The Apprentice and the Gods

There is only one television programme that I wouldn't miss for the world and it's that time of year again when The Apprentice swings back onto our screens for a glorious ten week series. Its compulsive viewing and as moral as a Greek tragedy.

Most reality TV is anything but reality - Big Brother has always just struck me as sad, like a visit to the zoo, to watch dumb beasts out of their normal habitat caged and driven slightly mad by the boredom. The Apprentice, though, seems to transcend the illusion that we're just watching normality, and through clever editing and the slow emergence of the contestants personalities over the course of the series it grips us in a titanic struggle. Partly of course it's the pure voyeurism of watching a pack of animals rip themselves apart, but like all good drama it twists and turns as it takes the viewer on a journey through some of the most unpleasant forms of back biting, lying and desperate attention seeking imaginable.

As with all successful dramas it's mostly down to excellent casting and each of the fifteen candidates walks in dressed for battle and proudly asserting their credentials. I am Spartacus! The brilliance of the programme is to hint from the off that such posturing will inevitably lead to hubris. We could be fooled into thinking of the whole concept as a glorification of greed and money making, but in reality it as as unheroic and nuanced as any work by Sophocles, Chekhov or Shakespeare. The Apprentice is a cathartic warning from the Gods be they on Olympus, or in an Amstrad board room on the Essex border.

Robben Island comes to Richmond

Today was the first public reading of Matt's verbatim play, The Robben Island Bible at the Richmond theatre. It was wonderful, particularly as the ever gracious John Kani had cajoled two of the other actors from The Tempest company Atandwa and Omphile to take part.

We closed the department for the afternoon and the stalls were filled with students and other special guests from Richmond, the University and the anti-apartheid movement.

There was an incredible pre-show moment when Molly realised that 100 under twenty fives were sitting in the sunshine on the steps of the theatre, giving the place the feel of the Royal Court circa 1960 so she sent the in-house photographer out to capture the mood.

The show itself went well and the actors quickly relaxed into the script (they'd only had two hours rehearsal on Monday afternoon.) Afterwards John turned on the charm in an incredibly moving, politicised and exciting question and answer session that can have left no-one in the audience in any doubt of the the power that theatre has to communicate, keep ideals alive, provide metaphors for resistance and inspire great acts of courage and humanity.

Green is the Colour.

The third year directors shows have finished now, after a four week festival of work. The last shows were on Friday. It's been a hugely impressive body of work and marvellous to see students across the three years working alongside each other to achieve their success. On the way have been some fine pieces of direction. Laura Dowens got three excellent performances out of her Pitchfork Disney cast, Clara Taylor did a marvellous, unpretentious job on Simon Stephen's fragmented play Pornography and Chloe Oxbury found a persuasive rhythm for Marina Carr's Woman and Scarecrow. Although there weren't stand out, breathtaking productions, it's clear that within the cohort are some careful, intelligent, crafty directors, who should certainly take lessons from this experience and have another crack in the near future.

Saturday was open day and around 200 prospective students and their families turned up to find out about the courses and Uni. Last year the open day was scheduled for St.Patrick's day - which was a mistake as the College has strong links with Ireland. Our guests were caught in a mixture of carefully co-ordinated, well oiled marketing presentation from the staff and a frenzied bacchanal ritual of Guinness and the craic from the students.

To avoid any ambiguity about the true face of College, this year the date was fixed safely for the 21st ... unfortunately nobody had checked the rugby fixtures, or played with the possibility that Ireland, might, just might win their first grand slam for 61 years!!! The relief of the final whistle was the cue for several semi naked St.Mary's rugby boys, who'd painted parts of their nether regions green in expectation of victory, to dance for joy across Walpole's Arcadian grounds in floppy leprechaun hats. Perhaps it'll help recruit as many as it drives away?

Theatre for A Change

Our developing partnership with Theatre for A Change is a very important part of our portfolio. Here is the article I've submitted for Drama St.Mary's brochure on this work.

In April 2008 Mark Griffin and Matthew Hahn spent two weeks in Malawi as guests of Theatre for a Change, a company specialising in the interactive forum theatre techniques pioneered by Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal.

The work of Tfac in Malawi uses this methodology to exploring strategies to enable individuals to assert their gender and sexual rights. The lecturers visit was a prelude to future exchanges of good practice between Tfac trainees and Drama St.Mary’s students interested in Theatre and Development work. The first cohort of our students will travel to Malawi and join Tfac in January 2011. These are some of the notes Mark made during the visit.

Each day, with the company, begins early with a six o’clock breakfast meeting of the core team, who over coffee and cereal discuss the needs for the day. It helps that all of them are focused on a common goal, namely HIV/AIDS prevention in a country where 14% of the population carry the virus.
Patrick, Tfac’s director, heads for the offices in the British Council Building, whilst Sam and Eric, the two senior facilitators head off to meet the twenty trainees, as they do three times a week.

‘Circle! Circle!’ cries Sam
‘Circle!’ respond the trainees coming together.

‘Gender! Gender!’ calls Eric and the circle checks itself to ensure the circle is balanced.

The training session is a mixture of skills development, reflection and evaluative feedback. Brainstorming is a common tool, as is improvisation and discussion. All are expected and encouraged to participate and a focus ball is smoothly passed around the space with participants taking turns to speak or suggest ideas for furthering the work. Each of the day’s activities, including planning the schedule, is facilitated by a different student. The process is everything and everybody trusts it.

Large sections of the work are videoed and reviewed with the trainees focusing on their use of voice, body and space as well as helping to indicate areas for development and improvement. It’s a rigorous and rewarding approach.

On Monday’s and Thursdays the twenty trainees travel into the schools and communities of Lilongwe to disseminate their work to their own focus group of twenty. In this way 400 people a week are already participating and later this month the trainees will take up placements in the nine teacher training colleges across the length of Malawi to deliver this methodology to all prospective Primary school teachers in the country.

We travel with trainees Ruth and Rashid who have been developing a theatre group with twenty sex workers from Kwale. At our first meeting the focus is on gathering testimony, with the workers using storytelling, short dramatisations and song to collect ideas for a short play. The work has a composite feel but each decision taken in creating the play is agreed on for its authenticity. The session ends with a joyful dance and the handing out of bags of rice donated by Feed the Children. Once this is done Grace, the leader reminds her fellow actors of the need for them to stay healthy and strong so that they can continue their important work.

Three days later we return to see the dress rehearsal of the play that the women have prepared. We crowd into a tiny sun baked yard to see how the story has developed. The rehearsal has caused a huge stir in the community and its standing room only as neighbours, friends and children crowd in to see what’s going on.

Afterwards Grace shows us around the group’s communal garden where sweet garlic, onions and tomatoes are growing. For the women this is a move towards self-sufficiency and an essential contribution to ensuring they remain nutritionally secure and it would not have happened had not the group come together through the drama workshops. Improvements imagined through a rehearsal are being act on by the women as they look to improve their quality of life. It’s inspiring and powerful work.

For more information on the the partnership between Theatre for a Change and Drama St.Mary’s please contact Matthew on: hahnm@smuc.ac.uk

Lost Banditos

Here's the latest in the Drama St.Mary's series of articles about current research and practice in the department. This article focuses on Kasia's work.

Drama St Mary’s has its own physical theatre ensemble “Lost Banditos” consisting of recent graduates and 3rd year students, interested in extra curricular development. It is directed by Kasia Zaremba-Byrne programme director for Physical Theatre. Here she talks about the project

You’re taking the first ever Drama St. Mary’s production Destination GB to the Edinburgh fringe this summer. What’s the motivation for the piece?

The group’s research is concentrating on issues relating to immigration, diversity, inclusion and racism. They explore the following questions: How we look at “the other” in the 21st century. How does our cultural and social upbringing shape our understanding of people who come with very different set of cultural, social, ethical rules? What does it mean to live in multicultural society? Why do immigrants choose Britain as a place to come?

Wow! How do you workshop these huge questions?

The group collects stories, images and opinions and then turns them into improvisations and scenes blending techniques borrowing from clowning, bouffon work and physical theatre. ‘Destination GB’ tells the story of two immigrants on the back of the lorry intercepted by English immigration officials.

What’s the long term plan for the project?

Well in the summer, as you know, the show is going to Edinburgh Fringe Festival for 4 weeks and then, once the students have all finished their degrees, it’s poised to tour regionally around England in the autumn.

I know you’re passionately committed to offering students at St. Mary’s opportunities to participate in production work. Could you tell us a bit more about the new MA Physical Theatre (International Ensemble) that you’ve just created?

The programme is designed to teach theatre in the European tradition with roots in Commedia Dell’Arte, this mode of theatre looks primarily at storytelling, stories drawn from and shared by the community to whom they are performed. It is populist, humanist and anti-elitist.

Who do you hope to recruit?

We’re targeting both domestic and international students with a view to sharing perspectives, cultural and theatrical traditions. As Physical Theatre has an emphasis on the visual rather than the verbal it is not necessary that the students are Anglophone, though the common language will be English. Two international companies will be connected with this degree New International Encounter and Complicite. Company making and touring are vital components of our work at Drama St Mary’s so the MA is focused on the creation of small- scale touring companies who we hope will enrich the theatre scene in the future with new distinctive voices.


For more information on Lost Banditos or the MA Physical Theatre (International Ensemble) please contact Kasia on: zarembabyrnek@smuc.ac.uk

Burnt By The Sun

Up to the National yesterday evening to see the Burnt By The Sun. A stage adaptation of the 1994 Oscar Winning film, adapted with fizz and crackle by master playwright Peter Flannery.

The action is set over one balmy summer day in a dacha on the outskirts of Moscow in 1936 where Kotov, a Bolshevik general of peasant stock and personal friend of Comrade Stalin is reacquainted with and betrayed by Mitia, an intellectual who has returned to the USSR to seek the fragments of the Fin de Siecle culture he once held so dear. As the play unravels it becomes clear that Mitia's sudden disappearance twelve years early was not an escape but a sentence, delivered with Kotov's active approval, to work in counter espionage in Italy and France. It is the start of the purges and after a Chekhovian opening of beautifully played misunderstandings and half expressed emotions, the play shifts into a knife edge thriller, leaving the audience trying to work out who Stalin's man really is?

Compounding the intrigue further is the captivating Maroussia, who quickly became Kotov's child bride once Mitia had disappeared. Her pain at her former lover's return is tenderly captured by Michelle Dockery. When Mitia suggests to Kotov that those who fly too high will always be burnt by the sun - it's unsure whether he's talking about Kotov's own subversive activity or his attraction to Maroussia.

At the heart of the production are two incredible performances. Ciaran Hinds brings intensity and fury to the role of Kotov. It's a huge physical portrayal that almost blows you out of your seat; whilst Rory Kinnear's Mitia is a perfect study of controlled bitterness and neurotic regret. As he did in Philistines, his previous Lyttelton show, Kinnear demonstrates a magnetic ability to speak softly and pull the audience towards him. The contrast between the players couldn't be greater, but makes for a irresistible dynamic and despite the obvious clash of style they are both sensitive enough to inhabit the same stage universe. It's edge of your seat stuff from beginning to end.

I left the theatre breathless, happy and slightly awed at the technical brilliance of the acting.

Milk

Up to Kilburn to the Tricycle cinema to finally catch Sean Penn's incredible Oscar winning performance in Milk. It's a wonderfully compassionate movie about the life and assassination of community activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected politician in the USA.

The work is an important tribute to a movement that prior to this biopic has mostly been defined by Stonewall. Much of the struggle for gay rights has moved forward, but occasionally the arguments prohibiting gays from certain jobs - as primary school teachers, in the military etc. rear there ugly heads and for that reason the film is a reminder of the need to be vigilant against any reactionary force that portrays homosexuality as a threat, rather than a compliment, to family values.

Penn is surely one of the most effecting screen actors of his generation and his intelligence, sensitivity and humanity comes through at every moment. For a man who's built his reputation playing alpha males this a fantastic choice of role and his masterful execution of both the public bravery and the private integrity of Milk makes for a moving couple of hours, but the real achievment is that Penn and director Gus Van Sant manage to stay on the side of metaphor rather than martyrdom, enabling a whole movement to seen through a single psychology.