Sam’s Drawings (Smart, 2016)

In the early days after we had come up with the concept of the show myself and Harry created the bare bones of our main character Sam .We knew he was an 8 year old boy and that he loved space and reading but apart from this we left the rest up to our actors. Although our intention was always for Sam to be played by Nick we knew that the ensemble were going to become his imagination so had to know the character just as well as Nick did.

A Good ensemble is ‘an approach to acting that aims for a unified effect achieved by all members of a cast working together on behalf of the play, rather than emphasizing individual performances’ (dictionary, 2016). This is key to the actors because not only are they going to be working together but they are also going to be playing the same characters, so it is important that they work well together, this is why it is important that they are all involved in the creation of Sam. 

This is where the diaries came in. Our first rehearsal we set up a workshop, all of our actors became Sam. After explaining a bit about the character we sent them away with paper and crayons and told them to draw space according to Sam. After they had finished we gathered around and then described their pictures to us. This early rehearsal sparked a lot of inspiration from the final show with phrases actually appearing in the show. In fact the tag line from the show: Space is infinite but definitely possible was written on one of the pictures drawn in the first workshop.

The ensemble and Sam (Crowe,2016)

After this workshop it was clear to us that the actors were Sam’s voice and as the show was devised collaboratively between the cast an us that we needed to embrace this. Also because we had discovered early on that letters were going to be key in the narrative of the story, we decided it would be a good idea to get the cast to start writing their own. We gave each of them identical notebooks which became ‘Sam’s diary’ after a lot of the workshops we would ask them to go away and write a letter that discussed the themes or events that had taken place that day. We then used parts of these letters to create Sam’s letters that would later be used in the show. This devising tool allowed us to  work collaboratively as a group whilst still giving myself and Harry control on where the narrative would lead. However we were giving the people who knew Sam the best the tools to shape his world. Also it was key to us that the ensemble also has a hand in writing the letters because although they were not playing Sam they were the cogs in his imagination and therefore in essence a part of his mind.

Dictionary.com. (2016). the definition of ensemble acting. [online] Available at: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/ensemble-acting [Accessed 24 May 2016].

Crowe, P. (2016) Sam and the Ensemble 

Smart, T. (2016) Sam’s Drawings