The first night of A Taste of Honey. It’s an endlessly surprising show. There are dirty dishes in the kitchen sink, it’s true, but there’s also a pianist squeezed in between the cooker and the drainer. Jo and Helen’s flat is a shabby mess, but fairground lights play around it – they’re as interested in seeking pleasure and enjoyment as they are in where the next meal’s coming from. And, when temperatures rise, aubergines quite literally fly. It has all the pathos, all the grit and detail you’d hope for from a production of this well known fifties masterpiece, but it also has all the joie de vivre that we manage to find despite our surroundings. And some tremendous performances, too.
[ add comment ] ( 1 view )
One of the first theatre festivals I went to was organised by the National Student Drama Festival, where it was inspiring to see the work being created by other students across the country, and to hear what they had to say about the work I was doing. There were workshops given by industry professionals, a daily newspaper complete with student critics and other events, amongst them, most memorably, my first encounter with Forum Theatre. More of a demonstration than a production, it was created by two nurses who worked in the mental health sector and showed us how they use theatre to engage patients with real-life situations, exploring alternative outcomes and giving their patients the opportunity to experience first-hand but in a safe context new solutions to old problems.
The application of theatre in social and educational contexts became a very real interest for me from that moment. The performers had talked about learning their process from Augusto Boal, and so, being the kind of person whose first port of call is always a book, I immediately turned to his seminal The Theatre of the Oppressed, which outlined what Boal termed forum theatre and discussed its uses in the context of oppressive regimes in Brazil and Argentina. The idea that theatre could change the world had always excited me, but to be honest I’d doubted whether this wasn’t just naivety on my part. Here, though, from the frontline, was the evidence that it could and did. Another of his books, Games For Actors and Non-Actors, saw me through many a workshop both with performers but more often with students or members of community theatre groups.
So I was saddened to hear of Boal’s death at the weekend. Not least because every day at the New Vic I see his work put into action in ways that are immediately effective. New Vic Borderlines’ approach is very much based on his work, using his techniques of forum theatre and image theatre to involve the participants in Borderlines programmes as ‘spect-actors’, staging situations from their own experience and exploring ways to effect change. It’s life-changing, but also life-affirming work, and owes so much to one of the century’s greatest theatre practitioners who has inspired theatre makers all over the world.
[ add comment ] ( 1 view )
It is a hive of creativity in the New Vic this week. Up in the lighting box the technical team are experimenting with snow, months ahead on their preparation for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. They want to create a snow curtain, which is no mean feat in the round, and are making and road testing prototype snow machines. In the Stephen Joseph Room our next production, A Taste of Honey, is taking shape, with a cast who are finding lots of brightness and lightness in what’s usually considered a kitchen sink drama. In the workshop the carpenters have created the staging which is now being fitted with hundreds of coloured light bulbs to create the effect of a funfair, and the scenic artists are making spangly paving stones. The main space is being shared between Honeymoon Suite, which has just received a clutch of excellent reviews puffing us all up with pride, and a Borderlines conference for hundreds of young delegates who are considering the caring professions as possible careers. In the Youth Room we’ve had Tale Trail sessions with pre-school children and youth theatre sessions; more youth theatre sessions have been taking place in our brand new building on the other side of the car park. In the design room mock-ups of mythical creatures litter the desks. The designers of Dumb Show and The Wicked Lady have brought in their early ideas. The casting team are busy on both these shows and even looking ahead into the autumn to our yet-to-be-announced season. As ever, the restaurant’s been busy all week.
I’ve been especially aware of all this because I’ve taken a few tours round the building this week, peeping into the evocative space backstage and into storerooms bristling with chairs or lined with ranks of costumes waiting patiently to be picked up or inhabited by an actor. We’ve stood in the centre of the stage and looked into the auditorium; we’ve stood in the auditorium and looked down on the stage. Taking people round this beautiful building, and describing how it came to be here in North Staffordshire, has been, as ever, a delight and a revelation – for me as much as for them. A new pair of eyes always brings a new perspective.
[ add comment ] ( 5 views )
Whew. Exhausted after two days at Circus Space. Dangling from a trapeze; shinning up ropes; twisting in long red silks; jumping and diving at the end of a bungee; harnessed up to ropes and wires. Last night my muscles sang as I sank into a bubble bath; but this morning it was straight back in the saddle again, rope burns and grazes and all.
Well, that’s how it felt. But I have to admit the experience was an entirely vicarious one for me. Instead of getting harnessed up and into the air I sat on a very comfortable chair with my notebook on my lap watching brave actors take their first leap into the world of aerial theatre. A typical director, I watch, assess, analyse, and feel t the end of the day I’ve gone on a huge journey without ever having left my seat. That’s OK: that’s how I want the audience to feel, and my role is to stand in (sit in!) for the audience in the rehearsal room.
We’ve been auditioning for The Wicked Lady. The actors we work with will need to be physically extremely fit; have good vocal ability; be quick learners, able to see and assimilate a physical language; have courage, both of mind and of body; be generous and supportive of their colleagues; work under their own initiative yet take direction well; be determined and committed. It’s a tall order. But I’m glad to say that many actors have these qualities, and I have such admiration for those in the profession for this endless versatility and remarkable generosity.
Could the last three days have been more different? I went from a cerebral day sitting round a table talking about the process and philosophy of rehearsals to a sweaty room full of physical activity and energy. I can’t imagine another job where I’d be able to enjoy so much variety, and meet so many interesting and different people who all have something useful and unique to offer.
[ add comment ] ( 1 view )
Between the ages of 16 and 19 I developed, almost from nowhere, an interest in theatre. Having randomly chosen theatre studies as an A level I determined to see all the theatre I could, which mostly involved trips to my ‘locals’ the National (where I could stand at the back for two pounds) and the Young Vic, where I could occasionally afford a proper seat.
London at that time was a poor, tatty place, and even the relatively modern South Bank wasn’t immune. This was the era of Cardboard City, centred on the underpasses beneath Waterloo, and the misery of it had to be traversed to get from my bus stop to the National. On the corner of the Cut impoverished drunken men leered and swayed. The foyer of the Young Vic looked like a bombed-out butcher’s shop (which, indeed, it was).
The college where I studied was in North London. I think I deliberately chose one as far from home as possible, hoping to spread my wings, and duly entered a brave new world populated by people who, mysteriously, didn’t have London accents. Nevertheless, Shoreditch at that time was like most of the rest of London – grimy, ugly, depressed.
So over the last few days it’s been a remarkable experience to find myself, first back at Waterloo, interviewing young directors at the Young Vic; and then at Shoreditch, opposite my old college, interviewing actor/aerialists at Circus Space.
How the areas have changed. Everything looks new or newly refurbished; every bit of masonry is sparkling clean, Quirky cafes and idiosyncratic bookshops crowd the squares and alleys; interesting looking people with studiedly casual haircuts and clothes walk the streets locked into ipods or Bluetooth. Interiors are all stripped wood flooring and bare brick walls, smelling new and clean.
It’s both wonderful and heartbreaking, to see what’s become of ‘my’ city. Wonderful because it’s so much better a place to be – inspiring, exciting, healthy, optimistic. Heartbreaking because, despite the squalor, there was an energy and lust-for-life in Waterloo and Shoreditch that belonged to the people who’d made their homes there and knew they were going to stay there, who owned the area (even if they did only rent their homes from the local council). A sense of belonging, I suppose. And that doesn’t seem to be part of the fabric any more. Everyone there is in transit.
A similar transformation took place in Birmingham between my arrival there in 1990, a young director, who found a grey concrete city of underpasses and neglect and a community whose self-deprecation bordered on self-loathing. The influx of European money led to a renaissance for Birmingham, which I only realised when my fashion designer sister came to visit me one day and instantly on arrival gasped ‘it looks like Paris!’ Paris, this? But looking at it with her eyes I could see that yes, it was a marvellous place, and I’d kind of got used to it and, even whilst enjoying the benefits it had to offer, hadn’t remembered to reassess them.
I came to North Staffordshire almost three years ago, and hope to see another phoenix rise from the ashes in the form of Stoke-on-Trent. Parts of it have huge potential – the decayed grandeur of Burslem, with a built environment yearning to be polished back to its original majesty; the more reserved market town beauty of Newcastle-under-Lyme; the dramatic landscapes of the Moorlands and the nearby Peak District. It’s an area yearning for regeneration, and is on the very verge of it. But I fear that recession has come just as Stoke is on the brink of its own phoenix moment.
[ add comment ] ( 1 view )
Calendar
