Having been blogging for the Entry Pass website for a month, Max Key, staff director on Fram here rounds his blog up with an overview of the whole experience of working on Fram, and it sounds like it was quite an awesome experience.

You can put your questions to Max and see the show at our Entry Pass Fram event on Monday 19 May. Simply buy a ticket for the show and join Max before hand for free.

So now over to Max for his final installment:

Blog Entry #3

I thought I would end my final diary entry with a summary and reflection of my involvement on Fram...

My involvement with Fram began back in March 2006 when we work-shopped an early version of the script over a week at the National Theatre studio. This included some terrific actors notably David Bradley, Peter Mumford and Sian Thomas.

Tony Harrison, who once wanted to be an archaeologist, arrived like his dramatic hero Nansen, an explorer carrying bags of his research and his trade-mark blue notebooks full of newspaper images and information gleaned from the media to aid his creative work. The week's workshop culminated in a read through of the play which I recorded, this allowed Tony to go away and re-work the initial script.

A short two years later I received a telephone call from the National Theatre asking if I would once again like to be a part of the production team as Nicholas Hytner, the Artistic Director of the National Theatre, had programmed Fram into the Olivier Theatre. Accepting the position without hesitation I was thrilled to discover the team included some of the most exciting theatre practioners in the world today. The collaboration between Tony Harrison and Bob Crowley formed a unique relationship that resulted in an organic process producing a fresh, original piece of theatre.

Harrison's captivating use of language and Crowley's strong metaphors in an ingenious design were a delight to see unfold during the six week rehearsal period.

The Rehearsal period

Day one of rehearsal consisted of the entire cast including: Jasper Britton, (playing the lead role of Nansen), Mark Addy, Jeff Rawle, Sian Thomas, Patrick Drury, Carolyn Pickles, Claire Lawrence et al.  The day began with Tony and Bob presenting the model box of the set that ranged from the blackest, bleakest stage to the most ambitious, icy vistas imaginable. This was followed by the cast watching two documentary films of Nansen's expedition to the North Pole, a film of Nansen in Russia during the famine in 1922 and some shocking footage of the effects of the famine. These left the cast stunned but thrilled to be part of this important piece of story-telling.  Few of us has had known, prior to these films, the importance of Nansen's achievements as both explorer and humanitarian as we suspected had few in the world outside of the theatre.

Inspired by the films and impressive research presented by Bob and Tony which  included: original pictures of Nansen and Johansen's clothing from their trip to the Arctic, images of the Fram (now preserved in a museum in Oslo) the cast passionately enjoyed their first read-through of the play that afternoon.

Rehearsals were soon to become a metaphor for the play as everyday we embarked on the Fram and moved forward on a voyage of discovery led by our leaders, Captains Harrison and Crowley. Each day the play continued to throw up new questions about theatre, its purpose, and its functions. Equally it raised questions about our understanding and expectations of theatre as a medium. Fram continually broke our preconceptions of the conventions of theatre. An example of this is, what we believed to be the bleak icy terrain of the Arctic Pole becomes an almost crude set framed by a fake proscenium arch to exemplify the Bolshoi Ballet under which Viviana Durante dances a ballet on ice choreographed by Wayne McGregor. 

Including a range of artistic disciplines, from Ballet to music, to video film to song and to spoken verse, was always integral to Tony Harrison's vision. This collaboration of different artistic disciplines made the piece dynamic and unique in its form.

The verse form

Tony Harrison specifically wrote Fram for the Olivier theatre. The Olivier theatre was designed to replicate the ancient Greek theatres, including that of Epidaurus and other amphitheatres. In Ancient Greek theatre the performers were masked and addressed their audience directly. This particular relationship with the audience is something on which Tony Harrison places emphasis in his own work. The musicality and rhythm of the verse is designed to reach and move an audience like no other language form allows. In the performance of Fram Harrison demands that the actors find their thoughts in the upper levels of the auditorium rather than from the ground. Examples of this are Murray and Thorndike speaking up towards the stained glass window and Nansen commenting on the auroras. The implication of this angle of delivery is that a higher level of thought is being achieved.
A unique aspect of Fram's form is the presentation of the dialogue in, not only verse, but rhyming couplets. From the outset Tony Harrison demanded that the actors learn the text like an opera singer would learn the libretto. He believes that by learning the words all else will follow naturally. He advises us to remember the thrill of reading poetry as a child, how we taste the verse, learn the tune and don't get caught up in the academic side of understanding. He advises actors or readers to learn how to say the words and then they will begin to understand how the character feels. He speaks of how talking in verse is closer to opera than naturalistic drama. Harrison has written verse that is accessible and simple in poetic terms but recognizes that blocks of verse on a page can seem intimidating, especially to young people encountering the text for the first time. He says: ‘by learning the words each individual will discover the hidden tempo of the characters,' which in turn will ensure the role is performed with integrity, colour and clarity. He encourages us to enjoy the verse, its richness and rhythm and says by doing so an understanding of meaning and character will follow.

Video and Film

The use of film and projected video imagery is something the production uses to a great extent. The video designer John Driscoll collaborated with Tony and Bob from day one of rehearsals to ensure that both the video design and the action onstage worked in harmony. Video design has become an increasingly popular medium in theatre as it is able to transport the audience from Westminster Abbey to the Russian Volga in an instant without the practical difficulties of a physical set. Notably the use of video design in Fram has numerous distinct functions; to create instant scenery or background image for the set, as an active narrative tool and also to reinforce certain key elements of the play, for example original photographs of the Russian famine appearing as a slide show.  Video design was fundamental to the plays dramatic impact as it added to one of the central arguments of the play, that is, what is the value of visual images in an image-saturated century.

Music and sound

Music and sound design were of major importance in the mounting of the production, these were invaluable in creating the mood and atmosphere of certain moments of the piece. Importantly the music and sound contributed to the establishment of historical context. Richard Blackford, who has previously collaborated with Harrison, has created an original sound and music score which is most evident in the ballet, for which he composed an original score influenced by the music of Stravinsky and Debussy. It is not incidental to Blackford's homage that these composers were beneficiaries of the ‘Nansen Passport' enabling them to escape Russia along with other great artists including Chegal and  Pavlova.  A later dramatic musical element is the arrival on stage of a nameless Kurdish poet, eyes and mouth sewn together with surgical thread, seeking his own artistic asylum in a modern context. The sewn up mouth and eyes are the antithesis of the open classical Greek mask of tragedy, Blackford's intent is to demonstrate the beauty of an aria, not unlike The Queen of the Night, as a simple, sombre hum;  a further musical motif on freedom and necessity of artistic expression.

Blog Entry #2

Some important things have happened this week with the development of Fram. Now in its fourth week of rehearsals lots of decision have been made about the set, and Bob Crowley and Tony Harrison's ultimate vision of the play.

The Olivier's 'drum revolve' is something that is being used frequently for this production (if you're interested in discovering about the mechanics of how it works please look on the main page of the National Theatre website.) A crucial decision was made today with the use of the drum revolve during a particular scene in which a dinner party takes place. Part of the reason to use the revolve was to create what we often call in theatre the ‘fourth wall', an imaginary wall that exists between the performer and the audience. At the beginning of the dinner party, before any of the guests have arrived, we see the character Eglantyne Jebb (played by Carolyn Pickles) watching a projected film of the Russian Famine on the back wall of the room. This film, which she is going to show all the characters later in the scene, never actually happens as the audience have already seen the film and so the scene ends - a clever technique of story telling... However, because the set must look like Eglantyne has set up a room designed to watch the film with the chairs and the film projector facing the back wall, this caused a problem in rehearsals as to how the rest of the scene was then to be staged. After a long discussion, both Tony and Bob decided that throughout the scene the drum revolve would slowly rotate over a period of 25 minutes and do a half a rotation so that the chairs and projector ended up facing the audience creating an imaginary wall, or the fourth wall, to an audience.

The use of film and video projected imagery is something that is being used a lot in this production and Video Designer Jon Driscoll has been working hard this week to ensure that both the video design and the action marry on stage. Video design has become an increasingly popular medium in theatre and is being used in many different ways. In Fram, the use of video design has many different functions. Its 2 main functions are...

1) Set - to create the scenery or the background picture of a set e.g. Video projection is used to project images of the Arctic pole

2) Action - some of the scenes have been filmed so we not only watch scenes live on stage but also see scenes acted on screen.

Additionally, video design in this play is being used to demonstrate how theatre and video can work together and more importantly asks the question, What in today's society is more powerful - the ‘visual image' or the ‘word'?


Blog Entry #1

We are now at the end of week 3 of a 6-week rehearsal period - exactly half way through our epic adventure of Fram written by Tony Harrison.

Fram means ‘Forward' in Norwegian and is the name of the ship specially built by the famous Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen. The play tells the story of Nansen and his suicidal companion, Johansen, and their bid to reach the North Pole on foot in the 1890s.

Rehearsals have become a metaphor of the play as everyday we embark on the Fram and set sail on a voyage of discovery. Led by ship captains Tony Harrison (Director) and Bob Crowley (Director/Designer), the company, which include actors Sian Thomas, Jasper Britton, Mark Addy, Jeff Rawle and the world famous prima ballerina Viviana Durante, feel apprehensive and yet excited about what the future holds.

Not only is Fram a fascinating play because it is entirely written in rhyming verse with rich poetic language from our country's leading poet, Tony Harrison, it is also being designed by world-famous designer Bob Crowley who is in rehearsals every day co-directing the production and creating a visually stunning spectacle.

The collaboration between Tony Harrison and Bob Crowley has become an integral and unique relationship, vital to the play's success. Each day the play continuously throws up new questions about theatre, its purpose, its function and the conventions of theatre which Tony, Bob and the actors talk about and aim to find answers to through the rehearsal process.

Being a new play, the writer, designer and actors are continuously rethinking, remolding and reshaping the play and production, which will eventually be presented to a public from the 10th April onwards.

Breaking the conventions of theatre is something that Fram does continuously throughout the play. An example of this is when the icy set that Nansen and Johansen walk on becomes the same set that Nansen watches a Russian ballet being performed on, framed by a proscenium arch. The ‘set' from which the audience has taken as ‘real' has had its convention broken by becoming a set within a set within a set.

Email questions for Max to entrypass@nationaltheatre.org.uk