The second in a series of short blogposts (here’s the first!) about my ‘Developing Your Creative Practice’ Arts Council project last year. Composer Laura Bowler joined me and the actors for a day of hawk observation in Kent, followed by some rehearsal workshops, which we held as close to the observation site as possible so that the birds could be fresh in the actors’ minds. Working with animals is how we prompt the actors’ imaginations. Laura speaks below about encountering this early stage of the observation and workshopping process for the first time.

When we had first carried out initial workshops we had added recorded music, but we wanted to try working with a composer who could approach the work in the same way as us. Laura had to see if she could develop music from the hawk observation in the same way that the actors developed animal/humans.