In any production, the director is a key figure, setting out the vision for a play, and working with the actors and creative team to unlock the text in order to release it from page to stage. In
Beasts and Beauties,
director and designer Melly Still has an even more central role than is usual because she combined the roles of director, set and costume designer, and scriptwriter. As she explains, when
planning the design, her different roles were inseparable. She created a setting and a wardrobe to provide a platform on which her conception of each story could be displayed. In
the auditions, she selected a company by seeing many actors in order to find the eight she believed were flexible and versatile enough to cope with the varied demands of telling eight separate stories and playing multiple characters, including animals and ghosts!
During the
early rehearsals for 'The Juniper Tree', she leads the cast from a read-through to rehearsal of the gruesome scene in which Elaine Claxton as the stepmother chops off the head of her stepson, played by actor Kelly Williams. The trio found a solution to the necessary illusion by using a highly realistic
wax head. In another rehearsal, this time for
'Toby and the Wolf', Melly encourages Elliot Levey, as the Wolf, to find a plausible way to lure the farm dog Toby, played by actor Howard Coggins, into conspiring with him, and against his better judgement, to outwit the farmer. Melly works with the actors to create
the fight scene, which is carefully choreographed to give the appearance of spontaneity and anarchy and yet is tightly disciplined. She also
directs musician Terje Isungset, who can be seen practising with the actors to telling effect.