Maker’s Diary: ‘Stop’ Contract

In rehearsals today we all worked to develop and agreed on a ‘stop’ contract for the scenes:

Nigel interrupts the game, gets on the block and announces “we know a story about her; do you want us to tell you or is there something that one of you would like to share?”

(If no one wants to share, he tells the audience that they can stop the story anytime they like by calling out ‘stop’. If they stop the scene than they can just move on to the next section or they can request that it is played out in a different way).

We decided that the audience should have the potential of affecting every part of the show and other’s experience of it…hence the ‘stop’ contract. All of the scenes are very strong and disturbing, so we felt that ethically and creatively the audience should have the potential to impact upon those. This passes some of the moral and creative responsibility on to them for their own experience.