National Theatre

"Surveying the room from where I write this, the studio replete with film lights, cameras, innumerable assorted props, a bowlful of maggots, several microphones, a handful of video projectors and hundreds of metres of cabling (the bête noir of the stage management team), I think of walking into Rehearsal Room 3 of the National Theatre two years ago when I originally met Katie Mitchell and her collaborators. This brief meeting turned into an opportunity to be part of the singular process that created Waves, the first in a number of hybrid film/theatre collaborations to include – in various configurations – Katie Mitchell (director), her dextrous and unflinching ensemble of actors, Vicki Mortimer (set designer), Paule Constable (lighting designer), Gareth Fry (sound designer), Paul Clark (composer), and myself.

As with Waves, the process of creating …some trace of her  begins with the text – in this case, Dostoevsky’s epic novel of 1868, The Idiot. The novel is analysed, dissected, fragmented, and re-imagined as a series of discrete filmic shots and sound effects.  For every dramatic moment on stage a film-shot and soundscape are painstakingly conceived, set up, lit, mic’d, rehearsed, re-rehearsed, and then notated."

The rest of Leo Warner's article; a brief chronology of Dostoevsky's life; notes on the careers of the company, and photographs of them at work; plus details about exclusive video from the production, are available in the ...some trace of her programme available from the Cottesloe foyer and the NT bookshop in the main entrance, priced at £2.