Engaging the audience...

Having seen Will Eno’s ‘Oh, The Humanity’ at Soho Theatre last week, a lot of my students commented on the unconventional ‘interactive’ elements of the production. Only, when I thought about it, I realised that the last four things I’d watched at the theatre had all attempted a quite deliberate and specific engagement with the audience. And in each case, something about that transaction defined my feelings towards the play. Those productions were: ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ at the Globe; the Danish theatre company Republique’s version of ‘Hamlet’; Will Eno’s collection of shorts mentioned above; and The RSC’s production of ‘Julius Caesar’.

As far as the two (original) Shakespeares were concerned, the nature of this engagement derived mainly from the place of performance. The Globe is a theatre that demands the acknowledgement of a shared space. Shakespeare’s characters often directly invoke the audience and, as well as a running metaphor of theatre-as-life, site-specific references are frequently embedded within the texts. (These days, we have the added anachronism of planes flying overhead; actors stopping to let them pass being a guaranteed crowd pleaser.) With that in mind, the critical response to ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ was interesting. Whilst the Daily Mail revelled in the simple fun of it all, the Guardian characterised it as ‘conventionally jolly’, never digging far beneath the surface. Michael Billington is sometimes criticised for a fixation with the ‘political’ in the theatre, but although I thoroughly enjoyed this production, part of me agrees that it was a missed opportunity to present one of Shakespeare’s most unsettling works in a relatively un-nuanced way. Isn’t a venue that has this relationship with its audience hardwired into it the perfect place to confront the play’s more troubling aspects? (By the by, it’s probably not worth being angry at the Daily Mail any more, but it’s amazing how effortlessly it can cause offence. Take this casual aside: ‘The Shrew will never be Harriet Harman’s favourite Shakespeare…’)

On the other hand, ‘Julius Caesar’, a West End transfer for the RSC, attempted to co-opt some of the Globe’s spirit. With the house lights up, the play was prefaced by music and dancing on stage, but the performers struggled in vain to reach out beyond the proscenium arch. Over the weekend, I read a piece of political commentary by Andrew Rawnsley that borrowed and adapted an Oscar Wilde quotation (quite freely, I think, as I haven’t been able to source the original…) Anyway, the basic idea was that authenticity is a uniquely prized possession. And once you can fake it, you’re made. It turns out to be a rather apt quotation in the context of Julius Caesar itself, but it also speaks to the dilemma of ‘artifice’ in the theatre. At any rate, this attempt to import something of the Globe’s participatory aesthetic into a West End venue didn’t fake it well enough for me.

In ‘Hamlet’ at the Queen Elizabeth Hall - a highly physical, multimedia ‘adaptation’ with live music by the Tiger Lilies - a different kind of engagement relied on the extent to which the audience knew the source material. Although some key scenes were preserved reasonably intact, much was skipped, re-ordered, or replaced. The result was a production that fell between two stools. Knowing the original fairly well, I found the snippets of text aggravating; I’d have preferred a freer interpretation. At the same time, I don’t think a newcomer to the play would have had much idea what was going on. The interaction with the audience was predicated on an assumed familiarity with the story, which simultaneously robbed it of its own energy.

And so to ‘Oh the Humanity’, a series of five short plays (mostly monologues) riff-ing on the gap between presentation and belief, and the hopeless ways in which we try to suppress our emotions. The plays are certainly beautifully crafted and lyrically realised. But they left me a bit cold. Perhaps the most distancing (if arguably the most interesting) was the fourth piece. Here the action spun 180 degrees, and the two characters on stage suddenly involved the audience in the setting up of a staged photograph. As we in the auditorium tried to fix our faces in an appropriate way, we were gently hectored and cajoled. The piece was all about authenticity - what can you read behind the eyes of those frozen on film? Formally, then, the device was in keeping with the wider questions of the play. So why did it feel so false? Why did I find myself becoming irritated by the faux spontaneity of the performers? The acting mantras of ‘living in the moment’ and ‘saying everything for the first time’, which count for so much behind a fourth wall, seemed contrived and disingenuous in this shared space. Ironically (perhaps) the audience’s inability to participate in a real conversation with the characters/performers was more starkly obvious here than in much naturalistic drama. Andrew Rawnsley’s butchered Oscar Wilde quotation seems appropriate in this context too. And while it’s a commonplace that the theatre depends on, demands, even inherently contains the concept of an audience, it’s also fascinating just how fragile and contingent that relationship can be.

Just a quick post to say...

Check out sohopolyfestival.blogspot.co.uk for some very exciting news about the 40th anniversary of The Soho Poly Theatre. On the bill: David Edgar, Robert Holman, Michael Billlington, Fred Proud, The Miniaturists, Michael Coveney, Irving Wardle, The Soho Theatre...

Follow our progress @SohoPolyFest

And for all tix info, email sohopolyfestival@gmail.com. Free, but limited availability!

Festivals, Shelters, and Being Human…

It’s been quite a while since ‘Brightest and Best’, and although I’d intended to write a wrap-up post, the end of a project is never quite the decisive moment I imagine it will be. These days I find I can walk away from such things quite fast, almost not thinking about them at all in their immediate aftermath. Very different to the come-down I used to feel after finishing plays when I was younger. A shame not to miss things in the way I used to; or healthier, maybe, to be able to move on...

In any case, I’ve moved straight on into two new projects which I wanted to write a bit about here. One is a mini-festival  I’m curating in mid June. The other is a writing commission I’ve just begun with Natalie Ibu, working with LAMDA second-year drama students to develop a play. The first of these will have a blog of its own, so I’ll post a link to that soon. But in brief, the festival will mark  40 years since The Soho Poly Theatre (now The Soho Theatre) moved into a tiny basement on Riding House Street and established itself as one of the most famous fringe venues of the 1970s and 80s. It was a home for new writing and the starting point for many actors and directors still working today. For the week beginning 18th June the plan is to bring it back to life  for a series of short plays, readings and discussions about theatre then and now.  More details to follow…

The LAMDA project is in its second week, and is quite a new experience for me. Evolving a play for twelve actors feels like writing in 3D. Rather than spending time thinking, I’m forced to react in the room to scores of questions and suggestion. It’s been pushing me into quick decisions, which is bracing but frightening too. Balancing that with the need to maintain an overarching ‘concept’ for the play is going to be one of the biggest challenges.

The idea we’re all working on grew out of something I read in a book by Matthew Sweet about hotels during WW2. In particular, there’s a story about a group of Communists marching to the Savoy during the Blitz and demanding to be let into the downstairs ballroom, a makeshift shelter for the (rich) guests. This demand was a protest against the inadequate provision of shelters for the desperately poor residents of places like Stepney in the East End. It’s a story which seems to question the Home Front myth that everyone was in it together.

Inevitably, researching these events throws light onto the present. Something that particularly strikes me is the way the current coalition has co-opted that famous phrase ‘in it together’ – partly to justify their reduction in support for the public sector and the championing of charities, volunteer organisations and the Big Society. Of course, there are many lenses through which to view such a comparison, but one of the interesting discoveries for me has been how the crisis of 1940 underscored how necessary government-led action was, and how poorly-funded and poorly-coordinated local provision was often unequal to the task at hand...

Then again, I’ll always look for the left-wing angle - which is a realisation that makes writing a play with political dimensions troubling and problematic. I’m not someone who finds it easy to write something that champions a particular ideology. It’s not that I don’t want to, but more that I  don’t seem to have the tools to do it without becoming reductive or simplistic. Certainly I’m not an historian, and I don’t think it would be legitimate for me to try and change people’s thinking about the Second World War (at least not in such a blunt way). I’m not sure that can ever be a playwright’s primary responsibility. I’ve argued this point before, but I’m uncomfortable with the idea of a writer using whatever powers of persuasion they might have to attempt to establish themselves as ‘an expert’ in any field other than writing itself. So, at the moment, I’m wrestling with the question of how to approach historical, and by implication political, material.

Worrying about it all over coffee the other morning, I kept returning  to the question of characters and what they want. In a sense that felt like cowardice: I don’t know what I want my play to say or mean, so I’ll let my characters worry about it all instead. And yet, that’s the choice I always seem to arrive back at. In the end, I found myself reformulating the idea that a play (well, one type of a play) is really just about testing characters’ value systems. I wondered if the most vivid question for each character is simply ‘What are your responsibilities as a human being?’ After all, isn’t that what all of us worry about most, at the crisis moments of our lives? And maybe plays are just one of the forms of art that help us develop a framework to articulate that question.

So, for now at least, I’m not thinking ‘What point do I want the play to make?’ or ‘How can I tie this story in to my own political opinions?’ Instead I’m just asking my characters, via the three-dimensional students who are embodying them, ‘What do you believe are your responsibilities as a human being?’ And then trying to think of how those beliefs might be put under the greatest possible stress…

Playwriting, Editing, Techs... and Knitting

Sunday was the first day of tech-ing for ‘Brightest and Best’. It was also - I realised with mixed feelings - almost 23 years since my first similar experience, for the Barnes Theatre Company’s production of The Mermaid some time in the last century. The BTC was run by Anne Carroll - one of the most inspiring theatre-people I’ve ever met. It was just a youth drama group, but those early experiences are still the ones I measure everything against. Techs were magical at the church hall on Kitson Road, and I vividly remember coming through the doors the weekend before the show to find Coeks and Darrol suspended up ladders, fixing lights and painting flats. That’s where I fell in love with theatre.

The first day in the ‘space’ is also the moment I revert to theatre geek. I find it incredibly exciting to look around me and see everyone locked into some kind of activity: Helen engrossed behind her sound desk; Eliot attempting to design an improvised window effect with a hi-tech lighting board and square of black cardboard; Ali – seconds earlier hanging by her fingertips from the rafters of the rehearsal room – now dressing the set; Will and Hetty trying costumes for the first time; Anna and Nadia… knitting.

But what struck me most in Sunday’s epic eleven-hour call was that it felt like just another form of writing, or at least an evolution of that process - the high speed making and unmaking of decisions (blocking, sound and lighting levels, props…) just another act of (physical) editing.

Something that has also been incredibly important for Natalie is the idea of spaces, or gaps. On one level, that’s been about filling in the world of the play. Just as a playwright develops the back-story that belongs outside the play, she and the cast have done amazing work to discover what the audience never sees. What Daisy Gibson looks like, for example? Or what happened when Terry was chased round the biology lab with a scalpel?

But even more significant has been the discovery of what happens between scenes. ‘Scene change rehearsals’ have been a major part of the process, and not just for practical reasons of slickness, etc., but because they form an integral part of the drama. So much of the storytelling exists in these liminal moments of change and transition. It’s in seeing these that I get to witness the expression of ideas that have been explored in detail during rehearsals. It’s made me more aware than ever that a play isn’t theatre until it’s in performance, and that this transformation is much more profound that simply a movement from page to stage. In fundamental respects, the direction has just been a continuation of the process I began with pen and paper.

And the process isn’t over yet. We just about got to the end yesterday, but now’s the day of the dress rehearsal.

Then, tomorrow, we’ll be in front of an audience for the first time.

Gulp.

(This is a cross posting with Natalie's website and the official BB blog - with lots of information about the show and the company: http://www.natalieibuwashere.co.uk/Natalie_Ibu_Was_Here/BB_Blog.html)

James Bond, post-its, and behaving very badly…

Almost three weeks ago, I wrote that I intended to track the process of producing 'Brightest and Best' on this blog. So the reason I’ve been completely silent is slightly ironic – the process of producing 'Brightest and Best'.

I suppose there’s been some other stuff going on, with the start of the Westminster term and seemingly endless marking. But the challenges of mounting a fringe production are pretty overwhelming all on their own.

My last post was just before auditions – which ended up spanning a week. We saw fantastic people, but after a while you feel you’re going snow blind. Still, we managed it and have now finished week #1 with an amazing team. And not just of actors. In fact, almost the most exciting moment for me was the first production meeting where I sat in awe listening to the designers and stage managers talk logistics. It’s such a privilege having all these people working to make the play a success. And hearing them chat about the technical kit they need to do it makes me feel like I’m in a James Bond film.

Now I’m taking more of a back seat. All playwrights make negotiations with directors over their involvement in rehearsals. It’s certainly true that vital re-writes come out of the experience of seeing actors test your scenes. But I think you have to put your trust in the expertise of the people you work with. Not everyone will agree, but I’m not sure a writer necessarily has the clearest vision of their own work. (Natalie is certainly able to describe 'Brightest and Best' much better than me.) Of course, it may be possible for a director or actors to misinterpret a play, but I’d rather take that risk, knowing that there’s a much greater chance their take will release new energy and ideas.

When I have been in the rehearsal room (barn/shed?), one thing I’ve noticed is that the wall is becoming increasingly plastered with bits of paper: the cast’s research into the play. It reminds me of the moment a colleague arrived at Westminster to share my office. The first things he noticed were post-it notes everywhere – my first attempts to plot out the structure of the play. It seems like the achingly painful process of writing can be summed up by the movement of small bits of paper stuck to one wall, to slightly bigger bits of paper stuck to another.

Another thing that happened on the bus home last night was that I bumped into my old French teacher. We had a lovely chat, although I guiltily remembered that I was one of his most annoying pupils. I was only eleven at the time, but I think I remember him sending a letter home to my parents about my terrible behaviour. That trauma aside, I'm hoping the meeting was a good omen..

So now it’s back to work on another crucial aspect of putting on a play: getting an audience. With that in mind, here’s a link to an article in today’s Guardian about how the fringe really is the place to be (and thanks to @peter_raynard who tweeted this earlier). Oh, and there's a link to tickets too!:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/theatreblog/2012/jan/30/london-fringe-theatre-good

http://www.wegottickets.com/f/3727

New Year / New Words

The Westminster term hasn’t quite started yet, although I’ve worked out that I’ve read roughly two, decently-sized novels’ worth of student writing this Christmas! Some great stuff though – makes me anxious to do some of my own…

But there’s not much time for that at the moment, as I’m right in the middle of auditions for my new play ‘Brightest and Best’ (details on the link opposite…) In fact this term I have a bit less teaching, so for the next few weeks I’m going to be posting more on the practical side of things. ‘Brightest and Best’ opens on 15^th February, and I think it’s going to be an exhausting (but exhilarating) task to get the show on its feet by then. The director is Natalie Ibu, who I’ve worked with on a few different projects and is one of the most inspiring people I know in theatre.

The audition process has been fascinating so far, particularly for the way that it starts to reveal the play in new ways. Hearing actors interpret and re-interpret scenes opens up so many possibilities, and I’m going to be re-writing / re-working for much of next week as a result of things I’ve learnt already. In particular two phrases, or questions, have really stood out for me – Natalie uses them a lot: What is the ‘offer’ the character is making? And what is the ‘cost’ to them of what they are saying/doing? Really, this is just another way of addressing dramatic agendas and stakes, but ‘offer’ and ‘cost’ are much more dynamic and evocative descriptions of those processes. I was reminded of Declan Donellan’s book 'The Actor and The Target' in which he talks about the weakness of the traditional question ‘what does a character want?’ and the energy that is released instead if you ask ‘what does one character need from the other?’ So much of the creative process seems to depend on the choice of words we use to describe what we’re up to.

The auditions have also been fun because I get to read in all the other parts.  It’s hard, being a frustrated actor…

Right, time to rush off to audition day #3. But for anyone who’s interesting in tracking the process of putting on this play a bit more closely, I’ve decided to take a jump into the twittersphere. So you can follow me, and other members of the creative team here…

@matt_morrison77

@NMHIBUIsHere

@zannawharfe

Do sign up and keep in touch!

The play's the thing...

The purpose of this blog was to record all the theatre-related things that I find myself involved in. So the reason I haven’t posted for almost a fortnight is slightly ironic: actually doing a play.

But that’s also been a reminder of the fact that trying to be a writer means much more than just ‘the work’. And perhaps theatre, more than any other literary form, is about process rather than product. Not only because a play script is on some levels a blueprint for performance; that it doesn’t become ‘theatre’ until rehearsals with actors and a director bring it to life. But also because it’s an intense and emotional social experience. Rather than being a means to an end, writing sometimes just feels like a way to live.

It’s exhausting though. The play (‘Through the Night’) went well. It was, as always, a learning experience. There’s nothing more exposing that putting your words into the mouths of actors – they won’t let you get away with a single inconsistency. And then you have to accept that the audience reaction is completely out of your hands. It’s nerve-racking, and a bit of me is glad to be back to some kind of normality today. But I’ve never been able to resist the addictive qualities of the theatre, and in no time I’ll be itching to get involved in the next project. Ultimately, I know that it’s only when I’m standing in a rehearsal room that I’m in my right space...

But there has been some other activity in the last few weeks, not least the end of my first MA playwriting course. That has been an incredibly enriching experience, and together we’ve interrogated some fascinating questions about the internal dramaturgy of plays, and how that can reflect or resist content. Our discussions about ‘London Road’ and ‘Jerusalem’ have been particularly interesting. The former explores the nature of community, marginalising, almost to the point of eradication, the ‘outsider’ figures – the prostitutes whose lives have been threatened, or taken, by the murderer Steve Wright. And ‘Jersualem’s two productions (in the West End and in the Occupy London encampments) have raised compelling questions about the radical (or otherwise) impulses in the storytelling.  In the last class of the semester, I also revisited a paper I wrote at the beginning of the year about presentations of ‘the apocalypse’ in modern drama. There, I argued that it is only the plays that break form with the aid of lyricism, metaphor and poetry that can hope to provide a truthful glimpse of such a catastrophic rupture.

I’ll also give a quick mention to another play which deals with a different sort of breakdown. ‘Haunted Child’ at The Royal Court is about a husband who announces one day that he’s found a new spiritual path, in the form of a bizarre, quasi-scientific cult. It’s a strange play, which seems to have left a lot of reviewers puzzled. Personally, I thought it was quite beautiful and moving. The way it presents a kind of mania as endlessly self-fulfilling was frightening, and the play addresses the nature of fundamentalist philosophies without losing the sense of a deeply personal tragedy for the family…