Pomona
Casting Week
The Play
When we found out the play we would be performing was Pomona by Alistair McDowell I was really intrigued because I had never heard anything about it before. I also really liked the writer’s note saying that all the actors should stay on stage for the whole performance ‘they just are’ and thought that painted a really interesting picture.
As we read through the play I found myself really drawn into the story, and wanting to know what happened next. I really enjoyed reading and listening to it, and found it really compelling and different. I loved the plot twist at the end that shows how the play is a never-ending loop, I thought it was really powerful – it took me a while to get over!
There are so many really unique and fascinating aspects about the play – the way nobody ever leaves the stage, the rolling of the dice, Cthulhu constantly watching everyone, the scenes where lines are divided between everyone, the looping, the state of fear that settles over everything. I also loved all of the characters and thought every one was really complex and fascinating. Pomona is completely different to anything I’ve done before, and I can’t wait to get started.
Casting
Casting week for Pomona was a lot of fun, and also really interesting. I loved being drawn deeper into the story and discovering more about the character’s lives through performing them and watching other people perform.
The first character I read for in the read through was Fay, and I immediately really liked her. She appealed to me because of how complex and different she was compared to the kind of roles I’d done before, and there was just a certain energy about her in her scenes I found really interesting.
When we started trying different scenes, the first one I did was the opening of the play as Zeppo with Emily B as Ollie. Reading Zeppo was a lot of fun, but I didn’t think there was anything really special I could bring to the role, and I didn’t think it would push me as much as some of the other characters.
I only read once as Ollie, in the scene where Fay shows her around, and even though I enjoyed it and really like the character, it didn’t really feel right to be on the other side of the scene – again, I thought that other people in the group could bring more to the character than I could.
I read several times as Fay over the week, in the scene where she shows Ollie around the brothel and the scene where she talks with Moe. I really enjoyed doing these scenes and slowly finding new aspects about the character. Watching other people perform scenes as Fay was also really enlightening – especially when Emily did her monologue on the phone to the babysitter, which really brought out her maternal side more, and the scene where she confronts Gale with the laptop had a really intense and powerful energy to watch. I think seeing other people play Fay made me even more attracted to the character.
I also read several scenes as Gale over the week. Reading Gale was a lot of fun, and for a while both she and Fay appealed to me equally. However, towards the end of the week I started to notice myself slipping back into some of Charlotte’s mannerisms when I did Gale’s scenes. I’ve played a lot of characters who are similar to Gale before outside of college, and although it’s not easy, it’s a little bit in my comfort zone – somewhere I really didn’t want to be in this play.
Final Casting
I was really happy with the final casting. Fay was the first character that appealed to me from Pomona and I’m really happy I get to play her.
I’m excited to start rehearsing and exploring more of her character because she’s completely different from anything I’ve ever done before. I tend to get typecast a little bit as more powerful authoritative characters which I do enjoy but I’m really excited to start exploring Fay and get my teeth into something completely different.
So far I’ve loved doing Fay’s scenes just in casting week. I think she’s a really complex, interesting character and there’s so much to work with – she’s a mother, she’s an abuse survivor, she’s on the run from her husband, her attitude towards working at the brothel, the connection she finds with Ollie. Her character development in the play is also really interesting as she gathers the courage to stand up to Gale.
I can’t wait to get into all of this, and I think I’m really going to enjoy it, but it’s also going to be a huge challenge, since I’ve never played anyone like this before. I said before we started Pomona that I wanted to be really challenged with my next role, and have something I can really work hard on, and I definitely think Fay will do that for me.
Ideas
One idea I did have for incorporating sound was the use of old video game noises, such as ‘you failed’ and the fail sound. I think this would work especially well with the loop of the ending – we could use a fail noise and then an old video game voice saying ‘try again’ or ‘better luck next time.’
I also think that we could use physical theatre for certain scenes in Pomona and it would look really effective and interesting. For instance, we could do four corners for the scene where Ollie is walking through the crowded shopping centre and Fay screams at her thinking that she’s her sister. It would show the business of the city, as well as the ‘looping’ Ollie talks about if we repeat the same movements. With the right music, I think this could look really powerful and different.
Since the characters never leave the stage, I also think that there could be some kind of physical theatre always going on in the background – the characters not in a scene could be sitting on the Rubik’s Cubes and all doing some kind of chair duet with each other and maybe some handheld Rubik’s cubes.
