Two in The Bush

With Chris White, who runs our MA Theatre Directing, to The Bush tonight to try and get into John Donnelly's new play The Knowledge, part of a season of plays looking at the current state of education and the first sign that writers are beginning to engage with some of the themes emerging from the Coalition Britain. It's playing in rep with Little Platoons, Steve Waters take on the 'free schools.'

Unfortunately we didn't book in advance and were just pipped in the queue for returns. So we spent our ticket money on the texts and retreated into the pub to catch up. Chris is always good value and full of sense both about theatre and education. He's an eternal optimist, full of new schemes and approaches which made it a delightful evening.

I flicked through the plays on the way home. They seemed really interesting, which made me sorry to have missed the show. I suspect the next few years are going to be a ripe time for a re-emergence of the state of the nation play and that these might come thick and fast as The Big Society bumps and grinds its way forward. After the years of plenty, the theatre is once again in the firing line, with cuts bound to take severe effect in the very near future. New writing will, as it's always done, provide a prism through which to construct a political defence. The early years of New Labour provided a boon time for writers who wanted to conduct a visceral analysis into the alienation of our consumer culture. As the new broom of spending cuts sweeps through the public services the response may be a more direct attack on those who are compiling the legislation.

It could be an exciting time.

.

Preparation for the Police.

We're back in rehearsals for Community Safety Day at Twickenham Stadium in February, adapting the forum play we wrote last year looking at issues around stop and search.

Andy, Katie and Emma are repeating their roles with Michael and Sophie joining the cast. The play went down well last year, but we haven't really looked at it since and of course nobody bothered to script it, so most of the early rehearsals have been trying to remember exactly what we did right last time out. Slowly we began to piece it back together and find new lines and ideas that keep the whole thing fresh. Interestingly it's the new actors who are keener to keep to the original work; whereas the older hands want time to explore and rework sections. The real issue is tone; our audience are all 13 and 14 years old. It's important to keep the characters recognisable, the jokes fast and the learning light. We're well placed to do it, but mustn't become complacent.

The police have requested that we focus on 'joint enterprise' - the idea that if you are with somebody as they commit a crime you're also deemed to have committed the crime. The law's pretty clear and unforgiving on this point. With that in mind James, our protagonist, is much more a bystander to the main events rather than a perpetrator under duress. We've added a new scene to give the audience a sense of James' home life. It might be a bit of a red herring in the initial play, but does give us an opportunity to touch on parental expectations and attitudes towards the law in the discussions afterwards.

.

Apocalypse No!

Off to the Trafalgar Studios to see Lara in the latest Barbershopera extravaganza Apocalypse No! As ever it's crazy, fast paced, silly, slightly out of control and extremely entertaining, good fun. The Wizard of Oz meets Monty Python.

This time God summons four dastardly horsemen to unleash total destruction on the world, but unfortunately Beth, a primary teacher, fighting OFSTED and the merger of her village school with a more results driven techno-college, is mistaken for Death and becomes accidentally coerced into helping Famine, Plague and War to fulfil their mission.

Time spent with Beth, of course, is a deeply humanising experience for the harbingers and they reveal their true colours. War is a bit of a wuss, Famine likes nothing more than a good meal whilst Plague has an almost OCD about cleanliness and won't touch a thing without his marigolds.

Through a breathtaking hour and a half of trials, tribulations and four part harmonies Beth eventually even manages to persuade God, quite literally a holy cow, that goodness does exist amongst the humans, saving both the planet and extra curricular activities in the process. Warmer hearts all round.

.

Letters to a Young Person

The Level 3 students have started their Prison Theatre module with Keith. It's the first time we've run it and it's already producing some interesting debates and ideas. Last week Glyn Banks, a criminologist, came in to give a talk and this week Chris Streeks, a former prisoner, who's spent most of his adult life inside, came to talk about the criminal justice system from a prisoners point of view.

Chris's journey is a remarkable one, he became involved in drama classes, managed to get a scholarship to RADA and now works as both an actor and an spokesman for the Prison Reform Trust. Theatre literally gave him the opportunity to escape and imagine a different way of living. He's got a career, a mortgage, a publishing deal, a family and is looking forward to a bright future.

Most importantly he's clearly relishing every moment of his freedom and is absolutely committed to helping young people who find themselves faced with the same dangers and heading down the same road as he did as a teenager. The thing that makes him most proud is that he is now a tax payer - a net giver rather than taker. He repeated this four or five times during his talk each time fixing his audience in the eye. At first it seemed a surprising criteria by which to judge your success, but it was clear listening that he's had to shrug off a burden of low expectations and deprecations to arrive where he is now. It was an inspiring afternoon affirming the value of well timed initiatives and the power of education to lift disaffected people out of trapped lives.

.

Seasons Greetings.

Off to the National with Eleanor on Tuesday to see a disappointing version of Alan Ayckbourn's Seasons Greetings. Hard to put a finger on what exactly was wrong with it - it's a wonderfully painful cringe of a script, a perfect cast and a beautifully designed set - but something seemed to be amiss.

Perhaps it's the wrong combination of director and material? Marianne Elliot has done some really cracking and inventive work in the Olivier over the last few years, which has elevated her into the pantheon of rare directors, able to make sense of that space. Here faced with a revival of a more recent play in the proscenium arch of the Lyttelton, the direction seemed almost too reverential, with a Chekhovian attention to nuance bringing an over complicated humanity to the characters rather than allowing their monstrous pettiness its full rein in two clear dimensions. Maybe it's just the sheer scale of the set, which slows up exits, entrances and often destroys any sense of surprise? Hard to get a laugh when you see it coming twenty seconds in advance.

The result is we're asked to look at the play from an almost sociological perspective, seeing from afar how the actions of one character affect the others. This works well in Shakespeare and Brecht, but seems very out of place in a in a visceral dark comedy designed to make us squirm in our seats. Ayckbourn is a great writer but we have to be up close and personal in order that we sense our own convoluted desires and pretensions in the twisted cartoon psychology of characters desperate to pretend they have common understanding and the ability to hold it together.

.

Applied Theatre Shows.

Friday was an evening of Applied Theatre work. Firstly the Level 2 students performed the greatest hits from last semester's three political cabaret shows. It was an interesting evening with more staff - including the Principal - showing up. The work felt slightly more edgy than before and the audience less willing to embrace some of the more dangerous material, perhaps most of the audience had seen the work previously, perhaps the new guests changed the dynamic? There was a lot unease at anything which scorned the royal wedding.

Either way it's hard to redo work that was created in response to specific events or moments and occasionally the team struggled to dredge up the sense of urgency and importance that had initially infused the sketches. It's still a fine body of material and a real tribute to the students, both as writers and performers, that they've managed to create a sustainable body of fresh and original work over a three month period. At their best they've been fearless, forthright and subversive, suggestive of a new way forward for the student voice. It's been a very successful module.

On to Studio 3 where the level 3 students performed their verbatim show taken from interviews conducted on the streets of Twickenham. There were some neat observations and studied character work. Overall though it's a work in progress thin on material, a collage of parodied voices rather than a nuanced or themed exploration of what is to live and work here. Still it was enjoyable enough for its own sake and hinted at a larger, more textured work in the future.
.

Central Cinderella.

Off with Tina to Central School of Speech and Drama this evening to see their MA Musical Theatre students' pantomime. Tina's brother Tony has been supervising and together with the company created a new version of Cinderella performed in four quarters. I'm wondering whether it wouldn't be a bad assignment to bring into Applied Theatre as an introduction to popular theatre. The work tonight was blissfully engaging, fun filled and unapologetic. Unsurprisingly the students seemed to love the licence.

The most impressive part of the evening was how proud everybody was to be associated with both the production and the institution. We were greeted warmly by the front of house who kept attentive to us whilst we waited to go in, before being shown with calm, confident smiles to our seats. There was no sense of competition or precociousness, just a genuine desire to put the audience at the heart of the evening.

We still haven't quite got this aspect of our work right at St Mary's where the foyer is a crush on show nights, the audience are not allowed access to the auditorium until the last moment and commands are barked out over loud speakers or through unnecessary mics.

I'm equally unsure that our present policy, of selling tickets a week in advance by 'mugging' people as they enter the refectory rather than through a sensibly run box office, serves us well. It does provide publicity beyond the print material that circulates around but I'm not sure it wins us many friends outside of the department and perhaps it even occasionally antagonises other members of the college community? I wonder whether a longer game, publicising a season of work in advance and having tickets available for all our work at once, might help us to establish the theatre as an essential part of the University's cultural life and make us seem less ragged and unorganised?

.