'Attempts on her Life'

My most challenging but rewarding process to date! 'Attempts' was my first project of 2023 and I enjoyed getting the opportunity to balance creating a handful of varied characters and helping to make sure things run smoothly behind the scenes. As a company we decided we wanted to tackle a piece that contained a difficult subject matter and something that could showcase the skills we’ve learnt in previous processes but to also develop them even further. It really pushed me to create larger than life characters whilst keeping the honesty and intensity true to each moment, and I enjoyed learning new techniques and ideas from different practitioners that we could bring into our stories. I also loved that we got the opportunity to perform outside the comforts of the Miskin and showcase our work to a wider audience, but it was very stressful trying to find a good venue whilst taking into account the location and the budget we had. but one of the biggest challenges for me was being able to analyse and unpick the text when we first picked up the play. Until this process I didn’t have much experience digging deep into text and finding hidden meanings beneath the surface, but being able to work as a company to understand the message was very helpful and it gave me the tools I needed to go away and develop my own theories behind Martin Crimp's work. I now feel much more confident in unpicking a piece of text, developing my understanding of what’s happening in the scene and then bringing the ideas onto the floor.

I had a selection of varied and absurd characters during this production and I had lots of fun looking at different physicalities and voice ideas to make each character the polar opposite of the one before, from exploring the emotional content of Anya’s life in Faith In Ourselves to playing with the physicality of a showgirl in Particle Physics. This process gave me the opportunity to look at characters I haven’t played before and explore different styles and how easily you can transition from one to another. It was very exciting performing in a new venue and I felt so lucky to be working with a great company to help bring a dark but important piece of theatre to life and highlight that Anne can be anyone of us.