Guest blog from Anna - on actor/director relationship

"Working with Laura on Ten Faces of Anna has been by far the most valuable experience I have had in my career to date.

My entrance to the industry was pretty standard and began back in 2009 after graduating from a very intense 3 year acting diploma course at the Oxford School of Drama. I got a great agent and went forth into the world of auditions and copious amounts of rejection J

I had always had a very clear idea in my head of the kind of work and characters that interested me and never lost sight of this along my journey. Making this a reality seemed less and less certain as the years progressed, however. The roles on offer, I felt to be quite one dimensional for female actors and found myself longing to be a man, just so I could sink my teeth into a really nitty, gritty, dirty  character. The chance to get behind the mask of Hitler, perhaps, and explore the human beneath the beast. These roles never popped up. For obvious reasons.

Three years on, I eventually decided to conquer the industry alone and start up my own film company, leaving the commercial world of agents and casting directors behind me. It was about one month into this process, that I got a lovely email from Laura Hypponen asking me if I would be interested in collaborating with her on this project. The timing was perfect.

I had met Laura once many moons ago at an audition for a film she had written and was directing. She cast me in the leading role of the film but, alas, it never got financed, so life went on as usual! It was incredible to hear from her two years later and to know she had thought of me for such an interesting and unique piece of work. I hope other actors who feel a little lost at times, may find this encouraging. It is all about timing and circumstance. Nobody is forgotten.

Ten Faces of Anna is every Character Actor’s dream. (In my humble opinion). An opportunity to explore an enriched variety of different people from different ages, backgrounds, moral standings, sexual orientation. Every single person on this weird and wacky planet has a story to tell, and I am so lucky that my job allows me to tell them.

A great actor/director relationship is key to creating a great piece of art and Laura and I really ‘’get’’ one another, which is amazing when working on such intimate stories. Until starting Ten Faces, I didn’t realise how little I was actually putting into my character building process. She has taught me so many priceless tools and techniques for my work. She is very much in control of what she seeks from the outcome of each character, but her complete open mindedness and BELIEF in my abilities as a performer, allows me to fail as many times as I possibly can, before being gently pushed in the right direction. I’ve gained an enormous amount of courage, self-worth and compassion from working on Ten Faces of Anna with such an incredible director and cannot wait to crack on with the Third Face.

I hope that every performer out there will have the opportunity to work with such an insightful mentor, but I really do think they are few and far between, and if you are lucky enough to be sought out by one, grab the opportunity with both hands and never let go!"

Love,

Annarose X

Diversity in Canary Wharf

Last week Anna and I made a field trip to Canary Wharf. A city within a city, an isolated cluster dedicated to generating profits, we felt it was the perfect destination to observe people that dedicate their lives to serving the capitalist dream. To quote the words of Canary Wharf Plc,

Canary Wharf is not just a place, it is a company.

Ideology aside, people are people everywhere, including in the shadows of imposing glass and steel towers. They are individuals with stories, backgrounds, fears, hopes, dreams. And haircuts and designer handbags! And this, of course, is the subject of our project...people.

In some ways it's very easy to sit down in a place like Canary Wharf (or Shoreditch, for that matter), let a stream of people walk by and decide on a label. "Bankers". "Creatives". "Wankers". "Slackers". And so on. Most of us feel the need to belong to a tribe, and the members of the other tribes represent a threat to the values that we uphold. Which is a shame, of course, letting our perception be narrowed down like that.

What we discovered at Canary Wharf was that there is a big difference between watching and seeing. From an initially overwhelming sense that people in this specific locale are a uniform group, we started seeing individuals, diversity, quirks and freaks. Granted, there was the uniform - neutral colours, as if to blend into the corporate background - and the handbags...that brown checkered Louis Vuitton one - maybe there's a small print in the employment contracts of these ladies that stipulates you must wear one to fit in? - but apart from that, it was just people...young ones excited about the opportunities ahead, older ones worn down by life, some elevated by their successes, others crushed by the impossibility of their dreams.

Until next time...X

Sleepwalker fundraising until 6th April

After some serious procrastination, I finally pressed "launch" on our new Kickstarter campaign for Sleepwalker, our next episode in the Ten Faces series.

Why is it such a hard thing, asking for money, relying on the kindness of strangers as well as people we know? I watched quite a sweet TED talk recently on this subject matter, the art of asking by Amanda Palmer. Whilst I didn't feel it gave any real answers, it certainly made me think differently about asking - so perhaps in some small way, it was an inspiring thing to watch. I'd be curious to hear more people's opinions on fundraising - why it can be so hard, especially if you are asking for something for yourself, like we are now doing for Sleepwalker. On the other hand, when people do come forward and say they want to support the project, it's probably the best feeling ever. So, despite the terror - it's time to bite the bullet and see what happens!

Which brings us to the fact that we have 11 days to find cash to pay for lights, insurance, camera and location for our next monologue. We are spreading the word on Facebook and I'm trying to find the courage to pester people directly by email...Maybe by this time tomorrow I'll have found it!

Please check out the Kickstarter page here...it only takes 2 minutes to pledge support. Any amount will make a huge difference to us, and we'd also love to hear from people who would like to get involved in other ways - maybe you have an interesting location we could film in (in London!), or you know of someone who'd like to assist the production...Don't be shy, we want to hear from you!

X

From Anarchist to Sleepwalker, and back

Dear readers,

I thought I'd jump forward in time (to today!) and talk a little about the new character Anna (pictured) and I are currently working on.

Following Dolly - whom we saw very much as a conformist and a conservative - we wanted to try & go to the other extreme with the next character. Our interpretation of Dolly turned out to be a control-freak who eventually has to break out of her perfection - with rather dramatic consequences, one could say. So, I was really tempted to give Anna the opportunity to show a completely different side to her, someone who is more loose and more comfortable stating her true nature.

We dreamed up Anarchist, a very direct character who asserts her needs and desires. Well, doesn't just assert herself, but demands change in society. We were trying to think of instances where people actually do this. Politics, maybe, to some extent - at least that's how I understand the word politics, that it should be about change, pushing for a (more) desirable state of affairs. I don't know why but when I tried to write a text that was totally earnest and critical of the status quo, I ended up writing a character that would probably be best labelled A Hypocrite...certainly not an Anarchist. So I scrapped that text for now, and we went back to square one.

We then tried to think of instances we were more familiar with, real people as opposed to (paid) politicians; individuals who stand up at Speakers Corner one day, because they have a burning desire to be heard, or indeed...people ranting on the bus. We thought about doing a Punk as our next character. Late 70s, early 80s, there was certainly a lot of Anger and Angst about. And interesting fashion :) But something still didn't quite click.

Then I spent some evenings trying to write a rap. Yeah, like...really. Those who know me will see just how ludicrous the idea is, me sipping on a glass of wine in Shoreditch and trying to rap some angry lyrics. Oh well. The idea of rap came because I was trying to find a tone in mainstream media that resembles sustained anger, the kind of anger that starts revolutions, whether small or large. Perhaps needless to say, this approach didn't quite work either, so we went back to the drawing board.

Then I wrote a new text, at the foundation of which I had the idea of individual need for freedom of expression. The text felt heavy and I was concerned it was too direct. But it was directness we had set out to achieve, so I asked Anna to read it. I was so excited to hear the text come alive - and realised it's possible to work completely against the text's bluntness by interpreting it more softly. So we went to the other extreme...instead of a Politician, or an Activist, or a Punk, or a Rapper - she is a Sleepwalker! More on this later - but I'm SOOOO excited :)

X

How it all got started

To start the story from the beginning, I contacted Anna last summer to see if she might be up for workshopping a series of characters with me. My plan was to use existing texts from plays and re-interpret them - but as we dug through some Shakespeare, Chekhov and other favourite playwrights, we realised we really wanted and needed to do something contemporary - work with texts that comment on today's life; explore themes and issues we encounter in our everyday lives.

And so our creative journey together began, with seemingly endless (and open-ended) conversations over coffee. I asked Anna what kinds of characters she'd like to play, and at the same time I was working out what kinds of characters I wanted to create for others to see. We drank a lot of coffee, and I took many, many notes. Nothing made particular sense initially, since we didn't have A Theme in mind, or a concept - just that we wanted to create a range of characters together - like a masterclass in acting and directing, if you will - with complete freedom to explore.

This is what I emerged with from our first meeting:

A slightly daunting list of ideas, characters, characteristics...and not much of an idea of how to go about it. Looking back on the lists of words now, I realise many of these have already been incorporated in Jester and Dolly, as well as the new texts I've written...even though we haven't really returned to these notes, or felt the need to stick to these characters beyond the initial conversation.

One thing we did discuss was that each character should build organically on the previous one. We'd create the pieces one by one, rather than thinking about what character number 10 should be like. I was hoping this sort of process led approach would give us both creative freedom and focus - we'd give our absolute 100% to each character while we'd work on them, and after we had filmed this individual character, we'd turn our full attention to the next one.

So...two done, eight to go! Yikes :)

XX

Welcome to the blog!

Dear friends, supporters and otherwise curious people,

As some of you already might know, last autumn I started a collaboration with a wonderful actor called Annarose Cattanach. We are creating a series of ten filmed monologues that are released on Youtube one by one, and then exhibited in a gallery as an installation in December 2014.

We have filmed two monologues so far, Jester and Dolly, and the feedback has been incredibly encouraging. We are now rehearsing the third one - and it occurred to me that it's high time we started sharing the creative process, not just the films, with those who might be interested in where these characters are coming from.

I'm hoping this blog will work like an interactive diary - a place where all the disparate ideas we have during the process can be noted - so at the end of the project we will have a log of how we got where we got to, as well as a record of how our readers and supporters are responding to the project.

For those of you on Facebook, do check out our Ten Faces group for more lighthearted updates on the project...this blog will serve as a more reflective take on things, trying to work out why we do what we do.

Alas - welcome! And thanks for joining us on our adventure. It's a slightly gloomy Monday morning here in East London, but I have a great sense of excitement about the journey ahead.

XXX

L