The Mudfest production Into the Unknown was devised through a series of exercises and improvisations. Zoë Barron spoke to performers Eleanor Bally, Joshua Lynzaat, Olivia McCombe and Mattie Young about the unusual and quite challenging process they went through.

The actors and director of Into the Unknown did not start off with anything so tangible as a script, or even an idea for a plotline.
“We started off with the phrase, ‘Into the Unknown’” said Eleanor Bally, one of the four performers in the production of the same title. “That was it. So, nothing, really.”
Bally performs Into the Unknown alongside Joshua Lynzaat, Olivia McCombe and Mattie Young. All four play a number of characters, often switching rapidly between them during the fragmented collection of scenes that make up the show. The content was generated through a series of improvisations, scenarios, writing exercises and brainstorming sessions, based on what the performers, writer Ian Wilding and director Tom Gutteridge found theatrically interesting.
“I think a lot of the first stuff that we generated came from Ian wilding… and the scenarios and situations that he and Tom Gutterage gave us,” Young said.
McCombe gave some examples of the exercises, which included activities such as imagining they were on a bus ride to the apocalypse and describing what they were seeing out the window. “And there was the terrorist abduction where we all woke up in a room and had to sacrifice one of the group in order to escape. So, quite dark really…and there was some interesting cause and effect [exercises].”
Such a fragmented method of generating theatre risks resulting in a very fragmented finished product. Into the Unknown, however, although it consists mainly of a group of loosely connected scenes, there is also a main scenario that is often revisited, and which forms something of a spine for the production, as well as an overall general theme.
“We had a quote,” McCombe said. “We tried to capture it in a sentence, what we were trying to get the whole piece to aim for, so that was ‘how choice and chance connections in a public space can turn strangers into community.’” In addition to this, Gutteridge, as the writer, went away and pulled the piece together to create a more cohesive structure. “He just pulled out all the things he found interesting watching and structured them.”
The end result is a very interesting experiment in theatre; one that draws on the spontaneity of improvisation for the creation of the script. “One of the really interesting discussions we had early on was what makes theatre,” Young said, “and what makes good theatre, and this idea that you can just rehearse the shit out of something and it loses its magic.”
“So any kind of performance is just trying to reproduce something that happens in rehearsal,” Lynzaat added.
He and the other three agreed that although they were forced to commit the show to script and structure, and conform to lighting and sound cues, the production has been able to remain quite fluid and fresh as a result of this method of devising through improvisation.
“I feel more spontaneous as an actor because all of our characters came from improv,” Lynzaat said.

A process like this, although dynamic and interesting can also be quite intimidating. According to the program, the process began with ten performers and ended with three.
“ A lot of people dropped out of the process because it was quite open,” Lynzaat said.
“Tom and Ian obviously informed a lot of it” Young added, “but I think the onus was really on us and that can be a little bit uncomfortable sometimes, when you think, ‘oh my God, not only do I have to perform, I actually have to come up with it.”
The process, intimidating as it was, formed an integral part of the production, with the actual performance playing a comparatively small roll. “The performance was always going to be part of the process, kind of showing where we’re up to, not the end product,” Lynzaat explained. “The whole process, as I understood it, was for us students to learn how to go about devising a piece of theatre.”
The intention is that Into the Unknown won’t end with Mudfest but will go on to grow and evolve and be performed again in different incarnations. The show is a work in progress. On the theatre walls is a sheet of butchers’ paper for audience feedback, among many other big sheets displaying brainstorming mud maps, lists of ideas and the stand-out results of exercises and scenarios. The actors and production crew hope to adopt this audience feedback into the continuing process.
“I like the idea of including the audience in the process.” Lynzaat said. “Kind of, creating theatre together. If we put it on again the same people could come and see it and give us feedback again.”

Interview by Zoë Barron

Bookmark and Share Bookmark & Share. Posted Tuesday 25 August, 2009. Updated Wednesday 26 August, 2009.