Frantic Assembly

Frantic Assembly was founded in 1994 by Scott Graham, Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton. These three were students at Swansea University. One day they were suddenly inspired to start their own theatre company. They were English and Geography graduates and as such they had no experience in the field but were "willing to learn and devoured any opportunity that came our way... This simple starting point of encouragement, learning and training has been at the heart of the company ever since." – Scott Graham, Artistic Director and Co-Founder. This inexperience in theatre and their chemistry inspired their interest in the collaboration between different artists and in the blurring of boundaries between theatre and dance.

Frantic Assembly is more then just the acting that happens on stage. It is about the actors themselves coming together creating combining their desire to improve themselves and lifting each other up to create the best piece of theatre possible. It is about telling stories in a voice we don't always hear and about finding talent in places we don't always look.

Frantic assembly rarely work on existing plays as they prefer to work on ideas and more contemporary events. The Frantic process is often chaotic and in the spur of the moment, they take the thoughtd they have at that moment and expand on them with exercises seeing what story or message they can squeeze out of something so simple and raw. This positive thinking is often articulated within the rehearsal room with the motto 'always forward, never backwards.'

Activities (Teaching Instructions):

Chair Duets:

1. Everyone starts sitting. It initially involves two performers and a series of touches, embraces, flirtations, and rejections, all while sat on a couple of chairs. Eventually you can engage the whole class in this task by pairing them off and giving everyone the same clear instructions. It is also interesting to try a few groups of three to see what challenges and opportunities this brings. Once students are in couples or groups ask them to take a chair each and find a space in the room where their chairs can sit side by side.

 2. One of the partners should create between two and four moves, moving their hands or moving the hands of their partner's, placing them on their thighs, shoulders, knees, around necks, or they could choose to place their partners hands somewhere on the partner's own body, thighs and shoulders, etc. They can also adjust the position of their partner, pulling them forward or pushing them back into their chair.

 3. Once they have done this, they remain in their final position and the other partner takes over and creates another two to four moves. 

4. Now, the original partner continues from the last position and creates a further two to four moves. 

It is important to keep this simple and to make tiny, bite sized chunks of material because they need to be remembered and linked together. Think of these little chunks of material as building blocks. They need to be solid and robust but will come together to make something much more complex eventually. Try to avoid story telling at this early stage. Look out for students developing attitude in the moves. By that I mean moves that scream 'get off me!' or 'I want you!' Keep the movement neutral at this stage. We will look at story telling later. 

5. Once the students have around 15 and 20 moves between them they need to make the transition between each movement and between each partner's moves fluid. From the outside we can often see that split second where one partner passes on the responsibility for the moves once they have executed the moves they created. You want them to be able to perform the choreography where you cannot see the 'joins.'

 To achieve this takes a lot of practice. Once they have got their moves clean, fluid and fast it is time to play with context and storytelling. 

Fluff Picking:

This is an incredibly simple task that involves picking imaginary bits of fluff, dust, whatever, off the clothes of a partner. This act can be seen on any train, in any pub or shopping centre, basically anywhere you might find a couple that are obviously very comfortable with each other's touch. It betrays an intimacy and history between people.

 1. Ask students to get into partners and sit them opposite each other. One should go first and find five moments of fluff or dust to pick from their partner's body. Consider the quality of the touch. Is it a wipe, a pick, or an adjust? Each one is slightly different. 

2. Repeat this sequence until it is memorised and secure. The second partner then does the same. What you end up with is two students with five moves each. 

 3. To make this more interesting the partners (A and B) can then play with the sequence. The sequence could look like this:

 A – does move 1 

A – does move 2 

B – does move 1 

A – does move 3 

B – does move 2 B

...

But it is purely up to the partners. This is a very simple sequence of ten moments that should be fairly easy to remember but, as with all of our tasks, it is important to start simple and then build up, to add more moves once the performers are comfortable and are sure they have the first section remembered. As ever, we ask you to think of these early stages as building blocks. 

4. Once they have rehearsed the new order of their moves, you could then start to play with the complexity. Ask them to adjust a move each so that they are now occurring simultaneously. This helps the choreography from falling into a predictable pattern and keeps both partners active. Even at this early building blocks stage the effect can be beautiful and mesmerising. 

5. The beauty of this process is that, from this simple start, it can become much more complex: 

• Ask the students to stand up. How does that change the choreographic effect? 

• What if you then change the touches into pulls or pushes and allows the performers to move the rest of their body in response to this? 

This process has provided the building blocks for much more complex and dynamic choreography. It can offer an organic way into lifting and catches, but don't miss the opportunity to also explore the more subtle possibilities. 

• What if you slow it down? 

 • Does the touch become fearful? Dangerous? Provocative? 

 • Does the touch heal? Does it thrill?

 • What if they both close their eyes? Does this change things? 

 • What if the choreography happens in an empty lift? Or in a busy lift? 

 • Does that change things? In a kitchen? In a field in the middle of a football match? 

You should never miss the opportunity to explore potential. That is why it is important to think of every stage as a building block. It is solid and secure but you can always build on it. Veering off and trying something does not destroy the process. You can always return to the simplicity of the task and rebuild.

The Dangerous Dance:

1. The students should create a string of gentle 'strictly come dancing' type material that allows them to move around a room. Encourage them to use the whole room.

2. Once they all have their 'dance' you should allow each one to be performed with the rest of the students watching. Give them space and conducive music and lighting. The results may provoke giggles but you will obviously get the best results by taking the task deadly seriously. 

3. The next step is to make little directorial changes and see how this reinvents things. Think about the tension that exists in the house in Stockholm. Set the duet in the kitchen of the characters' home. Try running the dance again. Maybe one of them does not want to dance as much as the other. Maybe they want to cook or continue cooking instead. Or maybe there is a phone ringing in the background and they want to answer it. Instantly what you might find is that what started as an act of union has become something that might appear as bullying or controlling. Why can't they answer the phone? Will this be an act of betrayal? How dangerous is it to show your desire to answer the phone? What would the ramifications be if one of them stopped to answer the phone? This can create an immediately complex relationship. It allows both the performer and observer to make new discoveries.

By exploring the context and adding or taking away details you can ramp up the intensity and emotional complexity of what began as a simple loving dance.  

Latto, K. (2016). Topic Exploration Pack Practitioners: Frantic Assembly Foreword by Karen Latto -OCR Subject Specialist Drama. [online] Available at: https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/314587-practitioners-frantic-assembly.pdf.