Article 2 of A Manifesto by The Factory
The Factory believes that theatre’s very essence as an art form is its liveness, and that too many decisions and too much production can kill the spontaneity necessary to fulfill its potential.

Article 3 of A Manifesto by The Factory
The Factory believes that people will travel a long way to witness something performed with bravery and skill, and that you don’t need star casting or technical wizardry to excite and inspire people.

Article 10 of A Manifesto by The Factory
Above all, The Factory believes in giving the creative process the time it needs, in going out on a limb, risking failure, making mistakes and not being ashamed of them


we ask you to try to PLAY

with humility with bravery with generosity with positivity with mischief with spontaneity with action with forward motion with truth with joy with conviction with purpose with daring
without fear without ego without vanity without character without planning without journeys without impressiveness without amusingness without behavior without demonstration without emotional display without previous circumstances without judgement without interpretation without indulgence
to effect change to win to redefine to challenge to say yes
moment to moment from the best part of your self for fun the sake of playing for the other player

As we often develop new projects which involve both actors who have been with The Factory since its birth, and those fairly new to us, I thought it might be useful to collate some thoughts about what, if anything, might be described as Factory Acting, and The Factory acting/directing process.

I think I forget sometimes how long some of us have been traveling down a certain path together now, and that a shorthand may have developed which might seem like a foreign language to those not yet as well versed in our process and approach. Indeed it is only in the presence of new people that I realise that we even have a company wide process or approach and that they may, in fact, be becoming quite defined.

I definitely think we have a set of principles of a sort which we desire those coming to The Factory to explore, hopefully embrace, and enjoy mining.

I think it is the responsibility of those you with a greater knowledge of these principles and their application to help explain them to new people who are interested, and keen to explore them. I think it is fair to say now that this is the path we are seemingly going down and that if you desire to work within The Factory community, we will assume it is because you want to learn these ideas, and will be excited to help develop them further.
I think our process almost exclusively involves the using of exercises to aid our ability to play in the manner expounded above. Although we spend a lot of time examining a text, this is really only so that we understand it well enough to apply the above to the playing of them.

If acting is seen as sport then rehearsals are really general training, the script is, perhaps the pitch or court (the peculiarities of which therefore need detailed examination), and your fellow actors are the opposing team. A show is like a match then. You understand the rules, you know every inch of the pitch, you are fit, able and have your training to rely on although you have no idea what the other players are going to do nor what is going to happen. This is the fun of it. You play to win, you move on when you make a mistake, you remain flexible and alive to the possibilities of the moment. You don't think about how you look doing any of it, nor what it says about you as a person. You are not why they come. They come because they want to see the game. We aim to give them to best game we can.

I like to think of our process in Curling terms. The playwright is the person who slides the thing, the actor is the thing sliding down the ice, the ice is the moment, and the director is the one with the brush, frantically and methodically clearing all the shit out the way so the ice is as clear and clean as possible. No one thinks of anything other than where the fucking thing is headed.

When working on a text we have decided not to talk about character, subtext, character journeys, themes, previous circumstances, emotion, genre, style, the play as a whole even, as these things are the concern of the audience, not us. Out of our playing one moment to the next, they will project such things onto our actions and spur of the moment decisions.
Such an approach can take quite a long time to get one's head around and to grips with, but we feel that when one starts to get the idea it allows the most exciting, truthful and most liberated playing around.

“When we say Lincoln had character, we do not mean the way he held a cigarette.” David Mamet

“If we encounter the unexpected onstage in front of people, we are apt to reveal ourselves.” David Mamet

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”
Carl Gustav Jung

“Acting is standing up naked and turning around very slowly.” Rosalind Russell

"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." John Wayne

“No one wants to pay good money and irreplaceable time to watch you be responsible.” David Mamet

“There is no character. There are only lines on a page.” David Mamet


Alex Hassell July 2009