The Evolution of Significant Other

The Significant Other Festival began as an idea to see two characters on stage talking to each other, no tricks, no flashy gimmicks, talking about their feelings, their hopes and dreams. While you might not think the people look or sound like you, you could relate to what they said and how they felt, because you may have said something similar and felt the same way. We wanted to make that connection to highlight that underneath it all we’re not so different.  Out of this idea grew an ethos, an ethos that became our mission statement and still informs everything we do today.

That first Significant Other, was 7 duologues, where we gave both the writer and then the actors and directors 7 days each to work on their contribution. It still all began with what we now call our Inspiration Session, a high energy few hours where we bombard the writers, actors and directors with as much as we can sending them away with their heads buzzing. I remember so vividly on the Sunday of our 3rd performance having to make my entrance from the side walkway next to the audience and struggling to get to my start position because there was a crowd of people standing to watch our show. It was an auspicious beginning for us, on that show we met so many of most treasured PenFedders. It was also how we first met Serena Haywood, who would go on to be our Literary Director. Our Company Stage Manager Davie Byden-Oakes also gained his first experience of working on a show and from that he has embraced the theatre so going on to study at LAMDA and most recently has just finished working on Fanny and Alexander at The Old Vic. We had 7 props that year, and what started as a practical consideration, we didn’t want to spend a week searching for random props, became a wonderful linking tool between the pieces and was one of the elements we carried forward.

Significant Other – Genres was the second iteration of the Festival and we made the change to the now familiar 10, 10 minute plays in 10 days format. We kept the idea of the same props, and they got upgraded to 10. One prop however became the stuff of legend, and illustrated to us just how if you give writers enough variety they will find the most varied uses for one single prop. Of course I’m referring to the lettuce, which gave us one of my favourite exchanges ever from writer Will Howells,

ALLIE     DO YOU HAVE ANY SMALLER LETTUCES?

PHIL       SMALLER?

ALLIE:    YEAH. THEY’RE ALL ABOUT THIS SIZE AND I’M NEVER GOING TO USE IT ALL. I’M NOT REALLY        A SALAD PERSON.

PHIL       THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE ICEBERG LETTUCE.

ALLIE     ​WHAT?

PHIL:      NINETY PERCENT OF IT IS BELOW THE SURFACE.

ALLIE     ​WOW. YOU REALLY JUST DID THAT.

And speaking of Will Howells, he would go on to write our first full length play Square which earned us our first 5 star reviews. The first musical also appeared to great success and now every year features a 10 minute musical. We also met the one and only Kim Burnett and in many ways she hasn’t left us yet and even if she’s not acting we find some way to incorporate the spirit of Burnett.

Then came Significant Other – Undercover. We were starting to be known as the festival of two chairs, so we mixed it up and gave our teams the inspiration of having a bed. However it was very interesting how everyone avoided using the bed, apart from the wonderful Michael Shon who’s vigour resulted in us having to construct elaborate support system for the bed. It also memorably gave us the death of a puppet dinosaur Suzy, in of course the musical. It was also where we met our first associate artist Jared Rogers playing the charming younger man in Silk. Every team was given a covering that also became the title of their play, another element that we now carry forward every year.

Object of Affection was Significant’s fourth outing, and we returned to The Tristan Bates Theatre which would be our home for the next few years. Every team was given a specific object to create their play around, and it resulted in some brilliant pieces, and gave us our next associates the wonderful Anthony Cozens and Jayne Edwards. The last piece ‘Life-size Cardboard Cut-out’ made quite an impression on us, even as 2D Han Solo the introduction of a third character gave a completely new dynamic. So often over the years the ‘Significant Other’ character had been an unseen off stage character. This brought it on stage and gave us an idea.

For our 5th year as a company we wanted to go bigger, and Significant Other – Plus One made that a possibility. Having a cast of three brought more conflict and that Significant Other on stage and gave them a voice. It was one of our favourite reveals in the Inspiration session, we had got the teams all settled and then revealed the plus ones, to an astonished reaction. It gave us one of our most memorable musicals starring our brilliant associate Antonia, who i had the joy of giving the direction, ‘channel your inner Liza’. Now having 3 actors has become the standard as also has bringing back a few brilliant people into the mix, if nothing else it adds a level of reassurance to everyone that it can be done. Also this year we ventured up north to the Oldham Coliseum and worked with local artists on Significant Other – Relationship Status, this was another confirmation for us that the format really worked.

Last year we took another leap of faith, we graduated up from the 80 seat venue into the 150 seats that the Vaults Theatre under Waterloo Station offered. Again we wanted to be bigger, we also wanted to try and connect the plays even more than before, to really give the audience a sense of a cohesive evening of theatre rather than just a disjointed night of shorts. The idea of the outside came fairly early and the weather related titles soon after that. As the plays came in, we could see the connections, in the reading and dramaturgy that goes on in the first 5 days, Serena and myself get excited as we see the themes begin to emerge. We began to imagine all the plays taking place in the same universe and subtly we tweaked a few character names and helped the writers lay easter eggs for our audience. Then in a burst of inspiration we staged an opening where one by one the characters all appear giving us a glimpse of what was to come. That opening montage stayed with me and led to a new idea. What if we set all the plays in a specific time and place? A place where lots of different people mix and meet? What if we set in a time when our Prime Minister told us ‘..there is no such thing as society’. So that brings us to Significant Other Inc. This year we tell 10 stories all set in the fictional factory of Reseal9 on one day in 1988. We’ve never attempted anything like it before, and we hope you’ll come and see it; hey you might even want to be in it. If Significant Other is all about connections, it’s about time it was all connected.

Neil J. Byden – Artistic Director

We like structure in Pensive. We’re not afraid of rules. What can we say, we like Trello. It’s comforting. And we do rather repeat ourselves. Here are a few of our favourite phrases. 

1.”One final question. What does ‘significant other’ mean to you?”
We like to meet everyone we work with and we ask them this . We’ve had in response – ‘my cat’, ‘my wife or my cat’, ‘ a sort of shadow of my life’, ‘the person you put as ICE on your phone’ to ‘dunno, the person you’re pokin’?’. I was asked four years ago and I wasn’t sure what to say.

And then we ask everyone to think about our reason for existing…
2 …’the magic in the mundane’…

3… ‘the extraordinary in the everyday’ 
The Pensive Federation was formed by actors Neil Byden and Laura Kim five years ago after they realised they shared a joint desire to make plays just about people, people talking to each other. New writing crisply done, simply and elegantly presented. I came along as a trembly new writer for the first Significant Other a year later and stayed as artistic director. Then came Davie Byden-Oakes as Company Production Manager and the most efficient man in theatre.
Why structure? Because by having a clear framework we allow our teams the most amazing freedom of creativity about the small moments in life. We see tiny changes having a big impact in relationships which then explode into life on stage. And then we are able to produce theatre that we think is unique in its consistency but also its heart. We see everyone we work we as part of our Pensive family. No, we’re not a cult although I said that so much in the last auditions I started to believe we are. We’re not a cult. No. 
We also love making new connections. Fringe theatre is bursting with creative energy and we like to see what happens when it meets. We’ve been described as a sort of Venn diagram in the London Fringe, bringing together people who then go on to form their own theatre companies. Our plays have featured at other writing nights, tours and one of our writers was a runner up in last years’ Bruntwood prize. Significant Other is a way of meeting an entirely new company. Terrifying but incredibly potent.
4. ‘You can be in Significant Other more than once, but only in a different role’. 

Ten plays in ten days. It’s insane but utterly brilliant. We form ten companies of two actors, a writer and director and give them a title, 10 props (of the same theme every year) to chose from and ten days to complete full plays. We love the writers’ terrified little faces as they open their play title golden envelopes. We have had writers back to direct, directors to act and producers to direct. We’ve not had a writer back to act but no surprise there. Each year we have an associate producer. This year we have an amazing three. And each year we give the teams an extra stimulus. This year it’s a biggie.
5. ‘Trust the process’.

At the beginning, that was what the producers would whisper to themselves to help them sleep. A company of 40, booked rehearsal rooms, actors getting paid jobs at the last minute…are we unhinged? But it works and now we soothe scared writers and nervous directors with it. After the Inspiration Session when we meet for the first time together and debate again if you can zap a boing (nope, I’m a writer, I’m never going to understand that) the writers are full of ideas about how to write for their actors. But getting from there to the stage seems impossible. But with months of planning, meticulous choosing of the people we think will ‘get Pensive’ , picking the best little teams to gel but spark and croissants (we like to make sure everyone is fed hence)…
6. ‘The Pensive (tummy) Bulge’ . 

But we know that it will work. Trust the process.
7. ‘The Euro sausage factory standard of writing’ (thanks Will Howells, writer, for that one) 

We warn the writers there will be notes on their scripts. There’s something about writers that if you get 10 of them them in a room together although no one has mentioned it, every play will have a wise tramp in it. Our new writing nights are unique in having a whole show theme and we strive for s consistently high standard but only one wise tramp per year, please. We thank you writers for tolerating our just-one-more-thing emails and….
8. ‘No Nazis. No dead babies’. 

We’re not about issues. We’re about tissues. Sorry, it’s late.
9. ‘Significant Other is the gateway drug to our other plays’ . 

Our Autumn show, The Collective Project is based on groups and has the same 6 actors in four plays. There’s also Rewritten where we explore using samples of dialogue in one play written by three writers. Trust the process.
10. ‘Welcome to the west end’ . Thank you Camden People’s Theatre, the etcetera, The Park and Tristan Bates for being amazing venues. And who knows where next. 
11. ‘So, what does Significant Other mean to you?’.

I’m still not sure but I do know that it’s about this time of year, mid process, when some powerful force means that creative powerhouse and amazing man, Neil and my consciousness fuse into some mutant force that sends out simultaneous identical emails, makes the same jokes and produces a show that just gets better and better every year. Whatever life throws at me, that’s up there with the brilliant and that’s significant to me. I learn so much from our incredible actors, directors and writers. Its a total privilege to spend time with you.  
Do do come and see what our fifth anniversary surprise is. It’s a cracker. It’s not literally a cracker although that is the sort of prop we go for.
We hope you enjoy what we do. We’re planning on being around for a long while yet enjoying our everyday. We think it’s magic.
Serena Haywood, Artistic Director (the quiet one)

Laura Attridge joined us for The Collective Project. New to working with us we did our best to prepare her for life with The Pensive Federation. She explains how she got on!

100% new to The Pensive Federation, I couldn’t quite believe my luck when I snapped up a final spot on the list of directors for the 2014 Collective Project. Sworn to secrecy about my participation, in order to facilitate genuine surprise at the first gathering and prevent artistic preconceptions, I had already been impressed by the few insights I had gained into the company and the projects. What stood out for me in particular was not only the desire to make new and exciting work, but also the attention and care paid by the core team to fully support all of the artists, practically and creatively, to facilitate the very best work from everyone involved.

So it was with excitement and not a few nerves that I walked into the first meeting, the grandly (and accurately) titled ‘Inspiration Session’. Over the course of the evening, writers, directors and actors – some friends, some strangers – played games, improvised, bonded, got very silly and very serious, and generally got familiar with one another. The exercises were designed to enable everyone involved to get a sense for their colleagues as artists and to see the potential for the creative work to come. At the end of the evening, the two collectives were announced, and I found myself a female minority in the ‘Male Bias’ group, paired with the writer Sherhan Lingham, who went on to choose the collective noun we would be focusing on: Faculty.

In the space of a day, Sherhan somehow provided me with a fantastic, fully-realised script, which provided a great basis for me to discover what in particular he was interested in dramatically: rather than read or workshop the script itself, I tried to break it down into its themes and components, using the actors to explore each of these individually. That weekend we spent four blissful hours playing, workshopping, sharing experiences, talking, challenging one another, and exploring the shifting of human power, with a particular focus on a classroom scenario. Some particularly cruel anecdotes about tricks played on teachers came into play – of course, we had to re-enact all of these!

After reading a wonderful new draft of Sherhan’s script, enriched in so many ways by the work we’d done over the weekend, I arrived at the script read-through to be told that he had, on the advice of the artistic team, ‘made a few changes’. And he had indeed: a significant and crucial change, made within 48 hours of sending his draft to the team, had revolutionised the script and brought everything together into a fine final project. That evening, the casts read through all eight of the new scripts, each wonderfully diverse and individual, and I got my hands on the play I would be directing: Dan Nixon’s ‘Bouquet’, a subtle and witty story based in a family florist shop with a shady secret.

My six actors and I were reunited at the weekend to rehearse ‘Bouquet’. The group had clearly bonded well, using one another’s energies and making instinctive choices on stage, making my job a lot easier. It was incredibly valuable to have Dan at the rehearsal to observe and advise as we brought his script to life. We haggled over the musical track to be used at the end of the piece, and I found a brilliant operatic aria about a poisoned bunch of flowers which perfectly suggested the subtle violence and power underscoring the piece. Four hours was all too short, and I had to trust my wonderful actors to go away, learn their lines and remember all of the things I’d tried to cram into our session.

I saw the show on the second night, and was absolutely blown away. The trust I’d had in the actors had been entirely justified, and they all excelled. It was particularly special to see my own direct input in two of the pieces (‘Faculty’ directed brilliantly by Artistic Director Neil J. Byden), and to witness the results of the hard work everyone had put in. It was evident from all of the performances – from my collective and the ‘Female Bias’ collective – that a great deal of fun had been had, partnerships and friendships had been made, opinions and ideas had been challenged, and exceptional, collaborative art had been made.

Photo of Laura by Serena Haywood

Cast photo by Dave Curtis