we could see Ruth's so it was very well staged in terms of visually to the audience.

There was only one location change and that was the back section when it became the apartment for Billy and Sylvia and this was clearly shown by the lowering of an old light bulb and dimming of the lights.

Lights and Tech

As you enter the Studio Theatre, it is dim lighting with a spotlight on Billy who is sat at the dinner table eating and you what him for about 5 minutes whilst the audience is filing in just eating this pasta and not reacting to anyone. In the background, you can hear an orchestra stringing up their instruments and sometimes plucking out some chords.

The play opens with the orchestra building into a crescendo that gets really loud whilst the actors come on the stage one by one and begin preparing the set for the first scene and then your all of a sudden dropped in the middle of an argument that's going on around the family dinner table. It's very sudden and it takes a while for you to register that you don't really know what the arguments about and you have to pay really close attention to what the actors are saying so that you can piece together what the subject is. I think this reflects on what it's like to be deaf, trying to pick up words so you can understand what's going on.

In various scenes, the lights fade to a spotlight on Dan/Billy or whoever is talking which then fades to darkness which becomes the trigger for the actors to start moving. All of the set changes were done by the actors and could be seen by the audience quite visually and I feel like this was done on purpose so that the audience had a feel of what this family's life was like.

At the end of Act 1 - we see Sylvia (who is played by a deaf actress who can't hear her own voice or the music that she is playing so to her she's just pressing keys but the music that she is playing sounds amazing) playing the piano in a blue light and blue ripples are sent out from her when the music gets louder and more intense so do the blue ripples. The main lights that we on the scene before begin to pulse and fade on the family as Billy turns away from the piano. He can't hear the music as he says earlier on the music is just a crackling which hints at why the piano music fades into white noise because this is what he hears whilst the rest of the family's attention is completely on Sylvia and her music. The white noise fades into the darkness for a transition but there's also a projection of a verse of the song along the top of the set and also on the wood whilst the actors are moving around. 

During an argument later on, the white noise becomes words that are all jumbled up and during certain conversations, when the two deaf characters don't understand, a sentence will flash up on the screens at the back but the words won't be in order and only certain words flash up and certain times and you have to piece together the sentence and that's what it's like being deaf. It really open up your eyes because it really takes a lot of concentration because your trying to think what it is. 

A 2nd time, when Billy and Sylvia are having a conversation that involves both speaking and sign there are certain sentences that are projected on the back walls.

At the end of the play, there is a complete role reversal as Billy needs captions at the start because he signs due to being deaf but then at the end Dan needs to sign because his stammer worsens and so he can't pronounce any words and so asks Billy to teach him sign so that he can communicate with him and also people can understand him.

Characters

Beth - mother, 60, peace-keeper. Played by Lindy Whiteford

- Traditional Housewife

- Gets more feisty throughout the play and challenges Christopher's (her husband's) views but usually ends up doing what he says as he overpowers her.

- Protective of her family and she tries to do what is best for her kids. Sometimes it's telling them the truth straight up or sometimes it's encouraging them and making them feel like she understands them.

- Genuinly tries and cares for Billy as she taught him to speak when he was little which has lead him to being able to lip read really well.

-Strength of character is really shown when Billy decides not to speak to the family unless they learn sign and the family starts to become rowdy, she tells them to quieten down so that Billy becomes the focus of the scene again.
- You get a sense that she has tried her hardest all through Billy's life, and now, to integrate him in "normal" life and when he says that he has found the deaf community, she supports him and encourages him to persevere with it.

Christopher - Father, 60, man-of-the-house, bolshie. Played by Simon Rouse

- Controversial views

- Proud and egotistical

- Stubborn with fairly fixed mindset which makes him opinionated.

- Projects his ideals onto his kids, especially Dan, which sometimes makes them distance themselves from him as the pressure gets overwhelming.

Ruth - sister, middle child, 20's, "singer" Played by Louisa Connolly-Burnham

- Outspoken and opinionated (probably influenced by her father)

- Wannabe singer who has an epiphany towards the end that she can't actually sing.

- Becomes very protective of Dan when his stutter returns and his mental state deteriorates

- More socially aware and has more relationships within the family.

- In Act 1 she is very sarcastic and she becomes the dramatic comic relief as there is a scene in which Dan and Sylvia kiss by mistake and straight after the blackout the lights come up on her lip-singing to opera into a hairbrush.

Billy - deaf, youngest child, early 20's. Played by Ciaran Alexander Stewart

-Isolated, maybe even lonely because he isolates himself from the rest of his family.

- Meets Sylvia and discovers his deaf identity which makes his anger on his family reflect back on himself.

- He's not fully aware of how much his family love and care for him.

- He loves Dan and Ruth, there is a clear sibling bond that forms throughout the play around these three characters.

- He wants to have meaning in his life which leads to him lying to the police about the words that he can lip read.
- He feels like he needs to make the family proud and so learns sign language to show them that he's doing something with his life.

Dan - oldest child, late 20's, maybe schizophrenic.

- Pressure from Dad since he was young.
- Loves Billy very much and is very protective of him.
- Fights with Ruth but their strong bond is clearly shown through the teasing.
- Billy is his safe place and this is reflected in the fact that the voices in his head are of everyone else but not Billy's voice
- When Billy leaves these voices worsen and his stammer reappears.
- There is a role reversal towards the end as his stammer is very bad and he has to resort to signing in order for him to be understood.
- He learns sign for both Billy and himself so that they can communicate together.
- "The first I miss you really means I love you." Daniel tries to tell Billy that they miss him but due to his stammer he cannot. He then asks Billy to teach him the sign for love by spelling out s-i-g-n. This completely juxtaposes with a line that he said earlier as he said "We love you most, idiot" and this didn't get through to Billy but trying to say we miss you really hits home for Billy.
- He kisses Sylvia after they have a cigarette together in the kitchen because he thought that it would break them up due to him not wanting her to take him away because Billy is Dan's safety blanket.

Directors Workshop with the Assistant Director, Jennifer Bates.

On the 8th July, me and a couple of friends went to a directing workshop at the Crucible lead by the assistant director, Jennifer Bates, as we had really enjoyed the show previously and we thought that it would be interesting for us to have a director's point of view on it. Also next year, we have a directing unit and so we thought that it would be helpful to pick up on some hints and tips and maybe some techniques we could use when we start directing ourselves.

Jen said that she would be taking us through the stages that they did in their 5 week rehearsal but instead of spending the 3 days to a week that they did we would be spending 15 minutes to 30 minutes on each section.

We started off with Facts and Questions. This is where you sit in a circle and you assign 1 person (or 2 depending on the size of your cast) to write down everything that is either:

• An immediate fact
• An immediate question
• A background fact
• Or a background question

You then read through the play, we only focused on the first scene as we didn't have that much time, and you shout out at any point when you think that you see one. When we did it, I color coded each category so that I could see where each one was more clearly. This what my script ended up looking like:

As you go alone, one of the directors become the "Timeline" person. This is trying to figure out what time it is set in and any events that have happened trying to fit them in the timeline as well. For example, one of the many conversations that is going on over the table is about nuts and how Beth has "got them off the lawn." We said that this was an indication that it was Autumn when this was set and also they have to be quite a well-off family if they can afford to have a nut tree in their back garden. Some of the immediate facts were:

• There's characters called Daniel, Beth, Christopher, Ruth and Billy.
• They have a garden
• Beth and Christopher are 60 years old.
• Christopher doesn't like smoked roe.

Some of our immediate questions were:

• Have you finished your pasta?
• What the hell did you put on it?
• Are you making fun of your mother?

Some background facts were:

• Ruth thinks highly of the character they call "cunt"
• Ruth views him as a potential love interest
• Christopher is a socialist and well educated

Some background questions were:

• Why is Billy eating in silence?
• Do they all sit down together at every meal, or do they just come together once a year like Christmas?
• Who plays the piano?
• What's the makeup of the family? Step-kids? Real kids?
• Are they Jewish?
• Do they live in the country?
• Does Daniel think Ruth is the favorite?

These are just a few of the many background questions that we got and we only spent 15 minutes on the first scene. As you carry on reading, some questions will be answered and you find that by the end of the play, at the last scene, majority of the questions that you had at the start should be answers but you may still have a few if the play ends on a cliffhanger, which it does; you never really find out what happens to Billy and Daniel.

These background questions are ones which the actors should flesh out when they begin acting as you should have gone through the whole play and by the time you put the scene on it's feet you already have a fuller idea of the character and so should the rest of the cast as you have all worked together. This process can be very slow at the start but once you understand and get into it you can really start to get some interesting backstories building up.

The directors can have done this already so that they have an idea of how they want the characters to be portrayed and so the directors can push the actors forward to discovering the facts for themselves and they also might flag up some new ones that the director may not have  wanted to use.

Jen said that the characters that we never meet, so ones that are just mentioned, become pictures on a wall which are found just on google images that fit what the cast think that character would look like. This is so that whenever that character is mentioned the whole cast knows what they look like and they are all picturing the same person, meaning they are all on the same page.

The next thing that they did is outline the events.

An event classifies as something that is said or done that change's everyone's intentions in the room. If it doesn't change every character's intentions then it doesn't count as an event. As a general rule for this all entrances and exits count as event because if someone exits the room it should change the atmosphere for everyone and same for entrances. When looking for events you need to ask yourself: Does it effect everyone, if not it doesn't count. An event could be a word, action or even the smallest of looks but it has to be noticed by everyone for it to have an effect.

Jen said that she likes to put a dash at the start and end of every events and then label it. The labels need to be clean cut with no guessing or assuming. Don't take things from the text that aren't actually in there. 

Some times it was hard for them to distinguish what was an event because obviously Billy is dead and so he can't hear any words that could symbolize an event so they had to make sure that if there was an event they have to have a big enough reaction or movements that would spark Billy's attention so that it would effect everyone and therefore could be classed as an event.

After you have identified all of the events you then write them all up and that is what your play will be. Different directors could have different events that are significant and so this is why you get so many different versions of the same play because each director has there own opinion. Who is talking and who the line is directed to are all important in how the event changes the character's intentions.

Between each event are units and in each unit each character has an intention and objective. Characters have wants, aims, objectives and sub-objectives and whilst we were at the workshop, I immediately linked this to Stanislavski as that what he based his drama on. In one unit, an actor should have clear intentions and within that, tactics that will make it possible. An event can come along and change that intention which will lead to the character possibly acting differently and their tactics to have changed.

We then put the scene on it's feet and played around with the staging, different intentions, where/how the events come around and how they effect the family. When we staged it, I was originally sat at the head of the table facing the audience as Billy with the intention of just eating the pasta but then we moved Billy next to Ruth with the same intention but Hannah, who was playing Ruth, made more of an effect with Billy. In the end, we had to move Billy to the opposite head of the table so that Christopher could sit down there instead and so Billy's intention changed to keeping out of the conversation. As we were going through the scene, I was going over the questions that we had discussed previously. Jen also said that in their rehearsal they planned the rest of the house so that when the actors went offstage they knew exactly where they were going. We found that as we were sitting at different places it effected who we reacted to, who's facial expressions we could see more etc.

We found that our scene 1 highly contrasted with the actual performance as when characters were leaving we subconsciously had the characters splintered off, crossing and then leaving, which enabled us to see the connections between all of the characters as they were talking to whoever went past and/or reacting to them.

Having this director's perspective really helped us and I was excited to watch the performance again but know what the director's were thinking during the making and I weirdly found that it made me look at things other than the actors when watching the second performance.

2nd Viewing

When watching it a second time I found myself paying much more attention to things like the set, lights, music and I found that when they play the white noise in the first act, it's purely white noise because it reflects what he can hear whilst the music is playing. But I noticed that in the second half, you can start to pick out words in the white noise as this is what he can hear when there's the argument going on about Billy leaving. When the white noise does start the lights dim with a spotlight on Billy and all the rest of the cast go into slow motion mouthing shouting and moving around as though the argument is still going on and then they snap back into the loud argument and it really makes the two experiences juxtapose.

In the end scene with Billy and Dan, I found myself paying more attention to Dan's hands and mouth as he tries to sign things or speak them as I wanted him to say things like "we don't mind" and "no one minds." But when those sentences come up on the back screen you know that he won't be able to say them and your heart drops a little. He proceeds to try and say things like "We miss you" and "please hold my hand" yet he still cannot which pushes him to spell out the word "sign" in sign language which catches Billy's attention he then asks him what the sign for love is and the two boys sign to each other and run to each other as the lights dim for the ending.

We also found that there was another role reversal in act 1 as Dan slams his hand on the table to get Billy's attention and this is when Dan can speak perfectly fine and Billy is choosing to tell them that his hearing aid is turn off but then it switches to Billy slamming his hand on the table to attract Dan's attention so that he can tell him he's leaving.

We could also see the sibling relationship a lot more during this performance and it became very playful and sweet and you could tell that deep down they all did care for one another. There was moments of little shared looks between them and gestures and reactions such as when Ruth swears at the two boys, Billy smiles towards Dan and also Dan fist pumps when Billy tells him that he is high up in the deaf hierarchy because he is deaf from birth.

We also found that Oliver Johnstone who plays Dan was really good at impressions. Throughout the play, we saw a Scottish accent when impersonating his mum, opera and a rendition of the Jungle Book when teasing Ruth and "Siegfried" said in a very unusual way.

When Sylvia is playing the piano, we noticed that it draws the family closer, the girls sit nearer to her and as Christopher moves closer, Billy moves away which is the cue for the music to build and the blue light to deepen which moves into a high pitched noise that builds until it snaps into white noise which is what Billy hears.

At the start, we found ourselves paying a lot of attention to how Billy is sat eating his pasta. The way that he was eating his spaghetti with a fork and a spoon really showed that the family was middle class and we already knew this from the directing workshop but it was nice to see how they had incorporated little signs to show what class they lived in.

Jen said that all the way through the play "they are switching tribes, changing their alliances" which really stood out as now that we had that information you could see them almost swapping constantly and with each comment that was made their were new alliances, new tribes, being formed and reformed.