ARTISTIC DIRECTOR'S BLOG: FPAC’s Professional Ensemble and the Viewpoints as a Devising & Training Technique:

The first strand of FPAC is the professional Ensemble. In March 2022, I held auditions at the Sunflower House and over 50 people showed up. These auditions were a gauge to me of what theatre makers are in Folkestone and in the southeast. I was blown away by the number of people who showed up and their wonderful skill set.

From that audition, I found 5 drama school trained actors - as the auditions were to be as a member of a new company without any promises of work, I was looking for people with skills but more importantly whom I just got on with. I was looking for those with an 'ensemble attitude' towards the group. There were many strong actors who came to audition, but they weren't the ones who were trying to make the ensemble lift; the ones I selected raised everyone. These five actors seemed to be lovely people and I got on with them. They 'accepted' my guidance througout the workshop and made the work better than I could have every envisoned.

This foundation to the company as an ensemble is very much rooted in my background & training as a theater maker. As mentioned previously, my university training and training in Chicago was very much rooted in the Viewpoints which was developed by the theatre director Ann Bogart in the United States over 30 years ago. 

Through working with the Viewpoints over the past 18 months, the FPAC Ensemble’s focus is to play with form through responding to outside stimulus rather than the interior psychology of a character; this creates a highly collaborative ensemble and a fresh and dynamic approach to storytelling.  This approach also places ongoing training on an equal footing to new work development so that the Ensemble is constantly developing their craft in addition to creating theatre. Creative Folkestone’s Open Sesame Programme has been a strong supporter of this training by offering us free training space at Block 67 for the last 18 months. 

FPAC is a pioneering proponent of this technique and the only theatre company in Kent to use it in ongoing training and new work development; this use of Viewpoints gives the FPAC Ensemble a distinctive voice in theatre-making.