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The process of developing GARAGE was a multi-step building process that focused on different collaborative exercises to create characters that would then be placed into different situations, thus creating a story. The desired result was a unified script that shared the voices of several different artists looking at the script from different points-of-view. We sought a seemingly mundane situation, relationship or event that raised a question that we would then seek to answer through a theatrical process, transforming said event into something with life and death stakes. We chose to explore the question: How far would two men be willing to go in order to obtain an empty garage? We wanted to take an empty space and fill it with so much history, memory and connection that it would impact a person close to it in a way that he would be willing to do anything to either keep it or take it.
The process of developing GARAGE lasted 13 weeks and consisted of six phases.
PHASE ONE: Journals and Research
Over the course of a year we observed the people around us, looking for potential relationships, situations and character attributes that we found intriguing. The observations that we found most interesting we then researched to answer questions about who we thought these people were and how they could end up in our observed and then imagined situations. This was all combined together to create the two male characters in GARAGE.
PHASE TWO: Character Development
We began this phase with simple Meisner exercises: coming to the door, first things, and provocative questions to settle into the characters. We did not want to force anything on the characters; we wanted the characters to create the story through guided interactions. We then allowed the actors playing the characters to live in the space and create their own rules for status which developed the relationship that exists between them. We also conducted character interviews where the actors, in character, answered questions that helped establish relationships and add depth to their histories.
PHASE THREE: Story Development
After exploring the characters we wanted to start laying a specific circumstance that would put them together in an empty garage. Again, we werent aware, going into this phase, where the story was going to go. Instead, we wanted to let this evolve through working together. We used our research, our previous interviews and exercises as the starting point, and then built off of what was discovered in the moment-to-moment work. The end result of this phase was a story outline.
PHASE FOUR: Improvisation and Transcription
Having discovered the story and the characters, we were now ready to begin building the actual script. We began by using the outline as a guide for writing scenes. The scenes were then brought into rehearsal, read, and then improvised by the actors. These improvisations were video taped and then transcribed. The original scene and the improvised scene work were then melded together. We also focused on writing scenes not supported by the original outline of the play that focused on the history of the characters and added depth to the relationships. We ended this phase with a completed script.
PHASE FIVE: Scene Work
Once the script was written we started working on it from the top. We discarded much of what had been the starting point and worked on the scenes moment by moment, again, allowing the actors to control where the characters could go based on their instincts and knowledge of the history of the characters. This was again video taped, transcribed and melded into a complete script.
PHASE SIX: Group writing
The final phase of this process was reading the script out loud as a group and stopping any time someone had a question, concern or idea. When we started this phase we had a one hundred page script. By the end we had a sixty page script. This was an important part of the process because it was here that we were able to unify the different voices. We wanted the script to speak for us as a group and we opened ourselves up to any options that were discovered as we worked this part of the script development.
