#movementdirector

Movement Director Ayse Tashkiran talks about creating movement for THE WOLVES.

Sarah De Lappe’s play is completely brilliant for a movement director as every scene has a distinctive movement score suggested by the text and the physical stage directions.

Months ago, I started working on the play with Ellen, the director, together we looked at each individual character in relation to the group and to her position in the soccer team, we talked about the poetic offer of the team name – The Wolves – and how wolf packs are organised, and of course, how the warm up functions as a shared ritual for these teenage women.  There are also some special movement moments such as #00’s scene and the journey of #7.

I attended auditions and once I knew who was playing each role, I started my own preparation which involved researching female soccer, the physiology of the teenage body, the organisation of wolf packs – hours reading coaching manuals and watching football teams ‘warm up’ on line, in parks on Sundays and at the training sessions on Saturday mornings. Going to the match between the England and Australia female teams gave me lots of direct, physical information about their relationship to each other, the space of the pitch, to running, attacking and defending.

I came to rehearsal with several objectives – firstly to ensure that all of the cast increased their general fitness to be able to move for the entirety of the play safely and sustainably, to construct the ‘warm up’ ritual that underpins many of the scenes, and to suggest choreography of the passing practices.   This involved lots of repetition and working very closely with the director, assistant director and the actors.

Movement sometimes will look invisible when it is well integrated – but getting to the effortless, unison flow of the warm up has taken a lot of repetition and detailed work from the company – the warm up had to have its own logic as a warm up, as well as frame the character choices that the actors and director were making. I certainly see this as a celebration in creating movement for young women that emphasises their physical capacity and prowess – and that is movement that I am completely delighted to put in front of other young women.

THE WOLVES runs until Sat 17 Nov at Stratford East

Photos: Manuel Harlan