Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti: A Working Diary

Adrian Lester, Lolita Chakrabarti

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350092785
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medios de comunicación y artes escénicas
• Subtopic: Actuación y audiciones

"An exhilarating, fascinating and eye-opening journey with two of our most inspirational creatives. A must-read for anyone interested in the crafts of acting and writing or considering a career as a self-employed artist. Lolita and Adrian don't shy away from documenting the reality of our profession – the endless multi-tasking, the long unpaid hours, and the peaks and troughs of generating your own work and being a creative-for-hire. Equally though they celebrate the joy and satisfaction when all that sweat and risk finally pays off." Meera Syal CBE In this insightful joint working diary, the creative powerhouse of a couple, Lolita Chakrabarti and Adrian Lester, chronicle 16 months of their fascinating working lives, including their experiences working on the stage adaptation of Life of Pi, an original series of monologues about the NHS, the film adaptation of Red Velvet and the TV series The Rook, among many other projects. As readers, we experience, first-hand, their experiences as two of the most proactive and versatile theatre makers today, working across a range of media and exciting collaborations.

Wednesday 29 August

Lolita I meet with Max and a possible composer for Pi at a hotel near Oxford Circus. It is an interesting meeting and the guy’s perspective on music within the show is strong.

Talking to Max afterwards, we try to define what kind of sound and feel we want for the show. I am very aware that it isn’t my call, really. I also don’t have that kind of eye for directing and never have. But I do have an instinct about which way to go. Felt careful of respecting Max’s position whilst giving my opinion.

I find out that we won’t get more than two weeks of rehearsal in London for Pi, so for three weeks of Invisible Cities I will have to travel up and down to Sheffield. It will be trickier but has to be done.

Sunday 2 September

Lolita At the end of play on Friday, I had two self-tapings emailed to me by my acting agents at Curtis Brown.

It’s reassuring to have auditions, but with self-tapings I find myself squeezing them into times I should be doing something else.

It was a family affair today. I had three fairly hefty scenes for one audition and two short, sharp ones for a comedy pilot. They were very different styles.

Adrian is always brilliant and films, reads and directs me too. Jasmine joined us today and read as well.

There is so much prospecting in this industry – working hard in order to get the opportunity to audition for work. As I get older, I just want the work based on my track record.

Anyway, I did them. And then Adrian edited them and put them into files for my agent. I wouldn’t know where to start if I had to do it by myself.

Thursday 6 September

Adrian Had a chat with Stephen Mears, the director on Guys and Dolls at the Royal Albert Hall.

I then went through the script. Should have done it much earlier. I have been neglecting this. Have to start the voice process and begin looking at the lines. At first, I thought we were going to do a rendition of the songs from the show: music stands in front of us, fixed microphones, little movement. Then I learned we would be doing some scenes as well. Ok, a little bit of dialogue to get us in and out of the songs – fine. But after talking to Stephen, I now understand why he wants us off book. The scenes will be fully acted and there’s going to be a chorus of dancers as well. I’m flicking through the script, and there’s a lot of lines. I have two solos, two duets, there are lots of scenes, costume, wigs, dance routines and only nine days’ rehearsal.

This’ll be … interesting.

Wednesday 5 September

Lolita I am finishing a light structural redraft of Pi so that Simon and Max can read before Monday. Some of it works, some of it needs deeper thought. We are fully cast for the workshop, which is great. I have some more friends in this now too; they’re good and nice people, so their support in the room is invaluable.

It is now the afternoon and I am having a long meeting with Leo, the director from 59 Productions, to get his thoughts on Invisible Cities. It is a good session, although getting my head back into the story takes a few moments. It’s a fantastic piece for this kind of multi-performance expression but trying to find a narrative within it is hard. Anyway, Leo has some great ideas and problems so I will take them away and digest.

I am excited to hear The Armoury in New York is very interested in Invisible Cities for 2020 and Sadler’s Wells want us to open their new space in London in Stratford in 2022. Also, apparently a lot of international venues are interested in the production and Rambert are keen to keep it in their repertoire, so it seems like it will have a long life.

I am working out dates for draft deliveries of Invisible Cities with Leo and we talk about sharing my time with rehearsals for Pi.

I have another audition tomorrow. A regular in a new series for ITV and the dates fit with what I’m doing. It’s my third audition this week – am feeling very lucky to have so many opportunities. It stands in direct contrast to the many times I have had none.

I receive an email from Marcus Davey, artistic director at the Roundhouse, to talk about the idea I pitched to him. He wants to do it and to talk logistics. I want to do it with Alan Lane from Slung Low directing and Rosa Maggiora designing. So we’re all going to meet in October and work it out. This will be fun.

Alan brought me back to the theatre, really. Almost ten years ago, I was pretty jaded by it. The experiences I’d had were hard and demoralizing. I was questioning my love of it. And then he asked me to write a monologue for his show at the Almeida. It was the first theatre piece I’d written that was produced and I also performed it. It was an event piece. Three writers, three monologues. The audience wore headphones and the actors wore microphones. We told a third of the audience our story and spent an hour walking the streets of Islington, where other actors and props were planted to support the narrative.

It was an extraordinary experience for me. The technology frequently went wrong but it was pure theatre. Pure storytelling. Alan has an infectious energy; he’s a ‘can do’ person who makes anything happen, so to do this with him will be brilliant.

Rosa designed a show I was in around the same time at the Royal Court – Free Outgoing by Anupama Chandrasekhar. It was done on a minuscule budget. Rosa was instinctive and so responsive to what we needed. It was well received and came back to the main house and then went to the Traverse during the Edinburgh Festival. To work with her like this will be wonderful.

I am excited by this project – it is called Testaments – and it could be a bold and relevant piece of theatre, plus I’ll be working with good friends.

Friday 7 September

Lolita I am filming my last scene on Riviera. This has been a fun job to do – great costumes and sets. The part has been frustrating as it demands very little but I have enjoyed it.

Monday 10 September

Lolita This is the first day of the second workshop on Pi. We have ten actors, Max, Finn (puppet and movement director) and Yann Martel – author of the book. We are in a rehearsal room in Bethnal Green working through my last draft to try and find the story arc of the whole piece. Each scene must inform the next, build to a climax and deliver an emotional journey at the same time. It’s linking many threads until they become one rope – sort of.

I am nervous because I am being put through my creative paces but being surrounded by so many creative minds will feed my vision. It is a great day of seeing where the gaps are and being presented with ideas of how to fill them.

Yann has come over from Canada to be here for the week. I am amazed at how generous he is being with this opus of his. He is very open to my reinvention of his story.

I am more sure-footed this time, I think. Ready for the chaos of this week. It feels like throwing the whole script, story and order up in the air and seeing where it lands.

Thursday 13 September

Adrian On my way in to do a demo for a large commercial radio station today. It’s a try-out, a mutual audition to see if my voice and manner would work well for their audience and to see if I can handle the technical aspects needed for the work.

Ever since I started doing voice-overs for TV documentaries, I have been loosely interested in the idea of doing radio. A few actors have done the job as they are able to bring an entertaining slant on current affairs all while presenting listeners with a good selection of music.

In preparation I’d had a lot of ideas about the little stories I might tell the audience, the news references I could talk about or make light of and especially the music that I would like to play.

Seems slightly obvious to say that the music was a big draw. Years ago I had listened to Lenny Henry on the radio make his turn as a DJ a unique listening experience. He recorded himself as a character who had phoned in or entered the booth interrupting and chatting away to himself as Lenny the DJ. It was a free-wheeling conversation that was very surreal and very funny. The tracks he played, chatted over and sometimes sang along to all helped to make his show unique. I felt that, given the opportunity, I would be able to create a show that had a similar sense of fun with good conversati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Adrian Lester and Lolita Chakrabarti: A Working Diary
• 1
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Copyright