Right at the start of the process of developing our debut show, we decided as a company that we wanted to write our own scripted comedy that would be set in a previous decade – which, after much discussion, we eventually decided would be the 90’s since a lot of the events that happened in that decade are still affecting or have strong correlations with events that are happening now. 

Since we had decided to write an almost “sitcom-style” comedy, and such style revolves around interesting characters being thrown into interesting situations, our first few company rehearsal sessions were all about the actors thinking of characters and situations that might be of use to the writing team. We each took part in a hot-seating exercise where we formed the bare bones of our characters (in particular their name and relationships to other characters) and were then paired off by the director and given a situation to improvise a scene with each other in order to see which characters ‘gelled’ well together (at least in their current fairly stereotypical and basic forms) and work out what potential plots could arise between them.

These improvised scenes helped to unlock the potential of our chosen characters since they were kept very simple – a pair waiting for a job interview, two people meeting after being arrested, someone losing their keys and asking a stranger to help them to find them, etc. – which allowed the focus to be placed on the characters we had each individually created and the possible relationships that could be formed between them; something that could help inform the general plot of the show and also our characterisation going forward.