The next thing was how to stage it; we began as standing in a diagonal line but we thought it looked quite dull and lacked dynamics and as proxemix is important in the movement aspect in relation to the presentation of the drama we decided to place the scene at the entrance to the pub and stand in a vertical line, one person on each step behind each other; that way we were all visible and we proceeded to move. We then began adding sidesteps and box steps. The most prominent one was the use of the ‘jazz fingers’ which added more energy to the scene, credit to inspiration from Bob Fosse. We weren’t sure how to kick off the dialogue and decided on the use of an MC (Master of Ceremonies) to open the play with a monologue to give the audience insight into what they were about to watch. The monologue was improvised and it lacked fluency at first so we decided to shorten it and subsequently making it funny and snappy and engage the audience with lines that gave an initial background of what the audience should expect mixed with comedy: ‘Hitchcock! Where boredom is defined as tension!’. We decided early on that if this was going to work, we couldn’t take ourselves too seriously so we relied on using elements of farce like suspension of disbelief and even moments of breaking the 4th wall in order to shake things up and make it interesting.
To lead on to the next scene, we created a transition where we proceeded to the next space in a single file and singing the opening song; the problem which arose with this was it was repetitive and didn’t look particularly energetic so we added the circular movement of the wrists signifying which would in turn signal the audience to follow.
The scene between Tippi and Hitchcock set in his trailer where he attempted to make sexual advances to her. We were unsure of how serious the scene should be and we ultimately decided on taking a Berkoff style approach by using two actors as a chorus and in the style of Lecoq use mime and sounds to enhance some of the words or phrases or actions the characters said or did. When we first improvised the scene, the dialogue came out very sharp and very funny and we kept it that way throughout. The choral speech and movement had to be worked on because it lacked energy and we were struggling to keep up with the pace of the dialogue so we chose words we thought were essential and used those added by mime; for example ‘sexual advances’ was repeated by the chorus is a husky voice accompanied by outrageous hip thrusting movements which also added more comedy. We set it out as the two characters sitting down with a chorus on either side of them which not only enhanced the drama but also provided different levels.
The ‘Psycho’ character we felt was something that needed a lot of work and exploration because there was a lot of opportunities where we could take the character. We started out has having him as softly spoken, wild-eyed and rigid and we soon realised it wasn’t working at all; it went against the conventions of the melodrama and it was too dreary and lacked projection. So instead we decided to give the character edge by making him extremely over the top psychotic and melodramatic in his delivery. It made him funny and scary at the same time, and very much a stock character; all his traits like not blinking or the sudden bursts of anger followed by manic laughter belonged to the archetype of a psycho. Improvising dialogue for the character was difficult because we had to come up with things that were so out of the ordinary that nobody in their right mind would say; things like ‘We eat the body’ in reference to Hitchcock and how to dispose of his body. The idea was that Anthony Perkins is obsessed trying to adopt Stanislavsky’s method acting and he became Norman Bates and in order to really go to the extremes of the character, he wants to murder Hitchcock.
It is important to state that our depiction of Hitchcock’s life in the play is purely fictional; we decided to go for a sort of Farce and instead of making characters, we made caricatures of the real life people involved because we felt it was much more entertaining, as far from naturalistic as possible. This was one of the most significant changes we made: our acting style and we felt at that point that from then on the play was going in the right direction. We embraced the melodrama and the absurd which in a way we felt reflected Hitchcock’s films.
We also decided on recreating the infamous shower scene from ‘Psycho’ not only because it is something so widely recognised in pop culture but also because upon visiting the pub, we noticed some glass doors leading to a staircase outside so we came up with the idea that that was the shower and we would place Janet Leigh behind the doors while Norman Bates would appear behind her and stab her. The only concern was the fact that the audience would not be able to hear what was going on outside so we worked out way around it by once again using a chorus or either side. We then improvised using a soundscape which very useful this time around; We came up with sounds like the turning of the drain; the water running and even the violins that accompanied the stabbing in the film.
The scene where Tippi Hendren and Janet Leigh have a heated argument followed by Anthony Perkins’ intervention and subsequent proposal to kill Hitchcock needed a lot of work in improvisation. First we needed to work on the staging; they started physically very close to each other and it wasn’t showing tension at all so the power of the scene was being lost. So we set it up as the argument became more heated, they would come closer to each other and it worked really well. It took some time to improvise the dialogue because once again we needed fast paced witty dialogue that steadily escalated. These characters also needed plenty of characterisation and we once again resorted to an archetype: this time the diva or the prima donna. Every movement of flicking the hair, or the lazy hand being held up, the exaggerated speech and the silly walking really helped bring out the physical comedy; for this to be achieved, we simply decided we should do the scene pretending to wear high heels which in turn helped us slip into character. When the Norman character steps in, we decided to bring out the horror but at the same time his charm and reasoning so it would make sense why Tippi and Janet found his proposal so appealing. We did this by showing Norman act out what they could potentially do, in a gruesome and graphic way. It was a very physical depiction and it was really successful in showing his insanity.
The grand finale we felt called for a different song and this time we contrasted it with a dark and hard-hitting song in comparison to the light opening. ‘We’re gonna kill Hitchcock/We’re gonna make his heart stop/ We’re gonna use this rope/We’re gonna make him choke!’ During the improvisation, we felt that those four lines were good and worked but we could easily add to it so we decided to each of us come up with a rhyming quadruplet which we could perform solo in between the chorus. They ended up being lines that showed the motives of the characters for what they were about to do except for Hitchcock; his line was influenced very much by a real life quote from Hitchcock himself: