Dramatic Methods: Multi-roling, Mime and Storytelling
The Challenge: One World, Eight Actors
Laura Eason’s stage adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel asks a small ensemble to create an entire planet. Fogg’s journey crosses three continents, dozens of locations, and involves dozens of incidental characters — customs officials, ship’s captains, train conductors, Yokohama acrobats and one very large elephant. With a cast of typically eight, every performer must be skilled in multi-roling: stepping out of a minor part, shedding an accent or a hat, and stepping instantly into another. The play’s pleasure lies in watching this transformation happen live, in front of the audience, with no apology and no disguise.
Understanding these dramatic methods is essential for exam-style questions. A strong answer recognises why Eason chose this form, not just that the cast is small. The form makes the world feel vast and the journey feel kinetic — qualities a naturalistic production with a large cast and scene-changes could never achieve.
Eason’s adaptation uses multi-roling, mime, direct address narration, object transformation and ensemble physical theatre as its core dramatic methods. Together they let eight actors tell a story that spans the globe.
Narration and Direct Address
One of the production’s most important tools is direct address. Company members step forward to narrate transitions between scenes, update the audience on the days remaining, or comment on Fogg’s progress. This has two effects: it keeps the racing pace alive (no long scene-change during which energy drains away), and it recruits the audience as fellow travellers tracking the wager in real time.
Narration here is not passive. A performer narrating a train journey is also simultaneously performing it — their voice creates the soundscape while their body mimes the carriage, so the boundaries between “telling” and “showing” dissolve. This is ensemble storytelling at its most efficient. The technique owes a debt to practitioners such as Complicite, whose work since the 1980s has made the narrator—performer a central figure in physical theatre.
A common student error is to treat Eason’s ensemble form as a practical limitation — “there aren’t enough actors for a big cast.” This misses the point entirely. Eason chose this form deliberately because the experience of watching actors transform — from a train conductor to an elephant’s front legs to a Reform Club gentleman — creates theatrical energy that a naturalistic production cannot. The rapid role-switching mirrors the dizzying speed of Fogg’s journey. A strong answer understands that the form is the meaning.
Mime and Physical Theatre
Mime is the engine of the production’s scene-setting. Where a naturalistic production would build a set, this company uses bodies. In the journey through India on elephant-back, the ensemble arranges itself to suggest the rhythm and sway of a large animal — one or two performers may form the front legs, others the haunches, while Fogg and Passepartout “ride” on top. The physical precision demanded of the company is equivalent to that of a dance piece.
Similarly, the crossing of the snowy American plains by train sees the ensemble arranged in rows of chairs, collectively swaying as the “carriage” accelerates. A performer at the front enacts the engine’s motion. The audience reads these configurations instantly. The vocabulary draws on the physical theatre tradition associated with Frantic Assembly and Complicite: the body is a flexible instrument capable of representing any object or environment with the right training and ensemble trust.
In this play, mime is not a fallback for missing props — it is the primary visual language. The audience’s imagination is recruited as a co-creator: they read a row of sway-and-jostle bodies as a train because the physical rhythm is unmistakably right.
Object Transformation
Object transformation is the third pillar of this production’s method. Chairs become railway carriages or the pews of a Reform Club; a length of rope becomes the rigging of a ship; a cane becomes a walking stick and then a conductor’s baton and then a rifle. The audience learns to interpret these transformations rapidly, partly because the physical use of the object teaches them what it “is” at any given moment.
This technique demands that performers commit fully. A chair is only a railway carriage if the performer sitting in it behaves exactly as they would in a moving train. The physical life — the sway, the grip on an imaginary armrest, the gaze out of an invisible window — persuades the audience. Break the physical logic and the fiction collapses. This requirement for total physical commitment is a core principle of physical theatre.
As a performer playing one of the ensemble in the elephant sequence, you might hold a low-to-the-ground posture, knees slightly bent, arms loose at the sides to suggest bulk. Your rhythm would synchronise with the other “legs” of the elephant — a slow, deliberate, four-count sway. Vocally, you would be silent: the physical work carries the scene. Your proxemics to the other ensemble members are tight — within touching distance — to suggest you are one creature rather than separate performers.
As a lighting designer, you might use a warm amber lighting special from a high angle to suggest the heat of the Indian sun. A gobo projecting dappled leaf-shadow patterns could suggest jungle canopy without a single physical piece of set. The warm wash would contrast with the cooler, greyer light used in London, immediately orientating the audience in a different part of the world.
Fast Costume Changes and Comic Timing
Multi-roling also demands a distinctive costume strategy. The production typically uses a base layer for each performer — a neutral Victorian suit or simple rehearsal costume — onto which accessories are layered rapidly: a hat, a badge, an accent, a way of walking. The base layer plus accessories system means a change from Reform Club gentleman to Indian customs official takes seconds rather than minutes.
Alongside this runs one of the production’s most important performance demands: comic timing. The play’s humour depends on the contrast between Fogg’s absolute stillness — his refusal to be rattled by any obstacle — and Passepartout’s physical and emotional expressiveness. Fogg’s stillness is the comic engine: it sets up a straight line against which Passepartout’s energy lands. A strong answer understands that Fogg’s restraint is as much a performance choice as Passepartout’s flamboyance.