Theatre 118 has got off to a flying start with their Play of The Week series which has delivered a new production for each week of July. It is a testament to their talent, ideas and utter dedication that they have pulled this off in so short a time without an iota of a hitch. In so doing, they have managed to create a community, a buzz, in an unused office block, just off Glassford Street.
Read MoreThe view from a bridge catches people in different ways. For some it is a salve for that which has come before. For others it offers the promise of a way out. For all it is a displacement activity: some place other than here, now. Kieran Lee-Hamilton’s play explores both strands from near opposite ends of the age spectrum…
Read MoreThe first to disappear in any murder story is the person who has suffered fatal harm. They are reduced to an ethnically defined, gendered, life-styled archetype with a number pertaining to their age stamped on their forehead. Oh, and they are always warm, generous and friendly. To a fault. Which is perhaps the fault that finally denudes them of any real personality and renders them unseen. Woe betide anyone that says “Aye Jim, could be a carnaptious so-and so from time to time” or “Jacky could be obstreperous when the mood took her”. It would add colour to those perfect bones…adding flawed human flesh.
Read MoreThey walk amongst us in ever greater numbers. The Faithfull prefer to believe in some nebulous entity before countenancing us. They don’t care for your opinions. For they are beyond reproach. They walk the path of the righteous and you? Well, you are simply too messy. The thing about religion is that it is a great consumer of time. Time you could better use to consider (let alone act on) climate change, food banks or unethical wars…or any other number of atrocities playing out across the globe now. Say what you like about the Greek gods: Helios at least intervened when his golden cows were slaughtered…
Read MoreIt’s an unenviable task bringing together two lives which shared no earthly bond. And contrivances to achieve such ends rarely convince. But every now and then a performance breaks loose from the threads of the inevitable and becomes something else. The Badly Behaved Poets Society takes two erstwhile non-contiguous lives and skilfully synthesises the coordinates of coexistence. The result is a play which more than convinces, it enthrals.
Read MoreI am delighted to announce that Bring Again The Now Of Then is now available for downloading and streaming. With approximately 30 revisions and 2 read-throughs, it has been the culmination of 5 years’ work. I am really happy with the outcome! Everybody involved has been thoroughly tremendous: Alex Bennett, Paul Gallagher, Jill Korn, Mark Coleman, Stuart Edgar, Andy Jones, Dani Heron, Lauren Downie, Iain McAleese, Julia Ndlovu, and Lorenzo Novani. It is slightly surreal to know the drama is complete. Now, I have to convince people to take a wee gamble and listen to the series. All episodes are available here:
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/bring-again-the-now-of-then-the-bauhaus-in-weimar/id1799557549
Read MoreThis week I received the draft of the first two episodes of Bring Again The Now Of Then…and it sounds amazing! As the introductory music fades we hear the crackling of an open fire and bang…we’re in Gertrud Grunow’s study where she regales us with the story of the spiritual years of the Bauhaus as she goes about her paperwork.
Read MoreSome memories are so vivid, so powerful as to remain with us for all time. Occasionally, living on beyond our own existence. Those memories involving loss go deeper, scarring our conscience and creasing the moments of recall. We are all reluctant collectors of such moments. We seek no claim of them, yet deep down we know a life without loss is like a bag of chips without salt n vinegar. Just not worth the pickle.
Read MoreAs you enter a performance space, more often than not, a set rushes at you with its questions. Where? A back-garden featuring an outhouse and a tennis courtyard. What? Tranquil birdsong belying a certain tension. Who? Well, exactly!
Read MoreFor me it’s walking. It’s when all my best ideas come. Their genesis, their development, and their resolution. It literally never happens whilst I am sitting at the PC. Something about the subconscious, I suppose. One day after watching a documentary on BBC 4, celebrating the centenary of the Bauhaus opening in Weimar, I went for a walk. I think you know what happened next…
Read MoreUniversal evocation. Nice idea if you can nail it. Setting a play in a school gets you 100% audience buy-in. Young or old, we have all been there and have our memories of it. For some it is perhaps the best days of their lives. For most, probably not. VL, written by Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair, is set in a secondary school and the ghost of that place clearly comes flooding back for a good deal of the audience.
Read MoreTheatre sets are fascinating. Sometimes you enter an auditorium and wonder at the world immediately before you as it induces uncertainty. Other times, an unexpected familiarity envelopes you in its warm cocoon. On this occasion, it’s the latter. The pre-millennial décor of a 1990s living room draws the focus: an extrapolation of the room which will readily feature in the home videos. The protagonist, Rob Madge, is the absolute epitome of that generation of kids who grew up in a family where the camcorder is an extension of the parental eye: the era of affordable video technology prior to mobile phones breaching their original USP to usurp the former. Subsequently, we see Rob at the age of 12 putting on a Disney show in their living room where he plays Mary Poppins, Mickey Mouse and a host of other characters. It doesn’t quite go to plan and their father - stage manager and Goofy - gets all the blame but their grandmother is having a ball in a ‘teacup’
Read MoreAs the saying goes: the road to success is littered with failures. But who amongst us, lying in a rain-filled pothole, has ever thought “Ah! My greatest success lies just around the corner!”? Failure is all-consuming and leaves no room for such thoughts…and that road is all the longer and in a greater state of disrepair if you happen to be black and female.
Read MoreTime-shifting is a guaranteed way of manifesting avenues for drama and comedy. Dropping characters into time-zones clearly alien to them yet recognisable to the audience is, at least, amusing. However, it requires a clearly delineated development to control the dramatic irony. Allowing the audience to always be one-step ahead of the character risks a punctured performance.
Read MoreWhat could possibly be more reasonable than making common ground with the company you’re in? Aligning your personal view with your audience is a reasonable thing to do, right? But in theatre, we need conflict! What if we shifted the conflict a few feet from the stage into the guiding mind of the audience? That enough conflict for you?
Read MoreIt was a pleasure, last week, to mingle with an excellent cast for a reading of my new audio play Bring Again the Now of Then on the early years of the Bauhaus. The aim was to establish the correct mix of voices for the piece and, as ever, to ascertain whether another draft of the play is required. Happy to say only small edits are needed.
Read MoreA year ago tonight, Dance The Colour Blue played to its last audience. My first professionally produced play was an entirely unexpected affair…as well as something of a revelatory experience!
Read MoreIt is not easy for art, rooted within one medium, to transcend its source and achieve equal salience within an adjacent medium. The well-trod path from page to stage is littered with an unintended dialectic between literature and performance. Curatorial precision is required at all times. This is perhaps most true when considering the memoir: a medium which confers unto the reader the intimacy of personal insight.
Read MoreThese last few months have been busy ones. Writing a play is often a process of discovery. You have the map of your previous navigation, but it is rarely of much use. And sometimes the things you discover are not immediately apparent from the content on the pages…
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