MIKE ALFREDS

Michael Guy Alfreds was a British director, and playwright born in London, 5th of June 1934. He's directed over 160 productions over the span of his career.

He uses similar to technique to the likes of Stanislavsky and Chekhov in achieving an naturalistic performance, urging actors to invest in their characters both emotionally and physically. He draws from Chekhov's work in particular lot on the psycho/physical relationship and how energy in movement can inform character and scenes.

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Alfreds core beliefs

Actors should be allowed to live in scenes rather than blocking.

Finding detail is the key to portraying truth.

Actors should always be active and never passive. 

(Some of the same beliefs shared and discussed in Yoshi Oida work)

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When asked about the tasks he makes his actors carry out.

"They do an awful lot of work on the environment/space, relationships, style and context.

They embody this naturally through an elaborate rehearsal process, then whatever they choose to play will be right because it will be true to that particular moment. They have to give up getting, say, a laugh on a specific line. You must be absolutely in the moment playing whatever the moment demands"

In this quote alone I can see how my director has drawn inspiration from Mike Alfreds' work. Especially in the initial stages of the play we talked a lot about establishing relationships between characters, the style of the play and the world in which the play takes place. We drew from stimuli such as Canary Wharf and Wall Street for the trader scenes, taking these images and sculpting them into stylised movement sequences such as the trader scene.

Ben gave us a great deal of freedom in scenes, allowing us to make our own choices in terms of blocking and intentions. He believed in us and if he didn't feel it was working he'd offer us an alternative or ask us questions so that we could form our own solutions. Acting under this directing choice proved as probably one of the most liberating experiences I've had rehearsing a play with a director, i really felt that i could follow my impulses and be free to make decisions in scenes ultimately freeing moments, pushing other actors to react on impulse. An example of this could be when on opening night i took the line "I don't have the time for you to be whoever the fuck you are right now" and stopped halfway to check Raz's Enron id tag checking who he is, Raz then shook me off creating an entirely new, fresh (and well received) moment in the play. Without this approach to rehearsals and building the play i wouldn't have felt that freedom to act on my impulse and this moment never would have been allowed to happen. I'll definitely take this on board and apply it to devising/rehearsing in the future as it gets rid of the rigidity you so often see in theatre work, it's actors working off what their being told to do rather than research and knowledge of the character allowing them to have the imagination and impetus to do what is natural.

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