Third Angel

I’m really pleased to have a set of ‘artists pages’ in the latest edition of the journal Performance Research: Undercover (Volume 26, Issue 8)

Watching the Detectives is a case file, documenting our research into The Department of Distractions, through the show of the same name, its forerunner O Grande Livro dos Pequenos Detalhes (The Great Book of Tiny Details) and the sequel play-at-home-game, The Distraction Agents. (It takes its name of course from both the Elvis Costello song, and a previous blogpost about The Department of Distractions).

Particular thanks to Fraser Stevens and James Harding for commissioning the piece, and to Becci Curtis for sterling support as always. And thanks to the support of Leeds Beckett University,Watching the Detectives is available as a free download here.

The final run of The Distraction Agents is available now, to play yourself or send as a gift! Click here for more information.

After almost a year of planning and making we are delighted that this week audiences are finally getting to play The Distraction Agents, our brand new show / experience set in the ‘world’ of our theatre show, The Department of Distractions. The Distraction Agents is a new virtual experience with real world challenges which can be enjoyed from home: part puzzle, part film, part game, part theatre, part real life. If you’re interested in playing, all the booking info is here.

Thematically and formally, The Distraction Agents draws on a number of our enduring interests, plus also more recent concerns and fascinations. Helen, our new Digital Marketing Officer, asked if we could articulate some of those inspirations in a blogpost. Hopefully this will serve as something like a programme note, giving a flavour of our research and aims, without giving any spoilers…

Can theatre shows have sequels?
This thought certainly came up in rehearsal for The Department of Distractions, and also led to a discussion at a Third Angel Board Meeting at some point. Of all of our projects, The Department is the one that most obviously references genre fiction and TV drama, making several nods to the idea of a series – either of episodes or books (as we have noted before).

Both The Wooster Group and Forced Entertainment have created thematically linked trilogies of shows in the past, and writer/performer Joe Bone had great success with the movie-inspired Bane trilogy, which we caught two parts of at Cena Brasil in 2014. And then there’s Shakespeare’s histories, and two-parters like Nicholas Nickleby and Harry Potter… but none of these are the sort of sequel that we were thinking about.

The world of The Department Of Distractions seems so rich to us, that even before the tour was cut short by the pandemic, we were thinking about other stories to tell and games to play with it. We’d fallen in love with the characters a little bit, too, and didn’t want to say goodbye to them yet.

So it’s more accurate to think of The Distraction Agents as a companion piece to The Department of Distractions. Narratively, TDA it is set *after* TDOD, and features some of the same characters, but you don’t need to have seen the theatre show to play the new project – it’s a stand-alone project.

As an aside, we also wanted to create a new project in collaboration with the brilliant touring team of The Department: Umar Butt, Nick Chambers, Stacey Sampson and Louise Gregory. The pandemic has hit the arts hard, as you are no doubt aware, and it has hit freelancers the hardest. We specifically wanted to create work for as wide a group as we could afford to. We don’t know yet if or when The Department of Distractions will be able to tour again, so this was important to us. 

Easter Eggs (and Red Herrings)
The Department of Distractions knowingly plays with some of the tropes of detective fiction, such as red herrings & Easter eggs, as a stylistic and thematic devices. In the making process we half-seriously set ourselves the challenge of including a reference to every other Third Angel show, as well as films, TV shows, comics and song lyrics, amongst other things. Inevitably, this burying of clues has continued with The Distraction Agents. There are references to the original theatre show itself, as well as nods to other ideas, sources and inspirations.

Games & Puzzles
Both Third Angel artistic directors, Rachael and Alex, love games and puzzles. And, as we noted in Popcorn, both of us can be quite competitive. We use gaming mechanics in a lot of our devising processes. Warm up games are common in theatre rehearsal rooms, of course, and we’re not alone in using games for devising material – we call them things like ‘text generating prompts’ and ‘rule-based devising-exercises’. Several shows are structured around the turn-taking mechanics of game play, too, such as Story Map (2010), Inspiration Exchange (2010) and Homo Ludens (2009).

We like crosswords, logic puzzles, sudoku, the 1–5 number square thing that is next to the sudoku. With this project we wanted to create puzzles that are genuinely tricky, but funny to play and satisfying to solve. We discovered, of course, that coming up with a good puzzle is as satisfying as solving one. (Some of us were mesmerised by this solving of The Miracle Sudoku!)

Adventure Gamebooks
Alex in particular has been a fan of adventure gamebooks for almost as long as he can remember. You might know them better as the brand names Choose Your Own Adventure, or Fighting Fantasy, both massively popular in the 1980s. But the brand Alex fell in love with as a kid were Tracker books. As a kid of 5 or 6 he had three: the Pirate one, the Detective one and the Space one. 

What made the Tracker books different to the versions that followed was that they had a picture for each entry – sometimes including clues that were not mentioned in the text. What he loved was the idea that you were exploring a world, that there was no single set narrative, and he would play them repeatedly, trying to make sure he had explored every possible avenue of the narrative.

It’s been fascinating to see the renewed interest in adventure gamebooks since the appearance of Black Mirror’s Bandersnatch episode a couple of years ago, and then in the performance work being made under lockdown. The ‘choose your own path’ mechanism has cropped up in several making processes for us over the years, most notably Homo Ludens (with TiG7) in 2009, for which we made big maps of the narrative flowcharts of those three original Tracker books. And now we have finally been able to map an adventure gamebook first, and then write it, as part of this project.

Escape Rooms
Rachael in particular enjoys a good escape room or adventure trail – either in person or, more recently, played over Zoom, as has become popular during lockdown. Something that is a challenge, but that also provides you with fun, that aims to entertain you. We were interested in making something that did this using several platforms – that provides audiences with something tangible, as well as something to watch. We asked ourselves, how do we enable people to be more active viewers of film and video work?

Playing games remotely in lockdown, we enjoyed experiences where we could co-operate, work as a team. The Distraction Agents was originally designed to be played solo, but through the process of playtesting, we realised that it could be enjoyed by a household, at the same time, or in sequence, if people want to play on their own and then pass the materials on to a friend.

Play By Mail
The Distraction Agents is an experience delivered to the audience via video communications and resources sent by post. Individual audience members are recruited by The Department to go undercover in their own lives. We’ve always loved postcards, letters and puzzles sent through the post, plus mail art, zines and play-by-mail role-playing games. This idea of remote/delivered performance is something we have experimented with before (in Pleasant Land [2004] Favourite Ever Christmas Present [2010] and Cape Wrath [on Twitter in 2011] for example) and have been meaning to come back to for some time. Working with designer Bethany Wells it’s been a joy to create maps, booklets, instruction cards and various other ‘published objects’ (for want of a better description) to send out to players.

It’s worth noting, perhaps, at this mention of players, that the ‘game’ offers different levels of involvement and participation. Play-testers spent between 2–5 hours on the experience (usually about 3hours), through re-watching and replaying different aspects of the game. Some puzzles are necessary in order to complete the task of the show, but other activities are suggestions and invitations. You can play entirely at home, or out in the world; you can play over the five days that the instruction videos arrive, or save them up and play all in one go or at whatever pace suits you.

The complication the play-by-mail element gives us is that you need to book a week in advance of the week you want to play. We’re learning how this works as we go, and are initially doing a 4-week run (details here). Depending on how it goes we might extend that 4-week window or run the piece again in the autumn. Watch this space.

Short Film
We’ve always made film work, as part of the live performance pieces, and as stand-alone shorts, and we wanted to do more of that. Performance for camera has had a new lease of life during lockdown, and watching on mobile devices has affected what constitutes a ‘short’ film. 

Over the course of making the project (in collaboration with film-maker Brett Chapman), we moved from the idea of a smaller number of 10 minute films, to a larger number of much shorter pieces. We’ve also always liked the idea that short films are a genre of their own, and they don’t have to adhere to the rules of another genre (drama, fiction, documentary or performance for camera). In these days of video messaging and live streams to/from phones, this seems even more relevant.

Oral Folklore & Storytelling
We’ve long been fascinated by urban legends, but also the more verifiably true stories that get repeated about particular places: stories that make a point, and influence our opinions and behaviour. Modern day allegories and fables. All of these make appearances in The Distraction Agents, woven in to the daily puzzle / game structure.

Maps & Phoneboxes
The show also contains maps and phoneboxes.

**

We’ve probably forgotten some stuff, too, so perhaps we’ll come back and update this… If you’re playing The Distractions Agents, we would of course love to hear how your experience of it has been, and also about any Easter eggs you spot…

Back in January we did an interview with Keir Shields at Sheffield Theatres, to discuss The Department of Distractions and other Third Angel projects. The Department arrives at Theatre Royal Plymouth next week, 24 - 27 April.

Big thanks to Keir for making this. Here it is:

One of the (many) joys of making The Department of Distractions was working with composer and sound designer Heather Fenoughty, and listening each week as a thrilling soundtrack emerged into the rehearsal room.

Heather has released one of the tracks from the show as a pay-what-you-want (well, at least £1) single, with all proceeds going to charities who work with the homeless. So it’s a great cause, and a great track. Please download and pay what you can.

I’ve always wanted to write a detective story.

As a teenager I was obsessed with Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective, Sarah Paretski’s VI Warshawski books, Michael Dibdin’s Aurelio Zen series (and his other books in fact), Douglas Adam’s Dirk Gently and the 80s TV series Moonlighting.

This love of detectives and crime drama (shared at least in part by Rachael), and teenage desire to actually be a detective, has surfaced in a number of other projects. It is woven into the childhood dreams theme of Class of ’76. It surfaced in the Twitter #Clues Game – which drew on more recent TV crime drama, Agatha Christie and what we now recognise (and catalogue on Instagram) as ‘distractions’, in the street. It was addressed head on (in a more autobiographical way than I was expecting) in Playing Detective, the piece I wrote for Slung Low’s 15 Minutes Live.

With The Department of Distractions, we’re finally telling that detective story. It draws on those teenage detective obsessions, as well as more recent examples of the genre such as The Bridge and The Mysteries of Laura, and detective fiction by Kate Atkinson and Donna Leon amongst others.

But when Paula and the team originally asked me to write a detective story for them, it was Moonlighting I went back to as a format model. Re-watching it a couple of years ago it was fascinating to be reminded just how innovative a show it was in many ways (they did Atomic Shakespeare, Big Man On Mulberry Street and The Straight Poop in the same season), whilst occasionally feeling incredibly dated. But I enjoyed its knowingness in relation to form and genre, and the fun it had in breaking with expectations and realism. I enjoyed the double act of the two detectives. And of course I enjoyed how, like the best detective fiction, it uses the act of investigation to explore other issues and themes.

The cast of The Great Book Of Tiny Details (as that first, Brazilian, version was called), asked me for four possible plots for a detective story, with the intention that they would choose their preferred one. I gave them one story with four possible endings. This story sat alongside the text about The Department, which in turn contained several other stories nested within it. The two main stories connected in a couple of ways, but this was not made explicit – a bit like the connections between stories in David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten.

With The Department of Distractions, our aim has been to integrate the two stories much more closely. Now the detective story – The Case of the Missing Traffic and Travel Announcer – is one of the stories that The Department tells. Working with Rachael as co-director, and Stacey Sampson as dramaturg, I returned to the timeline of the detective story only to spot a couple of plot holes. Tightening these up has meant knock-on effects days/pages later. It’s been really rewarding getting to grips with the intricacies of the plot – and understanding what the story is about better because of it. Often writing this show I have had the sensation of realising that something has happened, or is going on, rather than inventing it.

We’ve been putting the whole show together in residency at Northern Stage this week. I’m really enjoying seeing the characters and their work environment come to life. What I’m particularly looking forward to is finding out how audiences make sense of the plot. If we’ve got the balance of mystery and explanation and revelation right. If they pick up on the clues and piece them together.

**

Photos are of Umar Butt, Nick Chambers, Stacey Sampson and Rachael Walton in The Department’s office (in progress), designed by Bethany Wells, in rehearsal at Northern Stage, January 2018.

Some shows arrive as a really clear idea and we just set out to make them. They might change along the way, but we know from the moment the idea pops up that they are next on the agenda. Presumption came into Rachael’s mind during a budget meeting for something else. What I Heard About the World emerged during a let’s-make-a-show-together meeting that Jorge and I had in his flat in Lisbon.

Other shows emerge from one or more smaller starting points, and it feels more like we gradually realise that they are the next project. Recently 600 People and Partus have both done this – one-off commissions that grew into full-length touring shows. It’s a similar story with The Department of Distractions.

I think we first identified The Department in 2013 when we were making The Life & Loves of a Nobody. A clandestine organisation whose job it is to plant the seeds of stories out in the world, and in the media. Stories that might grab your attention for a few moments on the way in to work, or might be the subject of much discussion and speculation in the pub and on social media for a crucial day or two. Or stories that might take over the news cycle for a week or more.

In the end The Department didn’t figure in Life & Loves, though looking back, they could easily have been responsible for the TV programme that frames that show. And I kept thinking about them.

**

In 2014 I was invited by my friend and collaborator Paula Diogo (we made Off The White and Learning To Swim together) to be part of a Portuguese/Brazillian project, that was originally intended to take its inspiration from The Curious Incident in the Dog in the Night Time. My role would be to ‘write in to a devising process’. As the project moved away from Curious Incident specifically, Paula and I had a conversation in which she said (something like) “I want it to be about looking at the world differently, about seeing different details.” So I told her about The Department of Distractions, and wondered if it might be worth exploring further.

**

The project became O Grande Livro dos Pequenos Detalhes (The Great Book of Tiny Details) to open at Oi Futuro in Rio de Janeiro in May 2015. Earlier that year I was lucky enough to join the team in Rio writing for and with the four great deviser-performers, Paula, Michel Blois, Cláudia Gaiolas and Thiare Maia Amaral. I would write in the morning, in English. Paula and Cláudia would read it out, then make a really fast translation into Portuguese, and the four of the them would work with it then give me feedback (in English) and I would re-work the existing text, or write new stuff.

I found myself writing two texts that were related, but could also stand alone: one about the Brazillian office of The Department, the other a Detective story, partly inspired by my teenage love of the TV show Moonlighting (more about that next time).

The more we explored The Department, the more I felt like I didn’t trust their motives. The problem that I found I had was that as individuals, I really liked them, but I was less convinced that I liked what they were doing.

**

As an aside, it was a really interesting experience for me, just contributing the text to a devising process. I felt that I was genuinely offering the text for discussion, cutting up, reworking. But of course whenever they cut anything, I’d be feeling, “What’s wrong with that bit!?”

**

As the two texts became finalised, and translated into Portuguese by Joana Frazão and Alex Cassal, the team decided what order they would present the different texts. The two pieces were written with the idea that whilst the four parts of each text needed to be presented in the right order, the show could present either story first, or alternate between the two.

Due to scheduling issues, I was never able to go back to see the show in Rio or in Lisbon in 2016. But I saw photos and talked to Paula a lot about how they staged it, what they cut, and what order they ran it all in.

**

In O Grande Livro, the employees get a fax (!) from “the pissing England Office”, and the employees talk a couple of times about some of the work the England Office have done. Back at Third Angel HQ, we began to wonder about a parallel show - a UK version, about one of the England offices.

As we spent some time developing this idea in 2016, it occurred to us that we had been tracking the work of The Department for years. Several of our enduring interests were arguably their work: urban legends, conspiracy theories, telephone boxes, empty benches, the true stories that we choose to tell (and retell) about our lives and other people and other places, clues left in the street or buried in maps or letters pages or puzzles, the small details that can have a large impact…

We started documenting their work when we saw it, and cataloguing it here: #TheDepartmentOfDistractions.

**

January 2018. The Department of Distractions opens in co-production with Northern Stage next month (2nd Feb in fact – tickets here!). It turns out we’re making something in between an English remake and a companion piece. A couple of the characters are the same as in O Grande Livro, with the same names, and a couple are British equivalents with new nomenclature. It’s very clearly one show now, with the detective story woven into the story of The Department (again, more on that in the next post).

And it is just so thrilling to me to see and hear these characters, appearing in the rehearsal room / their workplace. I’m feeling incredibly lucky to have such a brilliant team. Joining co-director Rachael on stage are Stacey Sampson (who made Partus and The Desire Paths with us and appeared in The Paradise Project in Edinburgh), Nick Chambers (who worked on The Lad Lit Project and made The Life & Loves of a Nobody), and Umar Butt (who we saw in Tamasha’s My Name Is… in 2015 and have been keen to work with since). We’re delighted that we’re also joined by much of the Partus team: Heather Fenoughty (music and sound design), Bethany Wells (stage design) and Katharine Williams (lighting design). We’re making the show in the new Theatre Deli in Sheffield, at the moment, then we move to Northern Stage. More updates to come.