As part of our London Season series, we asked one of our 2025 graduating Three Year Course actors to take us inside the studio as they explored their first external Research & Development project with director Nadia Papachronopoulou. The project is still under wraps and not publicly announced. We can say that the third-year actors were working on developing ideas for a show that will be produced at a highly respected regional producing theatre.
Graduating actor Abigail Berry kept a journal of her time in the rehearsal room with Nadia. You can read about what they got up to, and her reflections on the work, below.
R&D Diary: Nadia Papachronopoulou
By Abigail Berry
Preparation
For this week, the only prep we had to do was read the play that Nadia is in the process of developing. The production is being developed with one of the most well-respected producing theatres in the country – a very exciting prospect!
The play is inspired by a pair of murders, with themes of revenge, obsession, desire, lust, sacrifice, and class.
Of course, the unsaid prep work was making sure we knew who was running the R&D, Nadia Papachronopoulou. A theatre director who has worked with theatres such as the Royal & Derngate, Royal Lyceum, Regents Park Open Air, Kiln, Old Vic, and on the West End and with the BBC.
Day 1
I started the day with a coffee and a pastry before heading into the rehearsal studios where we’ve been based during our time in London – Scrum Studios.
It’s wonderful to be based in a professional studio space with other artists working around us. Moving into this space from the quiet immersion of OSD’s home in Woodstock has been great.
We started the day by naming ourselves A and B in pairs. Our first discussion was about ‘obsessions,’ they could be ones you currently have or ones from when you were young, and what you would give up to indulge in them.
We then did a sort of ‘speed dating’ round, in which person A moved around, and person B stayed where they were.
Moving on, we repeated this exercise with the prompt “What is fame?”, talking about what fame means to you, but we were asked to steer clear of the negative aspects of fame.
The next topic was the negatives of fame, bringing up things like not being able to go out in public, stalkers, cancel culture, having to have a public persona that fits what people expect you to have, and being put in a box.
Moving on from this, the next speed dating discussion was about the play itself. We talked about the elitist themes and ideas gathered from reading the script in our preparation work.
For the final speed dating discussion, we discussed the themes of class within the play, talking about public and private personas, what’s expected of the classes, and how it seems like the grass could be greener on the other side.
The read-through
We then moved on to a read-through of the play. This was an on-its-feet read-through with people swapping in and out for the roles, very active and instinctive. Followed by a short group discussion, bringing up the ideas of obsession within the play, how it manifests, and how the whole play is in a heightened state with high stakes. We felt there was no opportunity for the audience to reflect during the play, that the pace of action kept everyone in a state of ‘in the moment’ reaction rather than reflection.
Group work
Nadia explained that the main focus of this week’s research will be on how cameras and live projections could be incorporated into the piece.
After the read-through, we were split into three groups, each looking at a section of the play to see how the camera can highlight fame and obsession.
My group was looking at a section from the start of the play. We explored a mockumentary style to-camera delivery to highlight how the characters step into a role-play scenario, playing with different statuses and classes to their own.
This method started to feel a bit too much like ‘The Office’, but it did bring about a lightness that contrasted well with the end of the piece. No spoilers!
At the end of this afternoon of exploration, we all came together to watch each other’s films. Amongst the many discoveries, we found that live projections blurred the lines of reality and play for the characters, which made for an interesting insight for the actors in those roles.
Day 2
We started day two by discussing desire and lust within the play and how they are represented. We then explored the idea of truth and what’s true and what’s a lie within the text. Is role-playing a lie or a performed truth? We were also prompted with a question as artists, when playing a character that’s done something “bad”, is it easier/better to find a reason that they’d do that? Does nature vs. nurture play a role in understanding a character?
Speaking for myself, I find that it’s easier to inhabit a “bad” character when I have a reason for the behaviour. In my experience of life, I can’t comprehend the idea of killing without remorse or emotion. Therefore, I find it safer to inhabit a character like this with a justification or understanding of why they do it, even if I have to create circumstances for them to be able to do this.
This also falls into the bracket of being able to be safe while within a character, finding a way to experience difficult emotions or physically demanding scenarios while protecting your psychological well-being as an artist outside of the character.
We have explored this idea of safety in our training at OSD. A good example from a previous movement class is that if you had to act out a torture scene of some kind, instead of going through the imagined physical and emotional pain of that, you could pretend that you are a piece of bacon in a pan. This visualisation and mindset help keep the actor safe by avoiding going to that place of torture across several performances.
Pair Work
We split off into pairs and decided on the background of the central characters, asking questions like:
- What happened in their childhood?
- What is the learnt behaviour, where does it stem from?
- What is plausible and acceptable without being too melodramatic?
- Do they have a history of competition between them?
We then picked a section of the script to explore. My partner and I chose the opening section of the play to examine how obsession feeds desire, and how the camera could help in highlighting this narrative. We found the camera highlighted specific small details, like hands touching, leading the audience to consider what is going unsaid by bringing them into these intimate, unspoken moments.
Day 3
Day three centred around exploring how projected live action (in this case, a social media live stream) can play alongside action on stage to heighten a specific plot point and bring the audience inside the unseen moments that are not explicit in the script.
We went away in three groups and developed our sequences based on different pivotal moments in the script. This was great as we used the projector and camera equipment to experiment with multimedia storytelling.
We decided that the action had to be balanced so that neither the stage nor the projected camera work was overpowering and demanding more attention from the audience. Through trial and error, we found that the sequences had to be highly planned and choreographed so that there was a perception of chaos rather than allowing ourselves to fall completely into that feeling.
At the end of the day we all decided to continue developing our chosen moments and present them at the end of the week. The presentation would flow between the camera moments with a stood up read through of the scenes between each moment.
Day 4
We cracked on today, getting in to our small groups to continue developing our sections of the script. We worked in a carousel of being in the room with Nadia, working on the staged elements, then working on the camera elements.
Once everyone had done one round of the carousel we came together to watch each section. Taking a few moments at the end of this sharing, we came back together to do a quick feedback looking at what they could practically improve for tomorrow, what worked and what needs a little more work.
Day 5
Our final day working with Nadia. We got into our groups, visited the feedback from day 4, and rehearsed, ready for the sharing in the afternoon. My partner and I mined the text more and detailed the camera work. We got in a few runs, but not enough to dry the section out.
The sharing went really well; it flowed from one to the next with precision, allowing for set up time and a relaxed atmosphere that let us all feel safe to mess up a little if it happened.
After the sharing, we all took time to reflect on what we watched and were part of. Watching everyone’s work was so lovely and inspiring; it was so good to watch different creative takes and ideas come to life. It was a really fun experience to be a part of.
Reflections from the week:
- It has been SUCH a refresher in how I look at my work and my ambitions for the future. It was such a relaxed way of working, creating bold work and experimenting. It was crazy to try and fail with a director who LIKES conflict and finds inspiration in contradicting opinions.
- Amazing to work towards a project in terms of experimentation, storytelling and questions instead of working towards the ‘perfect performance’. A beautiful approach to acting as ‘creating’ and ‘artistry’, which you can lose a little in your final year of training, as there are so many productions to focus on!
- It has been so lovely to step into something with no expectations and just throw myself into whatever the day is asking of me. It’s put a bit more fuel on the fire of my creativity, reminding me of the arts as a whole and refreshing my love for other aspects, too, such as directing and cinematography. Again, there is so much focus on with industry, agents, and performances in the final year of training (naturally so) that having the time and space to play and experiment again is so joyful and refreshing.
