Other reviews

And here are two more reviews of mine from plays in Cambridge:

The Lover / Ashes to Ashes   http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/3822

The Real Thing   http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/3906

Review of Celebration

Here’s my review of a production of Celebration I saw in Cambridge earlier this week:

http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/4071

 

Scrooge and Marley

Following swiftly after Little Angels, the next production I am involved in is Scrooge and Marley – a clever and raucous two-man adaptation of A Christmas Carol. It is to be performed in Cambridge by James Swanton and George Potts.  James is a fellow Yorkie and has asked me to be one of the associate directors for the piece. This basically means that I help out with a third of the rehearsals and come up with ideas for some of the staging including lighting. I had a good meeting with him in which he talked about the story and his thoughts behind the piece. He has already performed a one-man Dickens show in Cambridge, which was very good but more pared down – this demands a few more visual tricks and set pieces.

This ‘associate’ post is similar in some ways to being an assistant director: James already has developed in his mind how he wants the play to be staged, requiring me to watch rehearsals and suggest improvements and alterations. But it is also a bit more creative than the usual assisting post, and carries more responsibility.

And I also have a small acting part in another Cambridge show the week before Scrooge and Marley.  It has been about two and a half years since I last acted so I was keen to see how naturally it would come back to me. I haven’t especially missed acting but I like to keep challenging myself – so I’m looking forward to taking the part on.

Little Angels reviews

Here are two reviews of the play I assistant directed:

http://www.backstagepass.biz/2011/09/review-little-angels-york-theatre-royal.html

http://www.yorkpress.co.uk/leisure/theatre/9254224.Review__Little_Angels__York_Theatre_Royal_Studio_until_September_17/

Little Angels – first runthrough

The cast had their first proper runthrough of the play last night, and I’m glad to report that all is well with the production. It still needs tweaking and refining – but it is pleasing to see it in good shape. It was also interesting to see the production’s flow from scene to scene – it’s pacing and dramaturgical tensions (good sort of tensions) for the first time. The music sits right too for the scene transitions, and the odd prop that doesn’t quite feel right has been noted.

As the assistant director I’ve been making the odd note myself during runthroughs, and will relay these queries, suggestions and points to the cast or director as appropriate when we look back over the play again.

The cast will rehearse a little more to hone the piece further, and then it will be time for the technical rehearsals and dress rehearsal – which is when we move into the performance space and all the performance elements come together. Everyone’s excited about the forthcoming production week, to realise the performance completely. Get your tickets now!

Little Angels @York Theatre Royal

14th – 17th September ’11

7.45pm

Little Angels rehearsals continued

The cast and company had respite from my interruptions from the sidelines for a week – I was on holiday. Not before I had guided the actor playing Michael through his third and final monologue though. This time the director Julian worked on another scene whilst we looked over the monologue in another room. We made quite quick progress really – it was in the same style as the other two, so we immediately understood the tone of the piece. There were a few tweaks and changes Julian made when we showed it back to him – some subjective, others common sense corrections. But all in all, I was pleased that it didn’t have to be re-directed –  the groundwork was to his liking and in keeping with the rest of the play.

Upon my return from holiday the scene transitions had been more or less set, and the first half had been stumbled through. But unfortunately, several cast members were ill and there was a generally languid atmosphere in the rehearsal room as we looked over the second half. The actors have been working very hard and there’s always a moment such as this in the rehearsal period. But the test of a company’s dedication and vigour is their capacity to struggle through these peculiar setbacks – and that they did: battling through colds and coughs, and grasping at misplaced lines of dialogue caught in a recess of the brain. They are all troopers and when they did overcome these difficulties the scenes really are striking. Little Angels is in its ‘terrible two’s stage – but is developing promisingly.

some weeks into Little Angels

We have had about two weeks of rehearsals for Little Angels now and we seem to be making good progress.  The engagement and energy of the cast is unrelenting – even though we rehearse in the evenings! – and many of the scenes are developing well, with several strong moments. Owing to varying availability of cast members, rehearsals have had to be structured in a somewhat peculiar fashion, but this has not hindered the company in approaching each scene with the appropriate facts and consideration of the action that has preceded . It will be great when we can piece together the play from the different scenes into one continuous performance – though that is some way off yet.

Many of the scenes have only two or three characters in, which means that each actor has plenty of time to air their own views on their own character and the scene itself. This makes everyone’s engagement with the play strong – something I believe to be important.

As for myself, my role has been to make suggestions from the sidelines mostly – I am watching and learning from the director too; even though I have worked with him before, I realise how much more room I have for improvement of my directing technique. During the process I am lucky to be allowed to lead rehearsals of three monologues (two of which we have now blocked and practised) performed by the character Michael. The actor is very responsive to what I say and contributes many good and imaginative ideas of his own. At first, I am stumbling a bit over what I’m doing: it’s a tricky speech and some of my ideas on how to stage the scene are half-formed in my head.  The director chips in when I’m struggling or when I’m not communicating clearly, but as I get into it the scene seems to fall into place and I get better at guiding the actor and responding to his work and thoughts.

At the end of the rehearsal I am pleased. I walk home thinking over the work done – but also think about how perhaps I’ve been a little too secure in my ability at directing while at university. I notice that I’m perhaps a little too contemplative, a little too focused on detail too early, and not emitting enough energy into the rehearsal room. These are things I can work on – how useful it is to direct under the watch and assistance of someone more experienced.

The next day, I go over the two monologues, refining them, adding stuff, taking stuff away. And they look great – really interesting to watch, complex and yet straightforward storytelling too. It is very rewarding to see text really come alive like this.

Little Angels: the first rehearsal

Today was the first rehearsal for Little Angels – a play written by Hannah Davies, on at York Theatre Royal mid-September. I’m assisting on the production over the next month and a half. Julian, the director, is blogging on the York Theatre Royal wordpress page – this is a personal blog (so read his if you want an actual insight into the creative process!).

I say rehearsal, but it was more of a meet and greet and readthrough. Especially with making theatre, everyone needs to get to know everyone and be working from the same page – an apposite sort of metaphor for working from a new script … Games, improvisational exercises, a discussion about the play and the characters etc. The cast were shown a model of the set design, and the image research, character timeline, and lists of textual information about the characters were presented.

For me the process began just before the auditions when I read the play for the first time and discussed the play with Julian. I met the playwright at the first audition – we saw about 20 people that day, a mix of new and old faces from previous productions or from elsewhere. The majority of the people we saw were talented, interesting, and friendly – any of whom a director or actor would love to work with. But for Little Angels, in which several of the characters are related, and relatively young, the casting had to be considered in relation to the different potential cast members. Also because the play has very demotic dialogue, it was important to pick people who could nail the voices of the characters: their rhythm, dialect, even  timbre in some cases. So the combination of physical appearance and vocal quality requirements meant that many good performers who auditioned were inappropriate for this project. It can be somewhat disappointing to hear news of not getting a part in a play that you’ve auditioned for – but often it is owing to quite pragmatic, practical reasoning from those on the audition panel.

Hearing the cast reading through the play today, it sounded great – and the vocal qualities all seem to complement and gel well together it seemed to me.  They already ‘get’ the play – they seem to have understood the tone of the piece and captured the quintessence of their characters. Now we have to flesh out the detail, probe the text for clues, and texture their performances with (and building on from) the nuances of the script.

My preparation for this first rehearsal (and ongoing work) is in considering all of the different characters, and doing some research into the world of the play: finding out about prison, hostels, council houses, drug use – basically anything which might be obscure for the cast (or myself). It also means looking at the language of the play in close detail – considering the minute turns in the syntax and the pacing and emotional shifts in the dialogue of the scenes. I study English Literature at university, where there is an emphasis on close reading (Cambridge has a history of Practical Criticism / Formalism) so I think this is one of my strengths (or in management speak: ‘transferable skills’…) working in theatre.   But I feel I need to work on my movement and physicality skills more. I’m going to be working more closely with the actor playing the character Michael in this rehearsal process, guiding him through the monologues he has, and he is a really quite energetic and physical character. So I think this process will help me develop my movement skills more.

Have had a wonderful time on holiday too – but being kept busy inbetween.

What am I doing?

Now that I have finished my exams I am free to read what I want and free to prepare and participate in some creative projects. I have read theatre&feeling and Ionesco’s Rhinoceros over the last few days, and I’m about a third the way through Visuality in the Theatre: the Locus of  Looking by Maaike Bleeker. All of which I would recommend – although Bleeker’s monograph is hard-going it is intellectually rewarding for anyone interested in how a person is involved in the act of seeing a play.

I am considering doing my dissertation next year on Pinter’s plays so I am going to start working my way through them over the following months. A handful of them I have either read or seen, so it’s not exactly a leap into the unknown (I directed a well-received student production of Betrayal last year), but I am interested to see how different his plays are over his life-time – and the temporality of the plays themselves.

But I’m also looking forward to reading some Bond too (Saved, Lear, and his adaptation of Wedekind’s Spring Awakening). I have never read any of his work before, but I think reading him will inflect my other projects and interests – in addition to the self-evident pleasure of reading a new (as in: ‘new’ to the reader)  playwright’s work.

Anyone got any suggestions of new (as in: actually ‘new’) plays / theatre books they have read recently which are worth reading?

PROJECTS: 

I will be assisting on the York Theatre Royal Young Actors Company production of Little Angels by Hannah Davies – a new play (and yes, I mean world-première ’new’) – through August until the performances mid-September. I will blog about my involvement in this process here. In 2009 I assisted the YTR YAC in their production of Equus; I’m looking forward to working with the director Julian Ollive again – especially in the wonderful YTR Studio this time round. Little Angels will work really well in that performance space.

Over the summer I also hope to adapt a novella or novel into a dramatic performance. The idea being that I will produce this at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2012 with student performances preceding it in Cambridge.  As of yet, I don’t know what this will be an adaptation of… Something out of copyright in any case. It will be partly scripted, partly devised, and I’m itching to get going on it!

 

 

Why Chris Woodhead and Fiona Goldsmith are wrong about ‘Our Country’s Good’

The following question and response were printed in Chris Woodhead’s column in The Sunday Times 03.04.11 (this reproduced material is the copyright of News International):

At the age of 14, my daughter has been given a play to study for GCSE called Our Country’s Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker, about the first colony of convicts in Australia in the 1780s. I had never heard of it before and was shocked by the language and content. This is a passage from the first page of the first scene – “At night? The sea cracks against the ship. Fear whispers, screams, falls silent, hushed. Spewed from our country, forgotten, bound to the dark edge of the earth, at night what is there to do but seek English c***, warm, moist, soft, oh the comfort, the comfort of the lick, the thrust into the nooks, the crannies of the crooks of England. Alone, frightened, nameless in this stinking hole of hell, take me, take me inside you, whoever you are. Take me, my comfort and we’ll remember England together.” I am sure you will agree that it is inappropriate for most adults, let alone children. As a country with the richest literature in the world, why does an exam board add an obscure and obscene play to its reading list?

Fiona Goldsmith, Bridgwater

I think that many parents would worry about the language used in the first paragraph of this play. Neither is it just the language, it is the explicit sexual content. Like you, I do not understand why, when we have one of the richest literary traditions in the world, time should be spent on a contemporary play, which might have won a number of awards, but which cannot be compared to works by Shakespeare or Hardy or Keats.

The edginess and the supposed relevance of the issues that the text explores now matter, I am afraid, more than its intrinsic literary worth. When I taught English 40 years ago my main aim was to introduce my pupils to as many classic works of English literature as possible. I still think that is what English teachers should be doing.

I fundamentally disagree with what Chris Woodhead and Fiona Goldsmith say here about Our Country’s Good and the position of similar texts within the curriculum. By using close textual analysis of their own language I hope to illustrate why they are misguided in their views of literature and education. Since they “worry about language”, this seems the most appropriate way to counter their views.

Prior to my undermining of Woodhead’s position, however, I shall first highlight a distinction between him and Goldsmith.  She boldly asserts that England is “a country with the richest literature in the world.” Perhaps Goldsmith is an incredible linguistic and literary scholar with intimate knowledge of the classics of international literature, therefore giving her the intellectual authority to make such a claim. Her inability to punctuate correctly (her first comma is unnecessary) suggests, however, that she does not have this literary authority. Rather, her implicit judgment that other nations’ and languages’ literature are poorer (poorer being the antonym of “riche[r]”) indicates her narrow-minded jingoism. Woodhead recognises this and neatly rephrases her wording: “we have one of the richest literary traditions in the world” (my emphasis). Instead of addressing this difference of opinion, Woodhead silently amends her definite article, in a somewhat cowardly way, to minimise any disagreement.

The passage which Goldsmith cites -which incidentally is not “the first paragraph of this play” as Woodhead incorrectly states, but is the second speaker’s first words after the opening stage direction and scene title-  contains the word “England” (including its paronym ‘English’) three times. These are the words of the character John Wisehammer, who specifically seeks “English cunt” rather than just “cunt” in general because he is trying to maintain his cultural and national identity – an identity which is disrupted when a criminal is expelled for his “country’s good”. But Goldsmith’s consideration of national identity by exalting our literary tradition as “the richest” is, in contrast, purely jingoistic.

While Woodhead may have demonstrated some sensitivity to language through his mute transformation of Goldsmith’s “the”, which as a former English teacher and Chief Inspector of schools one would hope he has, elsewhere in his response this sensitivity seems to be lacking. Besides his vague use of the word “language”, he makes a grammatical blunder and uses clunky phrasing: it should be ‘compared with’ not “compared to”, and his final sentence features the rather awkward “I think that that.”  This might appear a pedantic criticism, but close scrutiny of language is an important aspect of the study of literature. Moreover, in the rhetorical figure of occupatio (also known as paralipsis or preterition) Woodhead states that the contemporary play Our Country’s Good “cannot be compared to works by Shakespeare or Hardy or Keats” – he does not literally mean “cannot” as he in fact wishes the reader to compare the play with these authors’ works in order to make his point that Wertenbaker is inferior to Shakespeare et al. As it happens, I believe that Our Country’s Good is considerably better than some of Shakespeare’s minor works, such as Pericles. And as I shall go on to justify, I think that students of literature should study a combination of old and new literature – giving them the independence to compare and contrast texts themselves. In other words, allowing them to think about and to pass judgment on texts without a teacher.

Value judgments about literature lie in the minds of readers – Woodhead’s phrase “intrinsic literary worth” is a fallacy: “worth” is an extrinsic consideration of a text, and is not intrinsic. The only intrinsic quality of a text is its printed paper. My own view is that Our Country’s Good is worthy of literary and theatrical study. Those who have not read the play will be able to recognise the lyricism of the language from the passage reproduced by Goldsmith. The richness of language which Goldsmith wishes her daughter to read is present in this play with its combination of modern and more “obscure” language from the eighteenth century; a richness which makes it a challenging text for students.

It seems that the notion of “obscur[ity]” is itself threatening to Goldsmith – what we do not understand can be perceived as a threat to our personal and philosophical status quo. Just as she presumes that foreign literature is inferior to her own literature, she presumes that Our Country’s Good should not be studied because she “had never heard of it before.”  What she particularly dislikes in this text, however, is the use of the word “cunt” – asterisked out in The Sunday Times. Since this is not “obscure”, and the meaning is evident, she finds it offensive. Woodhead seems to agree that the “explicit sexual content” and the swearword “cunt” make the play unsuitable for a 14-year-old to study.  A more suitable dramatist for study would, he suggests, be Shakespeare. Yet Hamlet, one of the nation’s most popular plays, and a key set-text for generations, contains the word “cunt” in it too. This may escape the attention of some readers, however, because it is an aural pun. Ironically, Goldsmith perhaps might object to it less because it is more “obscure” and so less evidently explicit.

The pun occurs in the following passage of Hamlet (3.2.107-115, Oxford; modernised spelling):

HAMLET (to Ophelia)  Lady, shall I lie in your lap?

OPHELIA  No, my lord.

HAMLET  I mean my head upon your lap?

OPHELIA  Ay, my lord.

HAMLET  Do you think I meant country matters?

OPHELIA  I think nothing, my lord.

HAMLET  That’s a fair thought to lie between maids’ legs.

OPHELIA  What is, my lord?

HAMLET No thing.

“Thing” is a euphemism for vagina, and continues the punning of “country matters”. In the recent television production of Hamlet by the RSC with David Tennant in the title role, he emphatically pronounces the first syllable of “country” to make the pun very clear to a modern-day audience. When the film was released by the BBC on DVD, it received a rating of 12 from the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification). Perhaps Goldsmith’s wish to isolate her daughter from the sort of language which is considered unsuitable for children (rather than teenagers) is zealously over-protective.

One might argue that “country matters” is merely explicit language rather than explicit sexual content. Imagery like the passage cited by Goldsmith from Our Country’s Good is, however, easy to find throughout the classics of English literature. Take Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale, a popular and well-known text – and as it happens, explicitly rude both in language and subject matter: it tells the story of the cuckolding of an older man. This passage shows the sexual molestation of a young wife by the clerk Nicholas (The Canterbury Tales, 3271-78, Riverside Chaucer; semi-modernised spelling):

Now, sire, and eft, sire, so bifel the cas

That on a day this hende Nicholas

Fil with yonge wyf to rage and pleye,

Whil that hir housbonde was at Oseneye,

As clerkes ben ful subtile and ful queynte,

And prively he caughte hire by the queynte,

And seyde, “Ywis, but if ich have my wille,

For deerne love of thee, lemman, I spille.”

As in Hamlet, a pun which might be “obscure” to modern ears is explicitly crude when the meaning is understood. The first use of the word “queynte” means ‘cunning’, but the second time it means “cunt.” To transpose these two lines from Middle English into modern idiom (or at least, in my attempt at an adequate translation): ‘Since scholars are very intelligent and crafty, / So in private he grabbed her cunt.’

Our literary tradition has a rich history of bawdy and explicit language depicting scenes of sexual content. Two of our greatest literary figures, in two of their most famous texts use the word “cunt.” These two examples are not isolated instances but are merely well-known exemplars of explicitness. It would be a shame to remove these brilliant texts from the reading lists of teenagers for being “obscure and obscene”; it would likewise be a shame to remove Our Country’s Good for this reason.

Finally, I shall challenge Woodhead’s notion of how literature should be taught. He writes in conclusion to his response: “[w]hen I taught English 40 years ago my main aim was to introduce my pupils to as many classic works of English literature as possible. I still think that that is what English teachers should be doing.”  The verb “introduce” seems innocent enough, but in this context it is synonymous with the word ‘expose’ (as in ‘exposure’) – as if the study of literature just means being exposed to works which have been *extrinsically* judged by others to be worthwhile. Consider what the word “introduce” means: if the role of a teacher is merely to introduce students to texts, like a host at a party introduces his guests to other guests, than how can students develop the skills to read for themselves? Imagine if everyone in the world was only ever introduced to other people instead of being able to instigate their own conversations? This is directly analogous to Woodhead’s notion of teaching literature.

Students should develop their analytical skills at GCSE level by reading a rich range of language from both canonical and modern texts. Both Chaucer and Shakespeare were highly praised and popular with their contemporaries, and it was this acclaim which helped ensure they were printed and exist for readers today. To dismiss contemporary acclaim as irrelevant –it “might have won a number of awards”–  denies the importance of independent criticism and thinking, and demonstrates Woodhead’s failure to understand the contexts in which literature has been, and is, produced. The richness of our literature is a result of its variety: literature created in various forms over the centuries and in various styles.  Hopefully, teachers do inspire students to examine the words writers use closely, rather than merely attempting “to introduce” them to works other people have already considered closely. Such students might then have the ability to articulate the linguistic and literary ineptitude of their parents and newspaper columnists. A nation with a greater sensitivity to its rich language, and with better and more independent readers and writers, would certainly be for ‘our country’s good.’

Betrayal reviews

Betrayal has a had an amazing first few nights at the Corpus Playroom. This student production is only on for 2 more nights: (Fri 12th and Sat 13th Nov ’10). Start time 9.15pm; tickets – £5/6.

Here are a selection of press comments from the student newspapers of Cambridge:

* * * * / * * * / * * * *

TCS / Varsity / The Tab

“a performance driven by such great acting [from a ] small cast of extremely strong leading actors”

“the acting was of an undeniably high standard. Adam Drew (Robert) brought a quiet menace to his character, successfully drawing the black comedy out of his lines. His portrayal of vulnerability turning into cold-hearted survival was masterfully drawn”

“Theo Chester’s portrayal of Jerry was intriguing from the start and his performance was lucid and composed.”

“Deli Segal created an entirely believable, complex character. Even at the start of the play, left alone on stage, she wove a tangible spell over everyone watching, setting a pervasive tone of quiet absorption”.

“remarkably tense”

“thick with atmosphere [which] became tangible and oppressive”

“exquisitely painful”

“O’Shea brought out all the dramatic irony of a play where the audience know far more about each scene’s consequences than its characters do”

“the Playroom’s curious division of its audience was dealt with superbly”

“Very slick, surreal scene changes also added a surprising flair”

“Betrayal is something you should see; the standard of acting is incredibly high and I doubt you’ll see a better Pinter this year”

..and finally, an audience member’s comment:

“one of the best straight plays I’ve ever seen at the Corpus Playroom”

Betrayal feedback

Have you seen Brickhouse’s production of Betrayal at the Corpus Playroom? Let us know what you thought of it by adding a comment to this post.* We really appreciate audience feedback, so please let us know what you liked. You can use the star feature too if you want to give the production a star rating.

Also, on this blog is  our Rehearsal Diary  http://olioshea.wordpress.com/category/Betrayal

*Please note that it is a requirement that all comments are subject to moderation for any inappropriate content, so be patient.

 

Betrayal’s 3rd week of rehearsal

Our third and final week of rehearsal is now drawing to a close. We had our runthrough today with props and some (substitute) furniture, which was both productive and exhausting. Over the last week we have been finalising props and music, in addition to costume, which has been fun but time-consuming. I have a plastic wallet stuffed with receipts waiting to be claimed back on our production budget. So today, after our week of going over all the scenes, we did a runthrough of the play.

In the morning we looked at the scene transitions: who was going to take which prop offstage and who was going to move such and such piece of furniture.  Tedious yet highly important for ensuring the scene changes are smooth and don’t look hobbled together.  Some of the scene changes are quite tricky to do in the 25-40second tracks we have decided upon, but mostly they’re quite straightforward.  There are a couple of props which haven’t yet been bought (tomorrow morning!), and then we have the pleasure of carrying it all over to the Corpus Playroom for our late afternoon technical rehearsal. When will I actually have time to eat?!

I’m looking forward to seeing all the different production elements come together tomorrow – but the tech will probably be quite stressful in places, and will be quite dull and laborious for the actors since we are only doing the scene transitions which is when the light and sound cues are positioned. Our lighting design is going to be fairly simplistic, so that shouldn’t be much of a problem. Since in a few of the scenes the characters are drinking and eating, we want to rehearse with the food and drinks tomorrow, so we might do the entire scenes with these moments in.

We’re trying to up the publicity – but we’re all so busy with the actual performance, that it’s difficult to keep on top of this aspect of the production.   Fingers crossed that lots of people come — from Tues 9th-Sat 13th Nov at the Corpus Playroom (9.15pm)…

Interview about Betrayal

Suzannne Burlton has interviewed me about Betrayal for her blog. Read it here:

http://interviewmecambridge.blogspot.com/2010/11/oliver-oshea-director-of-betrayal.html

Betrayal runs from Tues 9th- 13th Nov at the Corpus Playroom, 9.15pm.  (a student production)

 

2nd week of rehearsals

We’ve finished our second week of rehearsals, and we’ve nearly finished the whole play now. Next week, we put the play back into its original order (we’ve been rehearsing the character’s lives chronologically, while the actual structure of the play is backwards), and go over the scenes we have already done. We will also be working out the scene transitions next week, which if we have time, will be subtly choreographed with some backward movement too!

Each rehearsal the actors are improving and their performances more nuanced and interesting. As a director, the balance of knowledge regarding the play is shifting. Whilst at first, the director having thought considerably about the play and characters, is ahead of the actors, by this point in the rehearsals the actors now know their own character better than anyone else. In rehearsal the actors are pointing things out to me and questioning the suggestions that myself and the assistant director are making -which is good, as they are gaining ownership of their parts. The creative team have to let go of the characters and leave this to the actors; we are stepping back and focusing on the staging which will complement their performances.

I’ve had lots of design meetings this week – poster, collage, lighting, and it’s all very exciting if somewhat tiring. Costume and props are being sourced over the next week, which will run in parallel with our rehearsals, so it will be a very busy week for us. This week has been very busy and very long too – it’s the organisational things which take their toll on you. Publicity-wise we’re a little bit behind (time creeps up on you!), but hopefully things like this blog will encourage people to come see the production.

I would love to write some more about this week’s rehearsals – but unfortunately I have the final 100 or so pages of the Mysteries of Udolpho to read today! How suitable for Halloween…

Betrayal by Harold Pinter runs from Tues 9th – Sat 13th November’10, Corpus Playroom. Start time is 9.15pm. Tickets £5/6  (concessions/regular).  Pre-book tickets at Cambridge Arts Theatre box office; tickets will also be available OTD.

First week of rehearsals: Betrayal

Structurally, Betrayal works backwards starting with the end of a marriage, progressing to the beginning of an affair.  Our rehearsals are following the chronology of the characters rather than this structure, following them in key moments of the affair and beyond. So this week we started at Scene 9.  We’ve rehearsed 5 scenes now, with 4 more to explore and discover next week. This structure has demanded the actors to approach each scene considering what has come before, and how they enter into the scene (as Stanislavski would have called it – the given circumstances). Another of his fundamental ideas, the through-line, is the impetus behind this rehearsal structure.

Episodic in nature, and spanning almost 9 years, the play’s scenes are mostly only between 2 characters at a time, so rehearsals have been intense in focusing on individual characters. Not only are the cast engaging with their characters, but also their relationships with the other characters. The power struggles in the play are something which the actors seem to be especially enjoying exploring too; who has the power in this scene? Who thinks they have the power? What do we even mean by conceptualising and abstracting power?

Questions, questions, questions.  In any play, we always have to question the veracity of what a character says – with Pinter, this curiosity escalates into suspicion, even scepticism at the words spoken. The language is sparse, curt, and sometimes unforgivingly monosyllabic, yet beneath the surface, the play is teeming with detailed ambiguity. Often this is called subtext; yet that word itself is too simplistic. It’s too simplistic and binary to suggest that there is simply a contrast between what a character is saying and what they are feeling. It is the gap between the various semantic meanings of the words people say, and the various thoughts that are flooding their brains at moments of crisis, which is of interest in Betrayal and elsewhere. Throughout the play, the characters are trying to conceal things from their friends and lovers – yet sometimes the interplay between concealment and the hidden conflate. It is, suitably enough,  very difficult to convey this notion in words. Ultimately, in simplistic terms, in rehearsals we are not just asking why a character is saying or doing something, or merely how the actor might portray this, but also what they might actually be saying . And by saying, we mean what are they communicating – corporeally – voice and movement, respiration, everything.  In Betrayal, the what and the why are often conflated – how can we ascertain why someone is doing something if we don’t know what they are doing? But paradoxically, how can we determine exactly what someone is actually communicating if we don’t know what is motivating them?

The actors have embraced these challenges and have already progressed in their acting  drastically. Certain sections of scenes really are sparklingly alive with their nuance and depth. We still have a considerable way to go, but I’m pleased to report that the actors are thoughtfully engaged with the play and their characters.

For me, personally, since the play is set in internal spaces, the blocking has been relatively straight-forward. At first, I was moving them about a bit too much. It soon became clear that the movements within each scene, had to be minimal. As a director, one has to strike a balance in a naturalistic play between motivated movement and variation of the stage imagery. One scene is set in a restaurant, so it is compulsory to the style of the play, that they remain primarily sedentary. Yet in other scenes we try and vary this, correlating with the shifts in tone of a scene, or a sudden thought that motivates movement.

The Corpus Playroom, where the performances will be (cheeky plug alert: 9.15pm, 9th -13th Nov’10; £5/6), is a unique L-shaped space. While the stage itself is a rectangle with an upstage door and walls, the audience sits facing two sides of the stage. At the other two sides of the rectangle are walls – which creates an internal room-like space- perfect for Betrayal. In having audiences on two sides, a director has to think carefully about blocking-in the positioning with the actors. Although it is evidently important that an audience sees enough of the actors faces, and not just their profiles, one has to avoid having actors trying to be equally visible to both sides of the audience at any one time. If this is done, and productions in the Corpus Playroom frequently suffer from this, it feels very flat, very 2-dimensional, artificial even. The audience subconsciously is aware of the actors’ attempts to always be seen. Instead, the blocking has been made on the diagonal. This means that if a pair of actors is talking to each other, one of them might have their backs to one side of the audience, and the other might have their back to the other side. While this might sound counter-intuitive, this allows for the best use of a space like this one, and ensures the movement of the actors looks ‘real’ and not ‘flat’, when you have audiences watching the same play from different angled sightlines. So instead of presenting everyone with the same image, we’re presenting different perspectives to audience members depending where they are sitting.

Initially, the actors kept slightly turning their bodies to try and ‘open themselves out’ to the audience, avoiding having their backs to any audience member. For an end-on staging, this would be a sensible thing to do; in a space like the Corpus Playroom it just looks artificial. The actors are less conscious of this now and are ‘closing themselves off’ for want of a better phrase, and allowing for a sharing of sightlines.

I’ll write next weekend to update you on what has been going on in our 2nd week.

Betrayal readthrough

The auditions are over, and readthrough completed. We saw over 30 people for 3 parts nearly a week ago now, and the three people we chose, read through the play today. Everyone seems excited about the project – although it looks like it’s going to be hard work. I’m really pleased with the cast we’ve chosen, and although we’re missing the small role of the Italian waiter, they seem to gel well, the cast. Hearing the rhythms of the speech and dialogue was particularly instructive from the readthrough. The baseline of acting, as it were, even at this stage is high which means the final performances look very promising.

There are still a few administrative issues to organise, but all in all we should be well on our way. Next we need to advertise for a Stage Manager, Lighting Designer and Poster Designer. We’re going to sort out the costumes and properties ourselves, but will work with others where necessary to sort this out.

We’re beginning rehearsals next week – I’m eager to start playing with the shifts in the dialogue through the scenes, and playing with physical positioning and proxemics. Hopefully we’ll start getting some photos up here too, of us in rehearsal.

The collages which in a previous post I said the audience would place on the walls will not go ahead in this way. I’ve been informed that nothing can be stuck onto the backwalls of this theatre. Instead, we’re going to hang the collages from the lighting bars or from nail hooks in front of the wall before the audience arrive. This is slightly disappointing as there won’t be the interactive/immersive element of the scenography anymore – but, aesthetically,  it’ll still look similar.

I’ll give an update after our first week of rehearsal with pics hopefully.

 

 

Review of ‘Ajar’

A version of this review first appeared in The Cambridge Student.

Ajar

1 star

Suzanne Burlton’s new play is about Lottie (Patricia Snell),  a depressive in a loveless marriage,  who attempts to kill herself by an overdose of tablets, before she is interrupted by the cold-calling of an Avon representative knocking on her door. Apparently, Rachel (Sophie Peacock) is a desperate working mother from the council estate flogging her make-up in the suburban neighbourhood. She discovers upon entering Lottie’s house that hidden under the bananas and pear in the fruit bowl are the sleeping pills and tablets which Lottie was about to consume before her arrival. What follows is tedious and illogical dialogue in which the stranger attempts to persuade the house-owner not to kill herself, and to tell her husband Michael (Jagveen Tyndall) about her suicide attempt.

The play offers no insight into the mind of a depressive; no insight into the stiflingly suburban quotidian; no insight into anything. Indeed, anyone who has any experience or relation to mental illness would find this play offensive in its basic dramaturgical ineptitude. All three characters are thinly drawn, giving the actors little to work with; they are as blank as the clinically white walls in front of which the actors perform.

Burlton’s voice as a playwright is as sparse as her characters are: the dialogue is bland and banal, ridden with clichés and lacking in originality of tone. Dialogue resorts to dramatic conflict of the most banal: “I really don’t want you to kill yourself” pleads Rachel; the reply of Lottie is “I really want to kill myself.”  The encircling dialogue seems to have no progression. When the narrative does indeed progress, the motivation feels contrived, and has no logical coherence.  Hyperbolising I am not, in condemning the direness of the script.

It would be inaccurate to describe Ajar as unremittingly poor as there are moments that descend into unintentionally comic depths, at least startling the viewer by their relative vibrancy. As Lottie describes a recurring nightmare she has been having, with an unoriginal preponderance of blood, in which she fears her husband is trying to kill her, emblematically, the lighting quickly cross-fades to crimson, and her husband shuffles in like a zombie with a knife outstretched: a ridiculous moment.

A gobo designed to create the impression of sunlight shining through the living room casts an unrealistic shadow across the Corpus Playroom walls, and the telephone sound effect used does not correlate with the modern handset. On balance, these production oversights are indolent insignificances in comparison with the lack of textual realism in a play that otherwise chooses to observe the three unities of drama.

The director (Matthew Topham) describes Ajar as a “tense piece of new writing”, but there is no apparent friction between the two characters.  Dull dialogue is matched by unenlightening direction, with the actors being mostly sedentary, avoiding eye contact with each other. I was hoping that Lottie would do the inevitable and down her pills sooner rather than later – a despicable response to invoke in any audience member.

When the play does finally reach its end, Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence is heard: a reflection of this production’s lack of subtlety. None of the audience was certain whether the production had reached its conclusion despite the implied finality of the stage action. A voice behind us, informed the audience that the production had ended, while another member of the production team mouthed ‘get off’ to one of the actors inexplicably still remaining onstage.  Perhaps it was wise that there was no curtain call, excusing the audience from fulfilling the convention of applauding.

Watching Ajar wasn’t so bad that it would make one want to kill oneself: conversely, it was life-affirming knowing that real life does not resemble Burlton’s stilted dramaturgy.  If you must see a play about suicidal depression this term, hedge your bets and wait for Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis instead; improve your odds by reading it yourself.

 

Support the UK’s arts

The arts inspire, entertain, and challenge us; they make our society a better place to live, and hopefully make us think about our society and our own lives afresh. But without the aid of government funding, arts organisations, which support a broad spectrum of artists, will undoubtedly suffer. Although cuts across all public sectors are inevitable, the proportion of arts spending is minute compared with other departments. With the vital support that the government provides, arts organisations and artists actually boost the economy, in addition to serving the general public. A relatively small contribution from the taxpayer, results in a meaningful cultural and economic ‘return’.

Cuts to education work, outreach programmes, and access, and a rise in ticket prices will be the necessary response by organisations if the cuts hit them too hard.

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Betrayal update September ’10

Writing this while half-listening to the Review Show. Just an update on the process of Betrayal. Between now and the last time I wrote about my preparations of this play, I have been to Edinburgh fringe as well as visiting relatives in Ireland and Hampshire. Also I’ve been  reading  GB Shaw plays, which have been brilliant, as he is the playwright I’ll be writing my dissertation on. Other plays I’ve read include Oleanna by Mamet  and A Wedding Story by Lavery – very different plays but both I’d highly recommend. Lavery’s Beautiful Burnout script is brilliant, which is currently on tour (Frantic Assembly/National Theatre of Scotland).

Anyway, perhaps these different experiences have helped me come up with some new ideas for Betrayal. The set is going to be white walls with a collage of images, text, and red wallpaper samples stuck onto it related to the 70s period and the world of the play. The positioning of these pieces will be determined by the audience: as they arrive they will be handed  a piece of the collage sheets and be asked to stick wherever they like on the walls. Hopefully,  this will let them explore the space of room in which the action happens, and will allow them to closely examine the collages with their detail. For instance, in the collage will be pages from a WB Yeats poetry book since he is the favourite poet of two of the main characters. I’ve been reading Yeats before going to bed to get in their mindset. Colour scheme wise, the palette of the production (and therefore the collages) is of monochromes with splashes of red in the collage; in the scene changes there will be a wash of red too.   But the next job will be to make these collages!!

While the audience enter the space and position the collages on the wall, two of the actors will be frozen in their starting positions – the idea behind this is to convey the sense the production will play with time: rewinding, stopping and starting.

The idea of this pre-set has been inspired by several productions. A few years ago, Pilot Theatre and York Theatre Royal Youth Theatre devised a production in which when the audience arrived they created the set by participating in drawing and writing on the walls and floor. Although this was an interactive production about the sharing of cultures (the performance originated from an exchange trip to Kuala Lumpur), and therefore a very different piece to Betrayal. However, I’m interested in how more experimental work might interact with more traditional work. I believe that audiences are fairly open to unusual and experimental work as long as it is within the context of ‘experimental’ work, but struggle when different forms merge. So, in more traditional text-based plays, non-traditional stagings and forms seem discordant to some audiences.

In Edinburgh (and indeed before) I saw some good and not so good immersive performances. Immersive theatre is a pertinent reminder of the unique quality of live performance: a shared experience in a shared space.  I think this production’s pre-set will also create an immersive quality for the audience. This is important as I want them to feel as if they’re present in the rooms in which the betrayals take place, instead of voyeurs observing the private affairs of the characters.

Payment of the performance licence needs to be made soon and other logistical issues…

I’ll update once I’ve cast the production /had the first readthrough. Then after this I’ll write an update at the end of each week of the rehearsals with pics and vid.

*Betrayal, Corpus Playroom, Cambridge, 9th – 13th Nov 2010. 9.15pm.*