Music has a big part to play in the creation of a new show. I like to create a playlist of music as soon as an idea is born. This can be very different types of music that might capture something of what I am looking for but might not be an explicit suggestion to be included in the final show. It provides a palette that reflects moods, ideas for moments, characters, emotional responses, anything for provocation. I might include a particular track purely based on an instinct that it has something to offer even if I cannot quite articulate what that is yet.

This is a standard starting position for a project regardless of whether I am working with existing music or with a composer. The playlist operates as a shorthand for the whole creative team. We can talk about our response to a song in detail without ever suggesting that the song itself is to be used literally. The conversation might suggest a moment on stage might feel like a particular song or a scene might be structured like a particular piece of music.

When it comes to choosing particular tracks to be included in the production, it usually comes quite late, regardless of whether that is existing music or tracks created by a composer. I like to have that music early, though. Having that big bank of music is useful as I will try different tracks and tracks in different places until I am sure it has settled.

There is a temptation to find your favourite track and create the work around this. This can work very well but I am wary of over committing to this. It can be really illuminating and inspiring to let the music and the movement find each other. A relationship forms as they are played against each other. Even changing the music, you think works best can reinvent the movement in ways that you had not imagined beforehand. (This is more complicated and problematic if you are working with counts, however!)

On Metamorphosis, composer Stefan Janik named each of his tracks in relation to where he thought they would sit in the show. It must have been very frustrating for him, but I refused to be tied by those titles and played them all over the place to find where they could surprise, challenge and support the scenes. His instinct was spot on at times, but I felt it was important to explore the ‘what if’ relationship between scenes and music. This meant that the soundtrack only settled in the last few days of rehearsal.

Director, Movement Director, and Performer Jonnie Riordan offers this from his experience performing in The Unreturning and The Canticles for Frantic Assembly.

‘For artists and students devising your own work there isn’t just one way to approach this. I always love to create a playlist of music ahead of rehearsals, a selection of tracks that feels like it contains the atmosphere of the show you’re looking to create, some of these tracks find their way into the shows, others perhaps are used in the rehearsal room to steer the energy of the actors towards a particular feeling. Music played a huge part in the development of the play ‘The Unreturning’ by Anna Jordan. Director Neil Bettles and Anna were building a playlist as a way of communicating the atmosphere of the show they both hoped to create together. So, in making some broad music choices earlier in a process, it’s an extra tool in enabling collaboration.

Ideas are sparked from so many different sources, sometimes a piece of music could be the origin of a devising process, so in that sense we might find ourselves drawn to a track quite early on, perhaps the structure of a song informs the structure of a creative task. Maybe the question: when do you settle on a track is useful here too. It’s always healthy to leave yourself space to change your mind. Perhaps you use a piece of music to create the energy of the performance for the actors, and later in rehearsals score it with the track that is there to support the audience’s experience. I’ll never forgetting spending a few weeks performing Frantic Assembly choreography to a Kylie Minogue track knowing that we were destined to perform to a much slower, classical number by Benjamin Britten, but in our heads, we were always trying to match the spirit of the pop track we had devised to.’