Logo by Russ Hodgson © Spanner in the Works 2008
Welcome to Riverscross
Darren Rapier on an innovative drama project built around the development of a new soap
Ten years ago my company Spanner in the Works started running drama workshops at a new adolescent psychiatric unit in London. Our instinct at first was to work towards some sort of presentation but we quickly found that the nature of the unit was such that this wasn’t possible. Patients could be very different in mood from one session to the next, the clientele themselves changed frequently and having any sort of dramatic through-line was very difficult.
Our workshops have become stand-alone sessions, concluding on the day and re-starting the next week. We run drama games, moving into improvisations which are sometimes presented to the rest of the group. The sessions have been very successful and alongside them we have occasionally run residencies, where we have come in for a full week and made films or audio productions.
In 2008, however, we had an offer of additional funding from Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Charity and were encouraged to conceive a long term drama project to complement but not be attached to the work we were already doing. It needed to be something that could bridge the ever changing nature of the unit and include longer and shorter term patients, be passed on to new patients and help them develop useful life and career skills. We thought about what that might be and looked to the world of professional drama.
Both Tony Coult and I (who currently run the sessions) write and so wanted a project that would involve use of our own skills as well as something that used visiting tutors. One of the students (patients on the unit) had mentioned that it would be fun to write a soap opera, and this started us thinking that perhaps this was the project that would allow us to do just that, but on a much bigger scale than we could have normally managed. After a few meetings with the education and occupational therapy staff we had a plan: we would create a new soap opera from scratch, write it, produce it, film it and present the results at a London cinema for all the creators to see. That way the students would get the full benefit of seeing the project through, having a broadcast quality finished product they could be proud of and bypass any problems with minors/ patients being in front of a camera.
Freedom to create
The more we thought about the project the more excited we all became. The freedom to create a continuing drama without the constraints of institutionalised script readers, scripts editors and producers is surely a dream for any writer. We had the chance to be the creative directors, steering genuinely fresh ideas and voices towards a working soap. But part of the attraction of the soap model was also its constraints. In consultation with our students we could specify at an early stage in what slot it would ideally be broadcast and for whom. By establishing this we could then use industry guidelines to keep the content under control without being too heavy handed – subject matter and appropriateness of stories can otherwise be a problem with any teenage group, and even more so with psychiatric patients.
Tony and I decided that all we would impose would be the setting, to act as a hook from which our stories could start to hang. We hit upon the idea of an international train station and Riverscross International was born. The setting meant that we could explore stories anywhere in or around the station, as well as from characters travelling from pretty much anywhere in the world. As the unit was near London Bridge it would also give us the chance to take the students out on research trips. We were clear very early on that we did not want to restrict the stories to contemporary realism; the station would mean we could have fantasy stories, historical stories, all manner of styles and content.
We started in October 2008 on phase one of a three phase pilot process, breaking the project down into the creation of the series bible, creating storylines and then creating a trailer for the series based on the scripts generated. Since then we have been at the unit twice weekly, on top of our regular drama sessions. Sometimes these have overlapped – working on created characters in drama – and sometimes not.
Our first task was to create the ‘bible’ – an industry term we decided to ditch because of the connotations of the word and its association to some of the patients. We decided to called it the SID (Series Information Document) and this has held all the information created as the process has gone on, including parameters of the series, maps, character biogs, photographs, descriptions of the local area, history etc. As a practical exercise in creating such a document it was extremely engaging and very useful, but it also acts as an invaluable insight to anyone coming onto the project at a later date.
Research phase
During phase one we researched local history, took photographs of the local area and thought about who lived in and around such stations and who worked there. We then created our own history and street names and decided where in London to set Riverscross – it was decided to build it right on Deptford Creek, opposite Canary Wharf (a location we have since decided is much better than where Eurostar ended up at St. Pancras). We then brought in Russ Hodgson, a graphic artist, to work with the students on a logo for the station, a logo for the show and a map for both the station and the ‘precinct’ as a whole around and about it.
Again there were no restrictions on budget, as there would be with a regular soap, as we would not actually be making the precinct set. For our episode we would be using locations from our recce, so we could be as big as we liked with the physical world of our story, within reason.
With the characters taking shape and the map and logos done we brought in a professional musician, Ed Thomas, to work on a theme tune. Again students could be fully involved in the creation, while about aspects of composing and appreciating what needs to be considered when working on a specific music brief. They were even able to contribute their own voices to the finished result, with one of our French speaking students doing station announcements in French to complement an English “Welcome to Riverscross International”.
Musican Ed Thomas (left) leading a Riverscross workshop while Darren takes notes (Photo: Tony Coult)
Characters
Meanwhile we were working on creating characters. Using photographs, storytelling and drama techniques the list was growing rapidly and the SID expanding. Some fantastic creations have included Johan a Swiss watch seller, who travels to London on a regular basis to sell his watches to the trade, but who also supplies fake watches to an unscrupulous dealer on the station; Red Redford, an inept and stressed station manager who had cut a deal with a bent copper to smuggle drugs in on the European trains; Olu, who works as a station cleaner but is actually a trained doctor, desperate to keep his true identity hidden as he is a failed asylum seeker and Sister Mary Cecelia, a recently ordained nun who has returned to tell her sister (Sarah, or Mr. Boss as her co-workers call her), who in turn is totally unimpressed with her new habit.
With these elements in place we moved onto phase two of the project after Christmas. There was still the opportunity to add to what we had, if students wanted, but now they could start to explore their world; putting them into the Riverscross landscape. For this phase we hired in some actors to flesh out the characters and try them out in situations. Sometimes they worked with each other and sometimes with the students. But it was the students who called the shots. Actors tried out different characters for them and were ‘interviewed’ in character and as actors. The students were certainly impressed and delighted to see their characters coming to life before their eyes. It is probably important to stress at this point how we always draw a distinction between reality and fiction and hopefully by meeting the actors at these sessions students (who after all are still patients) can really start to appreciate this.
In this phase we were lucky enough to have the services of Enrico Tessarin and Bruce Webb. Enrico is the producer of Sofia’s Diary, the soap opera that ran online on Bebo, who had a lot of kudos with the students since they were all avid viewers. Bruce, a TV and film director has worked on Hollyoaks and was able to give a masterclass in directing a long running soap. Our students then acted and filmed parts of their own work. At the end of this phase we had created several storylines and worked out how our character’s stories interweaved and how they moved in and around the station. Our task now is to take the best of these and make them into a series trailer. Once this is written it will be filmed and edited professionally, with professional actors, although again the students will be fully engaged at every stage. If the funding for the rest of the project is successful we will then move to writing, casting and filming further episodes and developing the series further.
TV director Bruce Webb gives a masterclass to Riverscross students
(Photo: Tony Coult)
The beauty of the Rivercross project is its flexibility, something it needs in order to run successfully in the environment in which we are working. Students can work at their own level, either as a group, in small groups or individually. We have often switched the way we are working to achieve our aim; making it more or less academic, more or less practical, or more or less drama/TV specific. The multi-disciplined nature of continuing drama also means there is always another angle or another avenue to pursue if any student or students are finding it difficult or uninteresting.
Impact
Anecdotal evidence on the project’s impact has also been very encouraging. Students have been inspired by certain characters, facts or stories. They have identified with certain situations or characters and enjoyed building on what other have started to create. The ever changing makeup of the unit has been the project’s strength rather than its weakness. Students have also responded to our selection of excellent visitors, who have given them an insight into the professional world of their discipline and offered advice and encouragement.
Students who rarely contribute have sometimes found a voice in these sessions, where suddenly there is a spark of interest or knowledge they feel compelled to share and that, for me, is where the project’s true success has been.
The icing on the cake will be the screening. In the summer we will be inviting everyone who has taken part in the project over the last year to a London cinema. Here they will be treated to hors-d’oeuvres and then taken into the screening room for a presentation (which the current students will be running), followed by a screening of the trailer of their very own soap opera. They will be able to see their own characters and plots brought to life, 70 feet across and 40 feet high, followed by a Q&A with the actors, directors, producers, composers, designers and writers they have worked with – and the students, who are now taking it forward.
Everyone involved in the project – students, staff, visitors and even us – has been truly surprised by how successful it has been. We are already looking at ways in which we can stretch out further with the project, supporting and enhancing what has been achieved by students we have worked with; looking at ways of running the project in other environments and seeing if we can get it up and running as an actual continuing drama in some form. All this is merely at an ideas stage at the moment, but then less than 12 months ago, so was Riverscross. You can keep up to date with the Riverscross project at spannerintheworks.org.uk
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