Natasia Bullock and Chris Rae sit across the table from each other in Café 81 and enjoy what seems to be a brief respite in what has become two very fulfilling and busy lives. For Natasia, recently married and juggling more balls than an expert conjurer in a three ringed circus, her latest production, Rose of June, is being performed at the Unity Theatre on September 23rd and 24th.
After graduating from LJMU in drama and also completing the Emerging Artist Programme at Hope Street Limited, Natasia has worked in the theatre as a performer, stage manager and director. She is currently studying directing with The Everyman and Playhouse Theatre’s young directors scheme which has included her own adaption of the book of Daniel which was performed at The Everyman Studio. Although having worked at The Unity as a stage manager and a performer, Rose of June is Natasia’s debut at the theatre as a director.
Chris Rae has the honour of performing in Natasia’s directorial debut at The Unity Theatre and in a production based upon the works of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross M.D. and her studies upon the stages of grief, some actors might shy away from delving into the subject too closely but both Chris, who plays Sam in the play, and Natasia draw their drinks close and quite happily talk about grief, time in theatre and how the team behind Making Art and The Unity Theatre helped them through bringing this play to the wider Liverpool audience.
This play is a little bit different from what you’d normally expect, especially from the plays Natasia has been in before.
Chris: “The difference is that there is no written format of a script as you traditionally would have. Basically we’ve created a collage of moments that run from A to B and what we hope to achieve is a more truthful and raw response to the subject matter and in that sense to do it justice. So that there’s no assumptions and no premonition about what you’re going to do before you do it, it’s purely instinctive in that sense and what we’ll do during rehearsals now is wade through a wondrous amount of different scenes and different moments and different areas to simply build up what we’re trying to achieve and which are of the moment.”
It’s a fairly difficult subject for anybody to watch – the grief – it’s not an easy topic of conversation. Have you found that hard putting that together as a concept for the stage?
Natasia: “The first couple of rehearsals, we didn’t really do any performing at all, we’ve just gone to an automatic exercise in writing with what the five stages of grief could mean. So when we talk about the five stages, it’s Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her theories and it’s not to say that everyone goes through these stages but her theories say that people go through denial, bargaining which is kind of what if I did this – what ifs, the way that we’re looking at is more like if I would have seen them, if I could have been there, is there a change, leading into anger, depression and acceptance. So to begin with, we’ve just been looking at that, sharing stories as well, which was quite an emotional process as well; we’ve all got completely different experiences. I’m talking about how grief affects people in different situations and understanding that it’s not the same, you can’t just say that this is what exactly everyone goes through, this is how everyone feels. We’ve been exploring how somebody could feel and that’s what we’re trying to say with it all. We’re not saying this is how everyone should feel; it’s just exploring and presenting how it could go. I’ve forgotten what the question was now!”
It was about how difficult it was to bring the play to the stage!
Natasia: “So we’re doing that planned work and from that we’re improvising each stage if you like but what we’re trying to be is careful not to stereotype. How we’re finding challenges in each different scene that we look at. We need to be sensitive, we want to put a little bit more of a twist on it and if somebody doesn’t want to sit through an hour of doom and gloom as well, so it’s finding lighter moments, I don’t mean comic relief, to keep the audience interested and not feeling too down.”
An hour of doom and gloom where you’re bombarded with abject misery would be too despondent for many.
Natasia: “Absolutely and it’s from using the structure of the five stages but then it’s trying to factor in our influence as well which isn’t taking away too much from the five stages so there still needs to be a plot, a narrative and characters that you care about. It’s all of those elements, hopefully that will do the subject justice and explore grief.”
Forgive the question but do you find that whatever belief system that you have, helps you with the idea of grief?
Chris “I think so, I think when Tash touched on it earlier, with everyone has their own response, whether it be conscious or subconscious, to loss and loss can come in a lot of forms. I think with your belief system, Tash and I have different belief systems but with what we’re trying to represent, is simply an account, a neutral account of these stages and I think it can come into it, influencing without a doubt, that‘s something we often discuss in rehearsals, of people’s different belief systems, how they can be perceived as you would for any show and how the audience are going to react to that. What statement we are actually trying to put out, sometimes we get side tracked on occasions on discussions of that nature. Myself, I’m not particularly religious but it is a wonderful thing to have, particularly again in this instance in this play, if someone does pass, they’re told their soul, the embodiment of them lives on, you will see them again, it’s a lovely sense of feeling.”
I love the fact that, you don’t use the word ‘die’ because I don’t use it either, it’s someone’s passing, I’m not a religious man, I use the words pass over or pass on. ‘Die’ just seems too harsh a word to use, especially in the context of the play.
Natasia: “We don’t say at the minute either dead or die, maybe when we were exploring anger, we may have used the word dead once, that was during an improvisation and it’s kind of a let out of the anger. Opposite to Chris and I’m not sure about the other cast members, I’m obviously religious and I think in my opinion, you’re going to sleep and when you wake up you’re in a new world. So again, we don’t say you’ve died, in my belief, you’re free of all the pain, you can’t feel pain in death, when you’ve passed on and you’re asleep you can’t feel it. So in my belief system, it’s more of a comfort.”
It’s more difficult for the people who are left behind, I get the feeling that your play deals with this, it’s not the person who’s passing on that’s the centre, it’s the anger, the resentment, the disappointment, the genuine love of those who are still here.
Natasia: “It’s how they carry on, doing their different routines, how they carry on with life in the same way but without that other person. As well as Sam the other two characters are Emily and Daniel and they are friends of Sam’s and Rose’s so they’ve been a group of four friends so it’s also following their journey of grief and exploring a lot of things about what we’ve been talking about, who has the right to grieve and we’ve spoken about different situations that we’ve all been in and it’s like should Sam be grieving more than Emily the friend, no they mourn in different ways. It’s in different ways that kind of turmoil and Sam saying she was my wife so nobody could feel possibly the same way as he’s feeling, everybody’s journey is different and it’s all about journeys isn’t it?”
The play is taking part in the Making Art event at the Unity Theatre which I know you have great affinity for, I don’t think I’ve seen you at a play at the Unity though?
Chris: “Many moons ago, I had a small role but that was way back when I was at university. It was just a sort of piece that we did that had links with John Moores University but that was just in the Unity Bar upstairs, it wasn’t if you will a published play at all.”
On that basis, what was the idea for the Unity Theatre to host this play?
Chris: “With the Making Arts Team, we put this on at the moment as we agreed with Graham Phillips actually last year before Christmas which seems like a very long time ago and they support and actually a small amount of funding. The support included front of house and technical work, creatively we have complete reign, they will see the show before it goes on but especially as it’s supporting such local artists as it does, it’s such a lovely intimate space, we are fortunate to be in theatre. It’s a brilliant fit for us.”
The Unity has brought on a lot of aspiring actors, musicians and writers, I’ve seen you in several things at the theatre, playing the cello in that marvellous play A Cosy Murder,. What’s the relationship like between you, the Unity and the play and with Graham Phillips. Obviously Graham is a big champion of developing artists, isn’t he?
Natasia: “It’s amazing from my point of view, with my career, my very first job was at the Unity doing the stage management for the Christmas show Hansel and Gretel and that’s the path that I followed to get here. I wasn’t quite there then but it was great. I did Hansel and Gretel and then they helped me stage management-wise as well, I’m so thankful to the Unity for all they’ve done even giving me a ‘Saturday Job’ as the Fire Officer to help me. The Unity is so supportive in many ways; you can go to them for advice.”
How long is the play on for?
Natasia: “For two nights with Making Arts though with the intention of getting feedback on it and developing it. That’s what Making Art is all about. It’s being advertised in the programme as being ‘in development’. It’s the first time we’ve done it, we’re trying it out, especially with the methodology of not having a script to fall back on. Although we’ve to A to B for each scene to fall back on and we know the journey the play needs to take, the actors still have the freedom, even on the night, to change their lines or to say something at a different time if they think they should and they can so long as they get from A to B in each section.”
That’s almost like a journey in itself, you’re almost paraphrasing yourself and dare I say it, being your own story. You’re allowing the actors to have such artistic freedom.
Chris: “Yes, especially when I was structuring some of the story and the creative narrative behind it last year when I was in discussions with Natasha before it came to fruition. That was one of the aims to allow the artist freedom, not to become bound by a script or someone else’s work, which is not a negative by any fashion. To see the actual artistic freedom and to respond to something naturally and the idea especially with continuity within theatre or television, if you do something once and do it truthfully subconsciously you should repeat it when you form a creative narrative as people should be responding in the same way and responding truthfully and that’s to build up the narrative and the show and have a very structured format and a very keen-eyed director, to keep that narrative running and making sense. Also with that as well, it’s to do the subject matter justice.
I know I’m a firm believer in not screaming so to speak, with emotion on stage. To actually hear some of the language is emotional. However, to actually scream with emotion or to be upset is very rare to see onstage. If someone does that naturally, to respond to grief which everyone, as a touched on earlier, has their own format or way to respond to grief when someone has passed onto the other side, everyone is going to react the show in a different way, so to do it justice and to allow the performers to get something from the play, if it touches them in a certain way then justice will be done, we don’t want to patronise or stereotype it.”
Rose Of June is on at the Unity Theatre on September 23rd and 24th. Tickets are priced at £10 with concessions available at £8.
Tickets are available to purchase online at http://
Rose of June is a Stack Theatre Production
Ian D. Hall