“I am not an elephant, I am not an animal, I am a human being!” Without wanting to give too much away, I thought I would share with you some of the many and wide ranging influences that have inspired us in the creation of Oyster Boy. We are working hard to create something both […]

Oyster Boy rehearsals

So we have just finished our third week of rehearsals for our upcoming show, ‘Oyster Boy’. On Thursday we were lucky enough to have Mick Barnfather from the theatre company ‘Complicite’ come into our rehearsal to give us some guidance and advice about our process. As we are creating this show ourselves with no external director, it was extremely helpful having an outside eye to give us a fresh opinion on what we have so far. The main thing he advised us to do was to play more and to try as many ideas as possible without being precious about material that we come up with. This is a vital thing to remember because it is easy to get stuck if you are not ready to discard ideas that don’t work when you try them. Although the majority of Haste has done devising before, this is a unique and invaluable experience for all of us. The fact that we have a very exciting tour lined up is a great motivation to make the show as good as we can, although it’s definitely a bit scary at the same time!

After working with a brilliant director on our last show, having no director for this show is a challenge for us, but one which we are tackling with lots of determination. We are using techniques such as filming and taking pictures of improvisations and new ideas, as well as having different people stepping out and watching at various points. Although this can be a difficult way of sorting through material, eventually I am sure we will be very proud and satisfied that we have created a show entirely by ourselves.

We don’t want to give away too much right now as to what to expect in the show but you can look forward to lots of singing and harmonies, object manipulation (including throwing things around in a choreographed fashion!), puppetry, clowning and a mixture of languages!