Project history
In July 1998 the Lab invited Deborah Bruce to lead a weekend of work for actors on a topic of her choice. The result was a workshop about creating character and story-collage from personal objects. Over this initial stage the work began to focus thematically on imagined and contrived personal histories as the actors swapped and re-invented the stories inspired by the grab-bag of stimuli they had collected.
To meet demand and interest from both Deborah and the company, this was followed up over four consecutive weekends in September 1998 with a series entitled: "Portraits of People Who Never Existed".
Over this month, we were forced to make a virtue of the fact that we could not afford conventional rehearsal spaces, and instead spread the eight days of work between six different venues including Trinity Buoy Wharf, Wilton's Music Hall, a school, and a disused office. The emphasis on creative stimuli thus began to shift to include location, the company naturally drew on the environments in which they were working. Moreover, because the actors were invited to attend as they were able over these weeks, the fluctuations within the make-up of the company became part of the emerging theme concerning lost or inherited personal histories.
These pressures combined to create a style within the work: volatile or fragile histories played out within spaces that dictated or conversely undercut the stories told.
We had now reached a stage which warranted the inclusion of a writer. At this point, Clare Bayley was invited to join. A week of intensive script devising followed in December entitled:
Working in a disused warehouse space near Brick Lane, Shoreditch, this stage was focused on the connection our generation has with our grandparents: the idea of a spirit or a genetic programme affecting future generations. The material gathered so far formed the basis of seven days' devising and collating characters, stories and styles of presentation. At the end of this week Deborah and Clare began to work towards building a loose structure around which they could begin to arrange the daunting mass of material collected.
Finally, in a week of dedicated script development with a company of ten actors, Deborah and Clare were able to experiment with this story line and the community of characters drawn from the actors' earlier improvisation. This week took place in Hammerton Hall, something like an old Victorian school complex in Stockwell, specifically chosen for its suitability to the piece as it was forming. This culminated in two very well-received informal showings to an invited audience, all fifty of whom left armed with feedback sheets.
The strength of this company's 
creative lineage, supported by the response from an objective, if hand-picked audience, galvanised the Lab into seeing this project through to production. We now had a library of ideas shaped by Clare, and a company for whom it has been specifically written. Furthermore, a company with a close relationship with the writer, director and the material.
This is the first time the work of the Lab extended into public production and became a very exciting new stage in the Lab's history.