Making Battery Park

Opening night for my latest play, Battery Park, has come and gone. I'm sitting here, exhausted but exhilarated after a fantastic rehearsal process that led to us making what I think is a great show. 

I started this blog as a student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where I studied directing, as a place to reflect on my practice, and over a decade later I haven't kicked the habit. So here's a reflection on my process as a director - but also as the artistic director of Sleeping Warrior Theatre Company.  It will be of niche interest to some I hope, and will be a resource for myself looking back.

Battery Park is about a group of young people from Greenock who form a band and attempt to become bigger than Oasis in 1990's Britain. We know right from the off that they didn't succeed and we watch the main protagonist now - a 47 year old man - as he grapples with the choices made by younger him and how they still affect his life. 

Around a year and a half ago I applied to Creative Scotland's Open Fund for some money to develop my idea. We had 8 actors, a dramaturg (the excellent Isla Cowan) and space and time to play with my draft, write songs and get some footage together to try and take the project further. 

I'm not sure why, but I have found it very difficult to get theatres in Scotland to take my ideas on. And Battery Park was no exception, so I decided that I would attempt to get it staged through my own theatre company, Sleeping Warrior. We had been successful with our last two tours on what is called the Touring Fund,  an initiative funded by Creative Scotland that really works very well for a company like mine.

Our first show on this fund, Spuds, was around the £60,000 mark, whereas the following years tour of Crocodile Rock and A New Life was double that. I will admit to having made a mistake attempting to do two shows at the same time last year. The thought process was sound - instead of going somewhere like Inverness and doing one show over one night and then moving on, why not have two shows - using a similar set and the same actors - so they can stay for two nights? In practice this didn't work. Some theatre took one show and not the other and in the places where we played the two shows we tended to almost be in competition with ourselves. Artistically I didn't feel I could be in the headspace for each play in the way I'd like to - there were so many challenges happening on a production level that the artistic director role was far more at the front of my brain, compared to the director role. The actors and MD I worked with were all brilliant, and we made work that I'm proud of (and was reviewed very well), but it was a ridiculously stressful show for the small technical team working on it. I learned so so so much! Therefore when I applied for Battery Park I was sure to resource it better and make sure that it is tourable, high quality and won't put unacceptable strain on the team. 

We were rejected the first time round for the fund. This happens all the time, it's the nightmare part of this job. I mean I had my shows Spuds a few years earlier, various 5* reviews from it's time at Play Pie and a Pint, and we got rejected three times before the successful bid that got the show on the road. That's about 2 years of failure - for a show that was already a 'hit'. Anyways, I'm not one for giving up, so I worked a little more on the application for Battery Park, changed a couple of things here and there, got some financial and in-kind support from the Beacon (so they became our co-producing partners) and sent it off. The chips fell in our favour and we were awarded around £160,000 - so we were really into big numbers for this show. 

Spuds - 4 attempts to get funded

Once that stage was over, I did the application myself with a couple of friends looking over it for me, it was time for me to build my team. This is where I haven't always got it right in the past, so this year I was extra careful in who I was working with and making sure that the show was properly resourced from a workforce perspective. I met up with freelance producer Steph Connell as she had experience touring similar sized shows, and we teamed up. This would be around December 2022, so 8/9 months before the show started rehearsals. We worked together looking to see who would be a good fit for this show and started to form the rest of the team. I used the same lighting and sound designers from previous years, I think it's always good to reward loyalty where possible and they really helped me out when we were in dire straits - and they also do an amazing job of course - so that was an easy one! Steph had recommendations on the stage manager side so she recruited people for that. 

I've worked with many designers over the years, it's one of my favourite parts of the job, and I was keen to work with Kenneth Macleod, we were close to working with one another a few years before but it never happened, so it was nice to have the opportunity to get things going with him. 

Right from the off I was clear to everyone what we needed. A show that was visually exciting and inventive yet also tourable and, as we would be doing same day get ins and outs, something that will be possible for a small team to get up and down relatively quickly. This was really me finding my feet as an artistic director working to a large(er) budget, seeing where the problems might be 10 months down the line and trying to mitigate them now rather than a panic on tech night. Kenneth very much understood the brief from the off, which was very helpful! We brought in an experienced production manager, Elle, who had, again, done us a favour at the last minute in previous years, so it was nice to reward that help with an actual proper job! She began to liaise with theatres as soon as they were booked. As Steph was busy during the first half of the year we worked with our producer from the last two tours, Ailie, on booking. 

Booking a tour is...well it's just an absolute headache is what it is! We had our dates in the Beacon sorted and we were lucky that a show cancelled and we could get the following week at the Tron (where we will sell the most tickets). After that it was all about trying to get dates around the country, but trying not to have excessive travel, so you're not in Aberdeen one night and Peebles the next. It's a lot of back and forward, some theatres will respond right away, some will never get back to you, some will offer dates only for those dates to then disappear, some stages are too small, some capacities are too big... It's not anybody's fault, it's just the way it is, and in the end we managed to secure 13 venues, all over the country. Ailie then went back to her work at NTS, triumphant in successfully booking a tour for us!

You may have noticed that I haven't really spoken about anything creative yet. And that is absolutely the life of an artistic director of a theatre company. To make creative opportunities you need to put in a LOT of graft, work with a lot of people and do a whole bunch of organising. I think it's worthwhile to point out, that it will never be perfect. You will always have to work a few too many hours, you will have to forego some social things to get that application in on time, you will need to juggle 344390 things at the same time - and you will need to pay everybody else first before you pay yourself (even though the thing only exists because of you) that's just the way it is! 

So with the various team members being contracted and starting to think about the project it was time for me to get the ball rolling on casting.

Around this time I was also making decisions on the set. Kenneth would send me ideas and we would chat things through, so by the time I was meeting actors in auditions I could describe what the show was going to look like to them. 

We didn't have budget for a casting director so Steph and I took that on ourselves, contacting agents and actors. I tend to invite people I have seen in things and those that are recommended to me. Agents also send a list of people for me to look at and, after checking their Spotlights, I'll ask them in - or not. We had in-person auditions for the first time in years this time round, and it was a real pleasure. 

There were so many great actors that came through the door - we really could have cast the show a few times over. So much of casting is a domino effect. Stuart Edgar, who I knew from RCS as he is still training as an actor, came in quite early to auditions and was a pretty certain definite for the 'lead' role of Tommy. So from there we were then trying to build an ensemble around him, we had so many great actors up for the part of Angie (his girlfriend in the show) and it was all about who we felt would look like they would go out with Stuart! 

Stuart Edgar as Tommy

The part of Ed, his big brother, was also tricky. Again lots of good actors, but most felt like they were younger than Stuart so - through no fault of their own - that ruled them out, Ed is also physically bigger (that's important to the story) so we were very aware of that when seeing people. After our first run of auditions we didn't have anyone that we felt fit this criteria ... HOWEVER... we had met an actor who had auditioned for another part - we didn't think he was quite right for that, but thought he'd be a great Ed. Checked his Spotlight and saw he played guitar... we then got in touch with the actor (Tommy McGowan) to ask if he would be interested in auditioning again. I think in these sort of situations it's always better to give the actor the power of 'no' - if they don't fancy reading for it then I'd understand, but I want that to be their choice. He said he would, he read it, he was great, physically he worked against Stuart and we were game on. It took a long time to get all the actors contracted etc. and - of course - we made sure to let those that weren't successful know that it wasn't to be, when requested from agents we provided feedback. 

I go into this audition process in so much detail because I think it's good for actors to perhaps understand a little bit about what is going on on the other side of the table. You could give the most amazing audition ever, be brilliant, but not just physically right, or the appropriate age etc. etc. etc. so many things are out of your control. And if you give a good audition then you will be remember for other projects. Although if you're asked to bring a Britpop song in, don't start playing some laid-back jazz... please...never the jazz.

So actors booked, set agreed and being built, tour booked, marketing and press people in place, now it's time for selling this show. Because it took so long to do the casting we were getting very close to our deadline with theatres for images for the show. In the end two of the actors could make our photoshoot, the two brothers, and that was it. So a student actor at the RCS, Emma, very kindly came and modelled for us. Her image is now plastered around the country! We tried to make the band look as 90s as possible and get that genuine band look. Working with Eoin Carey, it was really exciting starting to make the first steps into the world of the play. I think it's fair to say that some of the pics weren't really working until we started spraying them with water and they had a slightly sweaty/greasy look about them, the transformation was amazing! We had a bunch of images to choose from, which we did, and then Serden, our marketing manager, liaised with the printers and designers to get posters and flyers made. 

Out and about during the photoshoot - pic by Eoin Carey

All the time during this I was working on the script. I was lucky to have my pal Debbie Hannan onboard as dramaturg. They looked at my drafts and would give me notes, things to think about, beats that weren't landing, characters journeys etc. It's invaluable, especially when you are writer/director, to have this outside eye and Debbie and I know one another so well that their notes to me were very clear and direct - just how I like it. 

I also had some songs to write, there are 6 in the show and we had 3 or 4 done. I met up with Isla Cowan who was dramaturg on the development and was now helping me with lyrics. I'm so used to writing musical theatre that I found my songs weren't quite ringing true lyrically (musical theatre is all about story and the song doing something dramatically, that wasn't relevant in this set-up), so Isla was a great help in working with me on making songs that were based on the what was happening in the play but could also just be songs in their own right. It's also really exciting to have ideas thrown at you that you would never have thought of - Down The Rabbit Hole is one of those songs, a great title and absolutely perfect for the dramatic moment it represents. Songwriting is so different to play writing. I doubt any of the songs in the show took over ten minutes to write, that's just what it's like. Capture a wee idea quickly, get some words that resound, put them together and there you go. The next stage, working on the songs with the band, takes time - but the actual writing was very quick. 

Rehearsals were creeping up on us. We had managed to get our tour done in 6 weeks, which gave us 4 for rehearsal. I made the decision - which turned out to be a great one(!) - to only have the band for the first week and to go to a music studio. It meant that the 4 members of Battery Park were coming together as a band first, and actors second - something that I felt was very important to the show. They are all great musicians and it just took a lot of experimenting with sounds and song structures etc. before we were happy with what we got. We rehearsed for 3 days and then recorded for two - the recording process was vital in that it gave us songs that we could use for marketing and also made us really focus on the different parts and how they knitted together. You can listen to the song on Spotify above, or search for it on your service. I briefly donned the role of producer for this EP, and mixed the songs at home - I think they sound great and hopefully make the band sound like an actual 'real' band! Check out one of the songs below:

So with our ears still ringing from Charlie's drums we headed into rehearsal of the play, exchanging the hash-tinged air of the music studio for the sleek rooms at the National Theatre of Scotland. Out of the various jobs I do it is directing that I find myself the most comfortable, so I was excited to get started. 

I knew we had a great group of actors and I also knew that my main job in the first few days was to create a room that helped create camaraderie amongst them all. The play is about a group of friends from Greenock,  so for those relationships to be believable, then there needs to be a genuine connection amongst everyone. It became a running joke during rehearsals that people would venture off into totally irrelevant funny wee stories, holding up rehearsals to tell everyone about this or that. Anyone who has worked with me before will know I am absolutely the worst for it. However, that sort of thing - as simple as it seems - is to my mind one of the most important parts of the whole process. If actors are willing to share stories, to laugh with one another, to feel comfortable in each other's company, then it means that when we come to working on the script there is a trust there. A director once said to me that he looked for actors that 'take their work seriously, but not themselves'. I think there is a lot of wisdom in that! If they are willing to joke with me and feel comfortable talking to me, then it means when they have an issue further down the line (or a solution that they may keep to themselves in other circumstances) then they hopefully feel comfortable bringing it up. 

Day one of 'actual' rehearsal is always nerve wracking. All the people involved tend to show up, people we won't see until tech or opening night! It's a really joyous moment where all the people that you've been chatting to, hiring, working on their role in the show with, come together as one. It was very clear to me on the first readthrough that my script wasn't working. This is where the advantage of being writer and director comes to the fore. I could quickly gauge people's opinions - our assistant director Scott Miller was particularly great at being honest, and useful, in pointing out where he felt thing were going astray - and then I could quickly work on them. The show felt, to me, like Lord of the Rings. Not because there was an abundance of Hobbits in it (you don't get Hobbits in Greenock) but because it felt like it had about 4 endings. I had various 'themes' and 'overarching ideas' that I wanted in the show, but sometimes they felt like they had nothing to do with the key story and the character's journey. Everyone chipped in with opinions, as a director it's my job to listen to them and then make a decision where we go. I rewrote the end that night and the next day we tried it again, still it wasn't quite there (but it was better). The actors had great ideas as to what was going awry and, after a number of cuts (it's almost always cuts, very rarely adding stuff) we had a script we were happy with. 

The read-through

For the main chunk of rehearsals I like to go through things chronologically, getting a rough overview of the scenes (mainly focusing on the writing) talking to the actors about what the scenes are doing, what the relationships in the scene are, what their character is wanting. I hate traditional 'blocking'. Where the actors move on the same line, to the same spot on the stage every time. It feels unalive and, to me, it destroys the point in having a live event. I like to set up the situation in a scene, set up the place imaginatively in the actors heads and then see where the scene takes them. Inevitably a gesture or a move that felt great and looked amazing the first time round becomes tired as the rehearsals continue. I like to give the actors the freedom to find the moment in the moment. 

However there are a few rules that I like to apply. There's a great exercise that I learned at RCS with the movement teachers. You imagine the stage is balancing on a pencil, if it's unbalanced then it tips. It's funny how this exercise gives you a funny feeling in your tummy when you look at an unbalanced space, it feels like the room is falling over! So I would sometimes feed that back to the actors, that the action was focused too much in one corner and the stage was tipping, it's a very simple way to keep the stage 'picture' balanced but not be too prescriptive to the actors. 

Throughout rehearsals, right up to preview, I am looking for 'dead' moments - repetitive behaviour that doesn't come from the moment. They are such strong actors that it happens rarely and when it does it sticks out like a sore thumb! All it takes is for me to give the very simple reminder that all action should come out of the moment, and not something pre-determined, and it's done. 

Of course there are some moments that have to be explored physically in detail. There are two kisses in the show and so we had a brill intimacy coordinator, Sharon Mackay in to work on that section. There is also a fight that 'almost' happens and a push, so we had to be safe and work on those sections in a controlled manner. 

We wanted to create a movement section that told the story of a drunken night out. To begin with we went for a Frantic Assembly sort of feel, but it soon became clear that this did not work with the language of the play. This is so important to me as a director, that everyone is living in the same world and that all the choices of the play belong within the context of that world. Our movement sections with various lifts and what have you, looked decent, but it stuck out like a sore thumb, so after much discussion and toing and froing we kept the story-telling that we had developed and simplified the movement, so it was no longer 'dancey' - it is a little bit more choreographed than the rest of the play but I think it's a nice wee section that is a welcome shift for the audience, and it also has coherency with the play as a whole. 

A big advantage for us was being in the building at NTS. It meant that our stage management team had access to their brilliant props store (they also let us borrow a lot of sound gear, as did the citizens theatre - to whom we are most grateful). Being able to have the set in the room from day one, and have the props arriving all the time meant that the actors were very used to the action of the play before we got anywhere near a stage. The attention to detail that the team put into all the props is amazing, there are a lot of discussions about what I would like and why X may work better than Y etc. If there was a problem then they offered solutions, what more can a director ask for?

As I'm working on the show Jane, our press officer, starts to send in requests for interviews - the idea for Battery Park really seemed to pique journalists' interest so I found that most of my lunchtimes were spent either doing interviews or having production meetings. Again it's not exactly ideal, but if we want an audience to attend then we will need to let people know about the show, so it was vital to set time aside for that and also to create space to film trailers etc. As with everything else, putting the work in earlier will hopefully help make things smoother in the future, we have lots of marketing assets lined up for the show, keeping an online presence going and hopefully giving people and idea what to expect - without giving too much away. 

As the actors are starting to learn lines and we have been through the play once, figuring out how the music works and adding and cutting lines all over the place then we start to step into the next part of the rehearsal process. This was towards the end of week two/start of week 3. The actors now have a grasp on their characters, on their journey and the 'meaning' of the play has been thinned out. I found that there were multiple moments where you could hear my voice as a playwright trying to explain what I thought the play was about - again, I can feel something in my stomach (an actual gut feeling) when these occur and get rid of them. Trusting the teams opinions is vital at this stage, 'what do you think?' is the most asked question as I try and get the text settled.  Chris Alexander, playing older Tommy, constantly returned to 'spoon feeding' where there was no space for the audience to interpret what had happened, that I was giving them all the information when it wasn't necessary - it's so easy to hear a note like that and work on it in the moment and get it fixed, the only discussion I have to have is with myself! 

So as the play is starting to get more solid, I start to add more detail into the scene. Most of the time this is through conversation 'why does she want that?' - 'how long has it been since they first kissed?' - 'do you think he believes himself when he says that?'. Things can get very detailed - one of the characters has the word "so"... and there was a lot of chat about that word, what she meant by it and how it affected the room. It's still one of my favourite moments.... a wee 'so' that is trying to keep things positive but is ultimately filled with defeat.

Working on the detail

As we slowly start to see all the pieces form together I'm looking at the atmosphere and rhythm of the play. Does it shift, does it grow, is the pacing right. Nobody wants to watch something that is one note, so I'm encouraging the actors to be really precise on their cues, or I'm asking them to change the atmosphere with a line and let that hang in the air. I've never worked on a play where a missed beat, and extra breath, can really throw things as much as this one. The second half was feeling a little bit underpowered and lazy, AD Scott suggested that two of the actors entrances right at the top of it be filled with far more energy. As soon as we tried that, the energy of their entrance then snowballed into the rest of that scene which snowballed into the next scene and on it went until the show ended with a real lightning bolt of energy. That was a real lesson for me and I made that clear to the actors (who already subconsciously knew) that in this play in particular everyone is helping to keep the ball in the air, drop the ball and the thing collapses in on itself. I think this thinking has really helped to make the shifts in the play work, when it's fast dialogue then it is fast, almost characters talking on top of one another and then 

BOOM! 

A bomb of a line is said

The atmosphere shifts 

and we're off again, in a different tempo, in a different atmosphere. 

Atmosphere and rhythm are essential

As we get closer to the end of rehearsal the actors can find life pretty challenging, getting off book whilst playing instruments, whilst dealing with loads of cables on a stage, whilst trying not to drop the ball to throw off the rhythm... there's a lot going on! As a director you can't panic in these moments, you know that they are brilliant, and that they are human, and they will get it! I had my moment of crisis about two years before when I couldn't get past the end of the first act, and now it's their time to be in that uncertain place. I truly believe that being calm, pleasant, encouraging and respectful in the room is the way to get the best results. Even if you are starting to get nervous, worrying that a scene will never be right (or whatever), you can't let that feed into the room as the actors will sense your anxiety and just get more anxious themselves. You note the moments of concern., you work on them, they get better and then new moment of concern pop up - that's the job!

As we headed into our last week of rehearsal we moved to Greenock. The change in rehearsal room was nice and things started to feel a whole lot more real. There was a moment of rehearsal that has stayed with me as I think it's a great example of what I've been talking about before. We did a run, it was very good, I was happy with it. I asked the actors if they had any thoughts and/or questions. One of the actors, extremely respectively said that from his point of view as an audience member (he wasn't in this particular bit) he thought that a part of the show wasn't working, that I hadn't got the staging right. He was correct. It wasn't right, and I sort of thought I would get away with it. But I was called out, and I was glad I was called out! We then looked at that bit, the actors offered their ideas, I listened, I tried various things and I made a decision. Having that sort of room, where everyone is collectively working towards the same goal (making an excellent show) is always what I'm looking for. In the end I need to be the 'yes' or 'no' person - and I'm very quick in making those decisions, maybe too quick sometimes - but having 6 ideas about how to tackle something is better than having just yours.

The role of the director shifts as you get nearer the show. I'm no longer on the floor working with the actors, my job becomes purely observing and then noting. I like to acknowledge in my notes when actors try something new, and try to actively encourage that. Note giving is an art-form, and everyone makes mistakes. It's so easy to say something negative like 'that scene lacked energy' rather than something useful that the actor can use - 'when you enter the room I want it to feel like you kicked the door down'. The actors are all so responsive to the notes that it's a joy - I think the best actors enjoy being noted, they want to look their best out there and I want them to look their best, so as long as we trust one another, it's a win win situation. 

And then we were in tech (where you work on the technical elements of the show in the final space of the performance). We had managed to do three runs in the rehearsal room prior to tech, this feels like a good amount as it's not so many that the acting is dead, but it's not so few that nobody knows what the hell they are doing! Tech can be laborious and stressful, the days tend to be long as you can only have the personnel and the theatre for a short amount of time (due to....yes money... it's always because of money). I had had various conversations with our lighting designer, Grant Anderson and sound designer Fraser Butler-Milroy - the show should feel like a gig, and again I was conscious of our quick get in times, so we needed something that was bold but also tourable. Fraser was keen to have a sound 2 operator, this was where I jump back into artistic director mode - looking at what money we have, and if this is something we can afford - on this occasion we could. The reasons we had budget freed up is that the team did a brilliant job in speaking to other theatres and, where possible, borrowing equipment. This is so important for small companies like mine, we own no equipment, so every show we need to hire stuff - being able to borrow makes life so much better for us and allows us to do things like hire more stage crew which makes life sooooo much easier for our tech team. 

Tech went extremely smoothly, this is where I could see decisions made 10 months ago coming to fruition. The set was all built weeks before and the ideas for staging on the final set had been decided, the lighting design was planned out from the off, the actors we cast were all brilliant and knew what they were doing, the band were well rehearsed and I had worked on the sound effects and created a Qlab (sound triggering software) that was good to go. There are always some niggles, we had some issues with a sign in the show that wasn't quite working, we only had one haze machine that made one corner of the stage look like it was on fire and some small costume pieces hadn't arrived but other than that we worked through the show with next to no problems - and these issues all had relatively simple fixes that were quickly acted on. Everything done with a sense of efficiency, not panic. We came to our fourth session, in the evening, and one of the actors wasn't feeling well but we had nothing else to do technically, so we went home. I can't tell you how rare this is, we had TOO MUCH TIME in tech. And the show looked amazing. It didn't feel right leaving the theatre that night, but as everyone kept saying to me - 'this is how a show is supposed to be, it shouldn't be abnormal!' and how right they are. 

A photo from tech

We planned to do a tech run the next day then our first dress. The actor was still unwell so we sent her home to rest and myself and the assistant director stood in. The run was more for the lighting and sound team to have another go at the show - there's a lot going on. Our dress went well, we then had another dress the next afternoon - this one with photographs - and then it was preview night. All the way through this we are still working on the show. The producer raised the point that one section wasn't a clear shift in time, so we worked on that, Isla came and watched a run and had a couple of points - as the director you are balancing what are show breaking notes (things like 'I didn't hear that line' or 'the story doesn't make sense here') and things that may be nice to have but ultimately, with time as short as we had, would get in the way of the actor's process too much. 

Photos of the final show, by Mihaela Bodlovic

I am very proud of the show. I feel for a piece to ring true then you have to make it about something that you like, that genuinely inspires you. Rock music and stories about small town Scotland do just that for me, so they will do that for other people too. It was only after the first show that I had realised I had made a love story, not my intention at all, but there it is! I think the acting is superb, the lights and sound totally brilliant and hopefully the audience will enjoy the writing, the composition and - ultimately the art form that pieces all this together - the directing. Here's a pic with most of the team, legends - every one of them.

Photo by Mihaela Bodlovic

You can find out more details of the show at www.sleepingwarriortheatre.com