Rabbie Burns often feels like an elusive character - sinusoidally ephemeral, not with respect to content, but in prominence. You think you’ll get a better sense of him next time around. But if the last decade is anything to go by, turning up the frequency merely turns up the translucency but at the expense of ambiguity. Despite multiple versions of this man, the more you try to delineate the one and true Burns, the more frustratingly opaque he becomes.
Burn by Alan Cumming is a one-man tour-de-force; a packet of energy to burn the surface of the facade in the hope of laying bare the man below. Whether it succeeds depends entirely on the knowledge and relationship you have with Burns as you take your seat.
(Le) Pain is a genre-hopping performative tour of life and bread. I had no idea the etymology of ‘companion’ had latin roots (com: ‘together with’; panis: ‘bread’)…sprinkle with a little French et viola: ‘to break bread with one another’. Lovely. As is this whole show.
She Wolf is a one-woman play on the corrosive effects of living in an unfettered, free-market capitalist society that is imbued with unrelenting masculinist tendencies. The protagonist works hard in an office when an opportunity for promotion presents itself. Being the best in her rank, and well placed for elevation, she applies for the position only to be passed over in favour of an incompetent male candidate who also happens to be related to one of the bosses.
What happens next is a salutary lesson on the consequences of so blatantly subverting the mirage of meritocracy.
Life is different on the 17th floor. The elasticity of the building fabric feels quite unlike that experienced on the 1st or 2nd floors. At this height, it bleeds into daily existence. It facilitates views normally afforded only to gulls but at the parallel 55.8 and the meridian -4.2 (an intersection better known as Glasgow) the proximity to an unleavened sky bows heads and lies heavy on souls. Its deleterious effects, imperceptible by all but the newly arrived, is worn as a coat amongst locals for whom this is but the tapestry of life. Indeed, if gravitational extremities connote any religious sense of place at all, then it is observed…this heaven rains. Heavily. Some bear crosses. Glaswegians bear clouds…a spritz of water enough to dampen (but not snuff out) the joy of life. These are the perfect conditions for black humour. The oil to grease the grinding day. The genius of Vlad Butucea’s Silkworm is we see the genesis of that.
I first met Ruby in 2015 when I enrolled for an MLitt in Playwriting & Dramaturgy at the University of Glasgow. I wasn’t very present in those early days as I was in between jobs whilst supporting members of my family who were in hospital. I was so pleased to meet Ruby. Here was a working class Glaswegian like me…but one who had directed students in plays in the US. Her presence assuaged my fears that I would be confronted with a monolith of middle class mores from the literary and performance world. Hers was a voice of place and warmth…one who reminded me of the good people I grew up with and cared.
Ahead of tomorrow’s launch, the last conversation finds interviewee Jill Korn turn interviewer to speak with Kenny Burnham.
Kenny is a theatre-maker, dramaturg and playwright. His work for stage includes Hollow and They’ll Get You Now You’re Gone. Kenny also featured in the filmed theatre event, A Journey Around My Tenement.
Last Thursday, for the first time since 2019, I stepped once more into a theatre space: James Arnott Theatre at the University of Glasgow. The School of Culture & Creative Arts is a department I know well from my time studying an MLitt there.
On this occasion, I was there to see Nicole Kovacs’ performative meditation on the life of Blanche DuBois - the doomed character from Tennesee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
With the launch date of A journey Around My Room fast approaching, we continue with our sequence of interviews. Interviewee Lorenzo Novani turns interviewer to speak with Jill Korn.
Jill is an actor, director and playwright. She has written several audio plays including Collaboration, Confessional, Galore!, Sea Change and The Escort. Jill was one of the collaborators in the filmed theatre event A Journey Around My Tenement, shown 2020. Jill plays the part Madame de Hautcastel.
The new audio play A Journey Around My Room will be available very soon. In the second of our interviews, interviewee David Sillars turns interviewer to speak with Lorenzo Novani.
Lorenzo is an actor, dramatist and playwright. He has written, staged and performed two plays Cracked Tiles and Loving the Enemy as well as having co-written the filmed-theatre event A Journey Around My Tenement. Lorenzo plays the part of Joanetti.
Within the next week or two, the audio-play A Journey Around My Room will be publicly available. My first play as an audio-cast has been a fascinating experience. Journey is a story of self-discovery, solidarity and survival in an age of turmoil. During the recording sessions I had the privilege of working with a stellar cast and the atmosphere was always convivial. The spirit of these enjoyable sessions was captured in a series of interviews between cast members David Sillars, Jill Korn, Lorenzo Novani and myself resulting in conversations sharing our experiences of bringing the play to life. These interviews take the form of a chain reaction: an actor interviews a fellow actor and they subsequently become the interviewee for another actor.
The first of these conversations features actor, David Sillars, being interviewed by director Kenny Burnham. David is an artist and actor with fifty years of experience in theatre, TV, film and radio. Nominated for the 2016 Michael Powell Award for the Best Performance in a British Feature, he is joint screen writer of the award winning LGBT feature Seat in Shadow. David plays the part of Xavier De Maistre.
I have recently received the final production of A Journey Around My Room…and I am really pleased with it! The actors have done a fantastic job bringing the characters to life and the world in which they live has been beautifully brought to life by sound engineer, Alex Bennett. Interviews between the actors will be published prior to release.
The audio play will be made available on this website very soon. I hope you’ll take the journey!
The recording for the 18th century French drama A Journey Around My Room has been completed. Bringing a landscape to life in a studio is an extraordinary experience…
It’s been a frustrating year for theatre and all those who work in the sector. Having written a couple of plays in the last year, I had hoped that I may be able to stage one of them towards the end of 2021. This was my thinking as 2020 drew to a close.
A Journey Around My Tenement will again be online from tomorrow and be available to view until Sunday 7th March. If you missed it the first time around, now’s the time to catch-up on three different occupants living up one Glasgow stairwell. Written by Jill Korn, Lorenzo Novani and Kenny Burnham.
“terrific - great script - acting wonderful - great fringe show”
“It’s excellent. Recommend watching it.”
“All 3 different from each other to keep me ‘stuck to my screen’.”
“Script was great. Acting was something else! Filming spot on.”
Tickets are a simple donation (as little as £1 - EB constraint), and available here:
A few years ago, I wrote a play that never saw the light of day. It was… not intentional, utterly frustrating and entirely enlightening. As I tend to write with a theme in mind, I conduct a considerable amount of research which often is more enjoyable than it sounds. However, it is always a job to ensure any research does not extrude from the narrative. The analogy of a double decker bus works best: top deck travels the story; inside travels the message. On this occasion, it didn't work: the play upon reflection didn't seem to hang.
During lockdown I was reading all about the Bauhaus. It struck me that the school which opened its doors on 1st April 1919 (a mere 5 months after the Great War) lived a day-to-day existence not entirely out of keeping with how our lives are today. I dwelt on the school’s less well-known formative years between 1919 and 1923. It is the first time I have considered writing something that was not at least in part fiction and I am aware, should I go on to write this, that there is a duty to maintain the integrity of the characters from that period including Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger and Johannes Itten…
During March, Jill Korn, Lorenzo Novani and I started working on an idea tangentially based on a theme we’d developed before as Stark Theatre. The outcome is A Journey Around My Tenement, a theatrical online experience featuring 3 adapted for screen monologues by 3 different occupants living up one close.
Dramaturgy - a word no sooner said than immediately seems to slip our grasp. And yet it is a word that seems strangely familiar too. It should be, for it is a concept we are intuitively aware. It is the difference between a good story told well, and well, just a story. We are all familiar with the non-linear narrative which is an example of temporal dramaturgy: the telling of the drama is re-ordered for the optimal effect of tension. That there is dramaturgy – the curation of effect; a mode of looking.
Space and place play an important role in dramaturgy. Location is defined as comprising both place and space. Space (enactment) is taken to mean the physical actuality; place (an ordering system) refers to the methods and ideas by which individuals understand and employ that space.
