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Category: Backstage


Mutiny!

Filed Under: Backstage, Pitcairn, Rehearsing by Jon — Comments Off
15th August 2014

Jack Tarlton

Pitcairn‘s director, Max Stafford-Clark, likes to use improvisation to help actors immerse themselves in their characters and situations. But he doesn’t usually put himself in the firing line… Here’s actor Jack Tarlton’s rehearsal blog. 

Being a True and most Accurate account by Jack Tarlton of the Treacherous and Convoluted Rebellion onboard Out of Joint

It is only a couple of days into the voyage of rehearsals for Richard Beans new play Pitcairn, and mutiny is in the air. The play chronicles the aftermath of the mutiny on the Bounty, and the attempt by Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers to establish a new life on the incredibly isolated island of Pitcairn.

Our director Max Stafford-Clark produces his well thumbed pack of playing cards and passes them around the table where the company is sat working line-by-line through the play. Each of us has to take a card without allowing anyone else to see which card we have. If it is a red suit then we remain loyal to Max and the rehearsal process. If it is black then we are mutinous. The higher the card the more loyal or rebellious we are. The lowest is 2, the highest 10. My card is Black 9.

Max says that between now and press night, some six weeks away, rebels who have drawn a black card must somehow cause an outbreak of mutiny. All options are open. “You could try to replace me with Sir Peter Hall if you want” Max advises. The loyal reds must try to stop the uprising. There is also an informant amongst us as the Joker was included and whoever selected this card must try to find out when the revolt is scheduled to take place and tell Max.

With one of the highest black cards in the room this makes me responsible for planning what form the mutiny will take. I will have to subtly work out who my fellow mutineers are, while avoiding giving any indication to any loyalists and must at all costs not reveal my plans to the informant. Not convinced that smuggling in the former Artistic Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre to take over rehearsals is entirely feasible and with at least six weeks until we open I decide to play the long game, waiting to see if anyone will reveal their hand first.

It’s odd as these first few days of rehearsal are the very important time when you get to know your new cast mates and bonds and friendships slowly start to develop. Now though, there is another parallel game of secret relationships being played out in the tea breaks and lunch hours.

I have another job at Latitude Festival this weekend, and so I leave rehearsals on Thursday evening to drive to Suffolk. I discover I feel a sense of release that I do not have to think of the mutiny for four days, and it is definitely the responsibility of that as opposed to the work on the play itself that I feel freed from.

Upon returning on Monday morning though I discover that the deadline for the uprising has been drastically shifted to this coming Saturday. Probably a wise decision – what would happen if half the company didn’t turn up for the first night?

I now have to act fast. I decide that Saturday itself will be the day of the uprising. You’ll be hard pressed to find an actor that wants to rehearse on a Saturday, so this will hopefully give me the best leverage and perhaps even offer the possibility of turning a few low-numbered reds. This is my version of Fletcher Christian’s promise of the wonders of Tahiti to those onboard the Bounty.

I get bolder in dropping the subject into conversation and am fairly confident that I have found my first ally, Henry. I tell him that I am going to try to get this Saturday off for the mutineers. If we get enough on our side we will meet at a café near the rehearsal rooms and phone to say that we aren’t coming in. He gives me Siubhan and Adam’s names as probable mutineers. That makes four, but will that be enough to stage a daring raid on Max Stafford-Clark’s authority? And all the time I am worried that I could be talking to the informant.

Then suddenly, an unexpected opportunity opens up. Asking around I find myself in with a small nucleus of loyalists, including Adam and Naveed. I lie and say that I am a Red 4 and ask red Adam if he knows of anyone who is against us. He gives me a list of those he is pretty sure are rebels. Henry and Siubhan are there as are Lois and Ash. Blatantly asking Siubhan if I can borrow a pen and paper I write these names down, in the same fashion that a list of potential mutineers’ names were discovered inscribed on paper on Tahiti before the mutiny.

But this means that the Reds are compiling names. So I decide to bring things to a head and send an email to my potential co-conspirators, very aware that I am taking a huge risk in exposing my plan to someone who might not be a mutineer.

I’m Black 9. I’ve got in with Adam and Naveed, both Red 6 and they think I’m one of them, but they are onto us and think we are going to do it on Saturday morning. I propose we meet Wednesday morning (tomorrow) at 9.30am in the rehearsal room hopefully before the others are there. We barricade the door and don’t let anyone in unless Max agrees to give us Saturday morning off. Or if Max is in his office we take him hostage and do it there. Others can choose to join us. Who’s in?

Jack

By the end of the day I have confirmation from all of them – a wink, a pat on the back or a shared nod, and Lois tells me she thinks that Vanessa and Cassie could also be on our side. Leaving rehearsals that day I think that we had a solid plan, but am then hit by a broadside. I check the next day’s call on the way home – Max is not in until 12pm tomorrow.

Should I postpone? I fear that this will give the Reds time to flush me out. And so –

I just checked the call for tomorrow and Max is not in until 12pm, so change of plan. I assume that we’ll take a tea break just before Max arrives… As soon as Max arrives we lock him in the rehearsal room with us. If there is anyone not in our group still in the room then (and to confirm out group is Jack, Sam, Lois, Ash, Siubhan and Henry) then when I say “It’s Time” we walk them calmly to the door and barricade it behind them. We all remain inside the room.

Don’t do anything until I say “It’s Time.” We will then issue our demands – this Saturday off – and allow anyone who wants in to join us.

I go to bed knowing that tomorrow will bring either triumph or humiliating defeat. And then I dream about it all night.

By the time I get to work I have received confirmation from all but Siubhan. The first couple of hours are spent continuing to work in detail through each line of the play with our Assistant Director Tim, but I find it very hard to concentrate, constantly glancing at the time with a growing sense of unease as it gets closer to 12pm and Max’s arrival.

“Ok we’ll take a tea break there.” Tim says.

It’s time.

"Traitor!" Adam Newington sees the mutiny through the rehearsal room door.

“Traitor!” Adam Newington sees the mutiny through the rehearsal room door.

Except that Siubhan, Ash and Henry have just wandered out of the room along with the bulk of the company. That’s not what we agreed! And there is still no sign of Max. Sam and Lois remain, and we exchange furtive glances and talk in hushed tones. Vanessa remains inside the room, checking her phone. Is she one of us? Sally our stage manager is on her computer. Tim walks back in. Sam, Lois and me look innocent. I can feel a knot in my stomach. And then a car draws up. Max is getting out. He’s entering the room. I’m approaching Sally. My throat feels dry. “Could I talk to you outside please?” I’m shutting the door behind her. Pulling heavy boxes over to barricade the door. I’ve just shouted “It’s Time!”

The first surprise is that Tim is suddenly telling Max “This is it! This is the Mutiny. We’re holding you hostage!” and tying him up with a skipping rope. By complete good fortune, he’s one of us! And Vanessa too! Adam is calling me a traitor through an open window. Then, there’s a banging on the fire door, those faithful to Max are trying to break in to save their director. Lois is there, making sure they don’t succeed. Some people have managed to slip in through the main door. Cutlasses have appeared from nowhere and my fellow mutineers are brandishing them to hold people back.

And I’m on a chair, shouting our demands – either Max agrees to give us Saturday off or we hold him here indefinitely and rehearsals will not be allowed to continue. He says that our writer Richard Bean is scheduled to work with us this weekend so that is out of the question. He asks Tim for his advise. “I’m a mutineer, I have to say we should have the day off!”

Eventually a compromise is reached. Max might give us a week on Saturday off, to go to the National Maritime Museum instead. This is a very watered down version of what I was demanding, but the reality of the situation is now piercing the adrenalin of the revolution. How long can I keep this up for? We’ve got to actually do some work at some point today. The plan worked. I’ve led the insurrection. But we need Max’s word. On the back of my script I hastily scrawl

“If rehearsals go well, you will give us Saturday 2nd August off (to go to the Maritime Museum) & let us know by Monday 28th July.”

Our director signs MAX in bright yellow highlighter pen. We untie him and everyone allowed back into the room.

Then the truth is revealed – the reason that Siubhan never answered my last email and left the room was that she thought I was the informant trying to incriminate her. But the biggest shock is Ash. The reason he left was because he was the Joker in the pack. I had allowed the spy into our very midst. His plan was to leave at the tea break and intercept Max’s car on the way in and warn him. Having played it so coolly throughout though, at the very last minute he thought he probably had enough time to go to the shop for a drink. By the time he was back it was too late, his mission failed. His captain was taken and the mutinous dogs were in control.

Henry had just forgotten.

Postscript

In the end we went to the National Maritime on Friday 1st August. And were all called into rehearsals the next day.

.

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Love and a Bottle – the making of a restoration comedy

Filed Under: Backstage, education, Rehearsing, Uncategorized, Writing by Jon — Comments Off
2nd July 2014

Love and a Bottle email

See this show for £6. Use the code OOJ when booking. Performances at Greenwich Theatre on 9, 12 or 14 July  Book tickets.  

Max Stafford-Clark and writer Stella Feehily are working with students from LAMDA drama school on their final year show – a major rewriting of the “lost” restoration comedy Love and a Bottle by George Farquhar. Here we talk to Max and Stella, and below you can read the experience of one of the young actors, Joseph Prowen.

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“We sent one of the students, who plays a beggar, to Finsbury Park station to beg – he wasn’t allowed to come back until he got at least 50p! It took him about three quarters of an hour and he said it was a mortifying experience. But when he came back, he played the scene completely differently”

Max Stafford-Clark and Stella Feehily talk to us about the process of creating Love and a Bottle and working with LAMDA students

What was it about the play made you want to rework it?

SF I’d read Love and a Bottle and loved it. It seemed like the perfect project to work with LAMDA students on. It’s young and full of spirit. The females in it are also resourceful, strong and very, very funny – that’s the other reason I wanted to do it. It’s quite sassy. Max had asked me to do it and I said the only way I would is if I could do it with LAMDA.

MSC Farquhar gives identities to his characters and he also gives them an emotional existence. Stella has done just this through workshopping the piece, especially with a character called Mrs Trudge, who she has since renamed Mistress Endwright. She’s gone from a fifteen line part to having one of the biggest parts in the play. By doing this, Stella has really released a whole emotional strand of the play.

What does the process involve? How do you begin?

SF Well Max has actually worked with LAMDA students before on a verbatim play called Mixed Up North, which was written by Robin Soans. Max and Robin went up north and interviewed locals and that formed the basis of the play. Whereas this project was quite different – I had this ancient text which I had to try and make sense of to begin with. Then I had an idea that because there were so many different characters, it would be best to conflate them all – I cut the character of a playwright named Lyrick and instead gave that role to Roebuck – which meant that we actually brought the play much closer to the autobiographical account of Farquhar’s first visit to London. So by the time we had our first proper rehearsal I already had a draft of this new version. From there, we started to cut the play – it needed to be a lot leaner. Once we’d done the cutting, we went through the process of casting, and once we knew who was playing who, I started to write each character to match the students’ personalities. So the creative process really sprung from the students’ differing personalities and writing each character to suit them. Joseph, for example, is a talented musician, so I have adapted his character Roebuck to play the violin.

How has it been working with LAMDA students?

SF Having the opportunity to knock the piece around with enthusiastic, talented drama students was essential in helping me write this play. I would ask them to do silly things to help me which I perhaps wouldn’t ask professional actors to do; they would run around the room and try out different accents, which really helped me envisage where the energy should be in the scene. Coming from an improvisational background myself, that is exactly what I wanted – for people to say yes, let’s go, let’s try that. They’re such a warm bunch of actors, and we loved seeing them develop so much from the initial readings to seeing them create these gorgeous, hilarious characters and speak the language so fluently and with ease.

We sent one of the students, who plays a beggar, to Finsbury Park station to beg – he wasn’t allowed to come back until he got at least 50p! It took him about three quarters of an hour and he said it was a mortifying experience. But when he came back, he played the scene completely differently; the humility that he brought to it was just extraordinary.

What are the differences between working with student actors and working actors?

MSC I would say it’s very similar. The first job you have as a director is to create a company – and the majority of that has been done for you because you’re presented with a company when coming to LAMDA. The second thing is to be able to harness the actors’ enthusiasm for the project, which has to be led by my own enthusiasm and the ability to turn the energy of discovery into the energy of performance. Immersing the students in the historical background was fun for both of us, and it was a learning curve for me as well as for them.

How important are drama schools in the role of new writing?

MSC Well the facilities are marvellous. Having the opportunity to unearth a hidden gem means we’re also restoring it to the canon and saying this play is worth considering, which will be a considerable service to the whole theatre community that LAMDA has expedited.

“Stella’s created a more well-rounded play, with clearer resolutions and she’s fleshed out the characters”

LAMDA_LongProject040713_imageRichardHubertSmith-2908

Joseph Prowen, a graduating BA (Hons) Professional Acting student at LAMDA, tells us about his time working with Stella Feehily and Max Stafford-Clark on a new version of George Farquhar’s Love and a Bottle, showing at Greenwich Theatre on 9, 12 & 14 July.

We began the LAMDA Long Project – an opportunity for students to work with a professional writer and director to produce the first draft of a new play – in our second year.  The process essentially involves research, readings, actioning and improvisation. We had a couple of sessions back in January last year, purely to talk about the play and do a read-through with Max and Stella. From there, everybody had the opportunity to read for each part – Max would say ‘tomorrow this will be the cast’, and then it would change every day. You’d then go home, look at the scene you were going to read, think about the character you were going to be reading for and do any relevant research that needed to be done. It’s really lovely to think that the end product of this play will have been made by us, and that Stella took inspiration from improvisations we did in rehearsals. Everyone had a chance to contribute something to each character.

Working with Max and Stella isn’t just an interesting dramatic process; a lot of the preparation was in the historical research. On our first day, Max did a quiz with us – what happened this year? When did this happen? When was this battle? We’d be asked to carry out some research around the period, or about different parts of Ireland – we might be asked to do a presentation on the Battle of the Boyne one week or John Dryden the next. You’ve really got to turn up having done your research, which is great as it encourages you to work hard.

Unlike a lot of new writing that happens, we had a leg up in that we took a play that already existed, Love and a Bottle, which was George Farquhar’s first play. The play is about a young Irishman named George Roebuck, who I play, and is based on Farquhar. When we got it, Love and a Bottle was great – youthful and exciting – but it felt like it needed some work. So what Stella did with us was to rework it and what you will see when the show opens is an amalgamation of Farquhar and Feehily. Stella’s created a more well-rounded play, with clearer resolutions and she’s fleshed out the characters, making them three-dimensional and much more human.

When we perform Love and a Bottle, there will only be a handful of us playing the same part as we were last year in rehearsals. So going into it again this summer has been like entering into a completely different play: workshopping a piece really is an ever-changing process, which I love. It’s such a rare opportunity for an actor to be able to completely immerse yourself in a process like this – especially with funding cuts. This is also our first major collaboration of this scale, which is great as the training at LAMDA is very much geared towards working as an ensemble, so this is something that’s perfect to do. We really felt like a company this year.

Love and a Bottle opens at Greenwich Theatre on Wednesday 9 July in collaboration with Out of Joint. To book tickets please call 020 8858 7755 or book online at www.greenwichtheatre.org.uk

 

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This May Hurt A Bit – interview with composer Charlotte Hatherley

Filed Under: Backstage, This May Hurt A Bit by Jon — Comments Off
7th April 2014

The incidental music in This May Hurt A Bit has been specially composed by Charlotte Hatherley. Charlotte has released three albums in her own name, was a member of rock band Ash for many years and more recently has played guitar on tour for Bat for Lashes and KT Tunstall. She also DJs. Here she talks about new directions, life on the road and writing for theatre.

Charlotte Hatherley

What are you listening to at the moment that you’d recommend?

I’m listening to ‘Hearts To Symphony’, the great new record from Carly Paradis who you might have heard playing on Clint Mansell’s Moon soundtrack.

How did you get involved with the play?

A playwright friend of mine in New York put me in touch with Stella Feehily. Stella had punk pop guitar music in mind for the play – my friend thought we’d make a good fit. We met up and, despite never having written music for a play before, I was immediately seduced by Stella’s enthusiasm and the idea of entering a completely new musical arena was very exciting.

What did Max and Stella ask from you?

Initially the references were The Pixies and Violent Femmes, quirky punk pop. Max wanted the play to end with an epic version of ‘I Vow To Thee My Country’ and referenced Hendrix’s ‘The Star Spangled Banner’. Max wanted me to sit in on rehearsals as much as possible so I could really understand the politics and emotional punch of the play.

With incidental musical, there’s a practical purpose – to cover the scene changes. But it also allows you to set a mood, an atmosphere, a pace. What are you trying to do in that respect with the music in this play?

Yes, essentially you’re trying to get from A to B within a 20/30 seconds time frame. Some scene changes require rhythm to keep the pace up whilst the set gets moved around, so I wrote the guitar tracks with that in mind. This May Hurt A Bit is very funny, but it’s also moving and thought provoking – the music can’t be too invasive in those moments so I introduced different textures to help reflect the mood.

The play is about the NHS – has it made you think about that, about healthcare generally? Have you had any notable encounters with the NHS?

I had meningitis when I was 3, and if it wasn’t for the NHS I probably wouldn’t be here – but I was too young to remember much about it. Working on this play was an education. I was aware of the NHS going through hard times, but it wasn’t until I sat in on a talk organized by Max and Stella with Dr Jacky Davis (who wrote NHS SOS) that I really understood the terrible mess it is in, and the damage political parties across the board have inflicted upon it.

Have you seen much theatre? Have you seen anything that you’ve particularly loved?

My mum is an actress and I spent a good part of my childhood climbing on the concrete sculptures in front of The National Theatre. My dad is also a playwright, so I’ve always been attached to the theatre. In my 20s I dated Michael Cerveris, an incredible stage actor from NYC. I saw him perform as Hedwig in ‘Hedwig and The Angry Inch’ MANY times! Most recently I saw Matilda in London, which I LOVED.

What are you up to at the moment now we’ve got This May Hurt A Bit up and running?

I’m releasing a record under the name ‘Sylver Tongue’ this year. It’s about to be mastered.

Why Sylver Tongue? And what’s the music like?

I’ve released 3 solo records under my own name. After my third record came out I was in need of a big creative break. Natasha Khan swept me up and asked me to tour with her band, Bat For Lashes, and I spent three years on the road. I came back to writing with a totally new perspective and a very clear idea of the kind of record I wanted to make. I felt constrained by the familiarity of the guitar so I wrote the entire record with keyboards and beats and hooked up with producer James Rutledge who brought his precision cool and sonic boom to the songs. It felt new, it looked new, so it made sense to call it something new. The music is very cinematic and emotive. I’m deeply proud of it.

You’ve toured a lot with a number of acts. Ash, Bat for Lashes, KT Tunstall. What do you like about life on the road? And, how much creative input do you have a as a musician playing others’ music?

I started touring the world at 18 so ‘the road’ has been a big part of my life. I get itchy if I say still for too long. I’ve had such incredible experiences on tour and have forged some wonderful friendships – I can’t think of a better way to make a living. I’ve always been comfortable taking a back seat and playing a more supportive role in a band. As a solo artist I understand the heat of carrying your own music and enjoy stepping aside where the only focus is on playing your instrument as well as you can every night. I have only toured with creatively open artists who encourage musicians to contribute to the cauldron of sound onstage, so I’m always creatively fulfilled.

When you’re performing your own music, what are you like on stage? Do you look forward to it? What’s your persona?

My Sylver Tongue stage persona is a (fake) fur and leather wearing Mad Max warrior woman! So when I perform I have to tap into that part of my personality – I have myself down as an introverted person but everyone has a chainmail clad Tina Turner inside of them, dying to get out. Playing live for me now is like being in the Thunderdome – and who wouldn’t look forward to that?

www.charlottehatherley.com @iamsylvertongue

About This May Hurt A Bit

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The NHS and me

Filed Under: Backstage, education, News, This May Hurt A Bit by Jon — Comments Off
28th February 2014

We asked the cast of This May Hurt A Bit: Why is this play important? 

Stephanie Cole and Natalie Klamar

Stephanie Cole

I’ve had a lot of contact with the NHS over the last few years – my husband dying of cancer, my mother of strokes, my brother has schizophrenia; so I’m very much aware that all is not well. I’m also aware that there are wonderful people working in it on the ground and that there are not so wonderful people running it which is happening in many areas of our lives, from the post office to the railways to the NHS.

Plays are there to make you look at things afresh and of course to entertain you but also to make you think and in this case it’s a very entertaining play, a very moving play, it’s very funny but along the way you glean information, a lot of it – rather like burrs on a country walk. At the end of the walk you suddenly find yourself stuck with burrs all over which you didn’t realise you’d acquired as you brushed through the edges.

My character has the last line of the play which is ‘we mustn’t give up Gina, we must fight, there’s still time’ and I think that’s really important.

Natalie Klamar

It’s so rare to be a part of a project that can change the way people think about such an important issue. Sometimes when you watch the news you can feel distanced from what they’re talking about if you’ve not been directly affected by it, but by creating characters that the audience can identify with and warm to; the subject matter can hit home in a way that facts and figures sometimes can’t.

Jane Wymark

What worries me is sleepwalking into losing the NHS because we’ve had it all our lives. So we take it for granted and we don’t know what it would be like without it and we’re brainwashed into thinking it’d all be marvellous and it wouldn’t.

As it stands, the NHS is still the best in the world for acute medicine. Where the system tends to fall down is chronic illness, when things go on and on. I agree with the message of the play it’s just so frightening about private finance initiatives and being stuck into this debt.  I’m so shocked to see it happening here.

People forget the enormous numbers of people who have very good treatment on the NHS every day, that aren’t dying in Mid Staffs and aren’t complaining about their GPs. There is a hell of a lot of extremely good care and that just sort of fades out.

Brian Protheroe and William Hope

I was 4 years old when the NHS came into being. It has benefitted me for the whole of my life and to find that private organisations are gradually being allowed to profit from this public service is both personally bewildering and distressing.

William Hope

As far as I know it’s the first theatrical production that has addressed the Health and Social Care Act, which is so complex and detailed. We’re slowly learning more but the principal fact is that it’s laying the ground to privatise as many components of the NHS as possible. I’m not sure that people are aware of the extent of it and probably this play will provoke a huge number of questions and shine a light on some of the murkier areas that the media should be picking up, on as well as members of the public.

Frances Ashman

Everybody knows that the NHS has been going through some really difficult times but somehow it goes over our heads because when we’re ill, as long as we’re treated, we’re “alright Jack”. I think this play’s important because nobody’s talking about it. There is nobody in this country not affected by what is happening to the NHS. All you need to know is you’ve been lied to. It affects all of us and I think we all have a responsibility to try and get together and stand against the people that are trying to take an institution that we’ve had for 65 years.

Tristram Wymark

The play is important to me because my sister (fellow cast-member Jane) and I have spent the last 7 years very involved with my mother’s health care. We’ve experienced the National Health close up and they have been wonderful, virtually every stage. Of course everyone has some bad experiences but those are outweighed by the amazing things these people do. I’m constantly heartened and overjoyed to see how much people in the health system care because it’s certainly not the money that keeps them going. The piece is important because there is a brilliant message in there that we need to get out there.

Hywel Morgan

‘Aneurin Bevan? Architect of the NHS and my political hero?! I’ll bite your arm off.’ That was what I told my agent before I’d even read Stella Feehilly’s script for ‘This May Hurt A Bit’.  Despite having died twelve years before I was born, coming from South Wales, Nye Bevan is a massive figure. Robert Thomas’ life size bronze at the end of Queen Street in Cardiff appeared during my teenage years and his legacy was emblazoned across the plinth: ‘Aneurin Bevan 1897-1960: Founder of the NHS.’

The truth is if we lose the NHS we lose the greatest thing this country has ever created. Most of us won’t realise how important it is until it’s gone.

Read Hywel’s rehearsal diary

 

 

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Kinnock, Campaigners and a trip to hospital – a rehearsal diary for This May Hurt A Bit

Filed Under: Backstage, Rehearsing by Jon — Comments Off
27th February 2014

Hywel Morgan plays NHS founder Nye Bevan in This May Hurt A Bit. Here’s his personal rehearsal journey.

‘Aneurin Bevan?, Architect of the NHS and my political hero?! I’ll bite your arm off.’

The statue of Aneurin Bevan in Cardiff.

That was what I told my agent before I’d even read Stella Feehilly’s script for ‘This May Hurt A Bit’. Despite having died twelve years before I was born, coming from South Wales, Nye Bevan is a massive figure. Robert Thomas’ life size bronze at the end of Queen Street in Cardiff appeared during my teenage years and espite sometimes being crowned with a traffic cone the morning after an International, his legacy was never obscured: ‘Aneurin Bevan 1897-1960. Founder of the NHS.’

Over the years and particularly under the current government, Nye’s excoriating quotes about the Tories and the NHS have become seared into my memory and it brought tears of joy to my eyes when Danny Boyle put the NHS centre stage at the Olympics. ‘Now let them try and privatise it’, I thought. But the Health and Social Care Bill, despite being widely reported as deeply flawed and heavily amended by both Houses of Parliament still got through.

I’d seen Max’s production of ‘The Permanent Way’ in 2005 and left the theatre burning with anger about the effects of privatisation on the railways. If I’m honest, I’d paid scant attention to the subject beforehand. I urged everyone to see it and foisted my programme playscript on people after the run had closed. From the first speech in the play, I knew ‘This May Hurt A Bit’ had the potential of sending out a similar message about the NHS.

The odds are stacked against me: Nye was ten years older than me and a little more portly in stature (a consequence of his reputation as a socialist and Bon Viveur, no doubt.) Secondly, although his political quotes are almost as well known as Churchill’s, his speaking voice is quite individual. For a barrel-chested Welshman, it was very high pitched, littered with peculiar traits and a stammer to boot. I pored over archive footage, united and actioned the speech then took myself off to Crystal Palace park to work on it. I banked that no-one would come near a ranting Welshman in the middle if a maze on a windy Thursday afternoon and I was right. By sunset, I had something approaching Nye’s extraordinary fluting pitch and delivery and a good sense of the desire to shame the BMA that drives the speech. Thankfully it was only after I’d read the speech that Max told me that they’d been workshopping the play at the National Studio since 2008 and that Neil Kinnock had been playing Nye.

I try to forget about auditions once they’re over in case it doesn’t work out. That way madness lies. When the offer comes through on Monday, I’m initially ecstatic then realise that it means my wife will have to take sole care of our little boy while I’m away on tour. He’s just turned one and up until now we’ve been able to juggle work commitments around him. Despite trying not to think about the play, Mellony tells me I’ve been lecturing her about the history of the NHS, Bevan and the threat of privatisation over the weekend. She knows how much it means to me and assures me well find a way to manage. The fact that we’ve got five weeks rehearsing in London is a huge relief. It’ll be March before I go away so we’ve got time to get our heads around it and adjust to both being full time working parents for the first time.

Hywel Morgan in rehearsal

REHEARSALS – WORKING ON THE TEXT

28th January

Day one. Greeted warmly in Welsh by Stephanie Cole who is playing Iris. It’s a lovely ice breaker.

We read through the play. By following Iris’s family, Stella explores the history and ethos of the NHS then events take us on a journey through the NHS in its current form – understaffed wards, overworked staff, fallible computer systems. It’s blackly funny, absurd in places and very sobering. The scenes all have Brechtian titles and Max describes the opening of the second act ‘Bring on the Dancing Nurses’ as a tribute to Danny Boyle’s Olympic ceremony.

29 January

Day two of rehearsals and we’re straight into “actioning” the play. This involves deciding on a transitive verb to describe our character’s intention on each line. A transitive verb is something you do to someone else, such as enlist, or tease, or provoke.

I’d already actioned the opening speech for my audition, but when we confer about the choices I’ve made, Max makes some better suggestions which give the speech much more light and shade. I’ve used actioning before but this really is a lesson from the master. It’s a brilliant framework to work within, and liberating. I wonder if it’s actions, not lines that Johnny Depp has fed into his earpiece!

By the end, Bevan’s slushy, stammering, little cornet of a voice is sweetly chiding and shaming the BMA and rallying the Labour benches with the Spirit of ’45.

REHEARSALS – MEETING THE EXPERTS

31 January

Stella and Max have invited a number of NHS experts to meet us, and today we welcome Dr Lucy Reynolds. Lucy is a Policy Strategist who used to work for large multinational companies in mergers and acquisitions. Having returned to the UK after working abroad she was horrified when she read the Health and Social Care bill and realised its implications: the bill is structured so that the NHS resembles a corporation that is being prepared for a takeover. It is being ‘harmonised’ for integration with large private healthcare insurance companies (in which over 200 sitting MP’s have interests).

If Bevan was the architect of the NHS then John Redwood planned it’s demolition under Thatcher many years ago. New Labour’s love of Private Finance Initiatives meant many new hospitals were built and although the balances didn’t appear on the books because they weren’t government funded, the public were saddled with the debt; but the NHS was further weakened by Alan Milburn who imported the Foundation Trust Hospital model from Spain. This allowed hospitals to act like businesses, to seek investment from private companies and opened the door to further marketisation of some NHS services. The New Health and Social care act utilised this change to widen the bridge of privatisation. David Cameron’s statements about ‘No top down reorganisation’ and ‘We will not sell off the NHS’ bear no relation to the act that was actually passed. It opens the door to ‘Any Qualified Provider’ being able to compete to provide services within the NHS.

Stephanie Cole and Natalie Klamar in rehearsal

The problem is that there is far more admin for both the NHS and the private companies, and the result is that money is being diverted away from patient care. The new system is 1/3 admin costs as opposed to 1/20th under Bevan. Lucy is incredibly passionate, almost shaking with fury as she talks and at the end apologises for ranting at us.  It feels like a fait accompli: that the eventual demise of the NHS is inevitable, especially if the EU signs up to EU/US trade deal, (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership or TTIP). If the NHS is not exempted from this deal it would have to operate within strict EU competition laws, meaning that the section of ‘Any Qualified Provider’ would be thrown open to the huge companies that dominate the US healthcare industry and there’s no way of reversing it.

3rd February

Lucy’s talk on Friday left me feeling quite depressed. Today we met Dr Jacky Davis, a Consultant Radiologist, and she restored my faith a little. Jacky founded the NHS National Health Action party and co-authored ‘NHS: SOS’ which I’ve been reading on the way to and from rehearsals. It has a foreword by Ken Loach and she asks us if we’ve seen his film ‘The Spirit of ’45’. We chorus ‘Yes’ and she beams: ‘Ah well, you’re already enlightened then!’

Jacky’s opinion is that Labour must make a convincing commitment to repeal the Health and Social care act, restore the Health Minister as being the person responsible for delivering a health service and taking on the debts from PFI hospitals into central Government borrowing, thereby putting it on the balance sheets but getting away from the crippling interest rates.

Finally, she tells us that we’ve lost over 50% of hospital beds over the last 20 years. There are huge shortages in acute and mental care wards as a result. The weakest and most vulnerable in our society are paying the price of austerity. Jacky is convinced that the NHS will be a major factor in the 2015 elections and is delighted that we’re doing this play.

4 February

In This May Hurt A Bit, one of the characters has a fit, and the ward staff have to respond. So today Dr Polly Brown, a Junior Doctor, took us through the anatomy of a medical emergency. In the play, “Doctor Gray” is on the ward doing rounds. Being the first person on the scene, she would take charge unless someone of a higher grade arrived, and would call for members of the on-duty Medical Emergency Team.

The Junior Doctor roleplays the situation for us, joining in the scene. Franc, who is playing Dr Gray, and Stella take notes. It’s very jargon heavy – we end up talking in acronyms – but shorthand is needed when time is short, and the emphasis is on a calm response and clear communication.

The thing is, we’ll be acting this out every night, knowing exactly what’s happening to our patient and that he’ll survive. In the real world, we wouldn’t know.

5th February

The most scary day for me so far. Max and Stella have invited Neil Kinnock to rehearsals. Neil is a direct conduit to Nye Bevan. They’re both from Tredegar, Nye was Neil’s hero and Neil is one of mine. Having hoped to join us in the morning he finally bursts into the rehearsal room at 5, throws his head back and booms a four letter word in frustration and apology for the delay. There’s a tube strike and it’s taken him four hours to get from Westminster to Finsbury Park. It’s raining but he’s dropped Glenys off to walk the rest of the way home.

He throws himself enthusiastically into meeting everyone. I shake his hand, which is cold, and introduce myself. ‘Where you from, kid?’ he beams back. It’s like speaking to my Uncle. He banters with me about familiar places and ends up confessing he crashed a car in Skewen once, (not his fault he assures us.)

Neil is here to give me notes on how I’m playing Nye, in front of the entire company. He’s relaxes and staring at me through his glasses. I’m not sure if I know the words yet, and I panic and launch into a torrent of high pitched Welsh shouting. All the subtlety, rhetoric and light and shade that I’ve worked on with Max and Stella goes straight out the window.

Neil is kind, tells me where I’m on the right track, enlightens me on a part of the speech that I’d misinterpreted and gives me notes about Nye’s stammer, which he says was caused by ‘a bastard of a teacher’. He surprises us all by explaining that this speech was delivered in the House of Lords because the commons was bomb damaged and says that Nye ‘always started small and finished big’.

Max gets me to do my party piece of impersonating Tony Blair before we finish. I oblige. Neil chuckles and tells us that cartoonists and impressionists are still having real trouble capturing Cameron because he’s so anonymous.

6th February

Following our roleplay of the MET call (which Stella has now honed into a taut scene worthy of E.R.) today we’re visited by Alan who’s been a paramedic in London for many years. We launch into a scene and within seconds he’s stopped us. ‘Sorry, you just wouldn’t be that rude to members of the public’ he says.

Alan takes us through the whole process from making the phone call to the emergency services to arriving at hospital. We ask Alan about what effect the cuts have had on him. He says there are less hospital beds now which means A&E departments get backed up and are often working way beyond their capacity. As he’s waiting for his taxi at the end, Max starts an exercise in the rehearsal room which involves the use of a lot of expletives. Alan glances back though the door to see Stephanie Cole cursing at other company members. He is horrified, Stephanie is in stitches.

7th February

Dr Louise Irvine was the driving force behind the Save Lewisham Hospital campaign. She explains how, despite being financially solvent, Lewisham Hospital was under threat of closure recently. A nearby Healthcare Trust had gone into administration and the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had tried to downgrade Lewisham Hospital’s A&E in order to balance the books. The move prompted a huge public campaign which culminated in a legal challenge to the government. They won a landmark judgement, the government appealed and lost but the fight is not over – the Government are now trying to amend the law itself. If they manage to do so, it will give the health secretary the power to close any hospital in the country without consultation.

Lewisham is my nearest A&E and they have a fabulous Children’s A&E there so it was lovely to be able to express my deep gratitude to her for saving our local hospital from closure. Turns out Louise is also Franc’s G.P. These are people at the coal face fighting for the longevity of the NHS and gathering huge public support. Louise and all the people in the campaign are living proof of Nye Bevan’s words: ‘The NHS will survive as long as there a folk left with the faith to fight for it.’

REHEARSALS – A DAY AT THE HOSPITAL WITH “JJ”

London’s Whittington Hospital

Today I had the privilege of meeting a man who for me embodies the very spirit of the NHS. ‘I wish you’d been here yesterday’, he tells me, ‘You’d have met someone important.’ He’s referring to Ed Milliband, who’d been at the Whittington Hospital the previous day. John James or ‘JJ’ McConnell has been working in the NHS for thirty years. Smartly turned out in a well-ironed pale blue shirt, black trousers and sensible shoes, he sports an ID lanyard and a small container of hand gel which hangs off his belt.

JJ started off in operating theatres and for the last seven years has been proud to be ‘Front of House’ at the Whittington. From his little cubby hole just off the main entrance to the Whittington, JJ has a panoramic view of everyone that arrives at the hospital. Even before they’ve entered the building, he has been watching patients arrive and assessing if they need assistance. As a result he is often at the front door to greet them as they arrive. He has several types of porters chairs, decorated in hazard tape and postcards of London. ‘to stop taxi drivers taking them by mistake’ he explains.

JJ’s calm demeanour and gentle inquiries mask an expert ability to assess people on sight. His years of experience mean that he gets people where they need to be with the minimum of fuss and the with the maximum of discretion and care. During the couple of hours I spend with him, we deal with several patients, (one infirm, another needing emergency care and a third routine but elderly.) All of them come back to thank him before leaving the Whittington.

What does he think of the cuts to hospitals? He describes a hospital as a body, with A&E at its heart. ‘Once you close the A&E, that cuts off the blood supply to the hospital. You lose the supply of patients to Intensive Care Units so they’re next to go and eventually you end up hacking off all the limbs until there’s nothing left.’ It’s reminiscent of Bevan’s final lines in the play, comparing the NHS to Lavinia in Titus Andronicus.

In his time at the Whittington, JJ’s been voted employee of the year, been invited to Downing St and had glowing letters of praise from people he’s helped. Although he’s proud of these achievements, (he keeps copies in a carrier bag in his locker) he doesn’t crave the attention. ‘I don’t like the thought that people are scrutinising me’ he says, ‘I just want you to go away with the truth.’ I feel impelled to give him a huge hug before I leave. He truly is a gentleman.

 

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Max Stafford-Clark in conversation

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23rd January 2014

On Friday 17 January, to celebrate the launch of his book Journal of the Plague Year, Out of Joint’s founder and director Max Stafford-Clark was interviewed on stage at the Royal Court Theatre by Chris Campbell, the theatre’s literary manager. The event included an extract from the book read by the brilliant actor Danny Webb, and questions from the packed audience.

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The spy in the bag – video

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2nd August 2013

Dawn King was first inspired to write Ciphers by the death of Gareth Williams, the GCHQ-employee who was found dead locked inside a bag in a Pimlico flat. Here she discusses the thoughts – and the play – that the case inspired; and some of her favourite writers.

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Born this way

Filed Under: Backstage, Our Country's Good, Rehearsing by Jon — Comments Off
12th February 2013

Kathryn O’Reilly has returned to Out of Joint to give a widely-praised performance as the ferocious, damaged, and very funny Liz Morden in Our Country’s Good. Here she talks about her character, the play’s messages and her own experiences of the power of theatre.

 “Punishment is not for revenge, but to lessen crime and reform the criminal”. Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845)

It can take one person to help change someone’s life, or steer them in the right direction. When I was at school, and they were trying to chuck me out, I went to my first drama teacher for help. The head of the board of Governors asked me, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” “An actress” I replied. The head scoffed and said “I suppose we think we have another Emma Thompson on our hands.” My drama teacher was very encouraging and I found drama such a positive way to channel my energies.

Theatre has had a massive and positive impact on my life. Prior to training at LAMDA, I spent years working in forum theatre and role playing in equality and diversity work. I worked for the NHS, the Police, and ran my own children’s theatre company.

Our Country’s Good asks massive questions about society, crime and humanity that I find absolutely fascinating. Its great theme for me is the power of theatre in changing, inspiring and educating lives. I believe passionately in this power of the theatre and the arts.

I play a character called Liz Morden, a convict who comes across as pretty intimidating when she first joins the cast of The Recruiting Officer in the play. Liz had virtually no chance from the off. Her journey from victim to perpetrator is incredibly interesting. Of course, not every person who suffers like Liz turns to crime and ends up behind bars but it is easy to see how it happens. And it makes sense to Liz too: by the time in the play when she is arrested for stealing food, and put into prison within the colony – a prison within a prison – and facing death, it seems inevitable, as if everything in her life has been leading up to this.

Liz’s story is timeless. She was born into extreme poverty, with a broken home life and no formal education. A lack of positive role models, of love, care, affection and encouragement. She has to grow up very quickly. She’s betrayed and abandoned by her family. She enters a life of crime. Sentenced and imprisoned.

When she was still a child, her own father betrayed her: he shifted the blame to her very publically for a theft in order to save his own skin. She was beaten and humiliated in the street , with no one running to her aid, and so this traumatising experience further fuelled in her feelings of low self-esteem, a confused sense of identity, fear and rage and . In that moment of betrayal, her chances and choices in life were suddenly and dramatically shrunk. Liz also feels deeply unattractive. Her own brother tells her to her face she is ugly and he plants the seed that she can earn money by going on the game, suggesting that, after all, most men don’t look at the mantelpiece. This is further rammed home by her pimp who tells her as she ages to supplement, or “spice”, her dwindling earnings by following in her father’s footsteps to be a “nibbler”, or small-time thief.

It’s easy to see, with this kind of cycle, how the idea came about that crime was (to use modern parlance) in the genes; that there was a criminal mind, even a “criminal class”. In the play, we hear Captain Tench describe the convict’s as “born that way”. Back then, when Our Country’s Good is set, the Government dealt with this criminal class by initiating the biggest single exile in history, loading them on a ship and sending them half way around the world. Out of sight, out of mind. Thinking this would eradicate them. Liz is described as “foul mouthed and lower than an animal” by officers. Times change, but the language used to write off a whole section of society doesn’t sound all that alien to our own era.

But Liz has a hero, in the figure of the progressive Governor of the colony, Captain Phillip. Whether you believe “act like a king and people will treat you like a king” or “treat someone like a king and they will act like one”, belief and behaviour has to start somewhere. Phillip believes this. That we are born free, that everyone is equal – and then life happens. “Treat her as a corpse and of course she will die” he says. Instead, “try a little kindness”. As I said, it can take one person.

Liz was played by Linda Bassett in the original production 25 years ago (no pressure!). I see her as my most prestigious role to date and I’ve had to dig deep to portray her. As an actor you have to find the character you’re playing, from the text, all the facts about them, the events, given circumstances, goals and obstacles, what other characters say about them, the language your character uses, all these go into building your creation. Working with Max Stafford-Clark he also requires us to carry out research, reading books and reporting back on interesting findings, he also sets improvisations as well as facilitating a delving into one’s own personal stories from which a parallel can be drawn and used effectively. For example, to help me find the sense of empowerment Liz gets from taking part in a play, Max asked me in rehearsals “when did you fall in love with theatre?”. I was thirteen, playing a Jet Girl in West Side Story (with my first drama teacher directing it). It was completely thrilling.

I love Liz. She has integrity, humour, and she’s a survivor. I hope you’ll enjoy meeting her too.

Follow Kathryn on Twitter @kathryn1oreilly 

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Forgotten People

Filed Under: Backstage, Uncategorized, Writing by Jon — Comments Off
10th January 2013

Barney Norris in a production of Through The Leaves

Fear of Music writer Barney Norris on rewrites, the army, and the strange fame of Andover.

In 2008 I was in a play called Through the Leaves by the German writer Franz Xaver Kroetz, in a production directed by Alice Hamilton, the director of Fear Of Music. I hadn’t previously encountered Kroetz, Germany’s most frequently performed living playwright, and his work fascinated me. I thought Through The Leaves was incredible: a portrait of a failed affair between a butcher and a roaming drunk (that was me) that put life on stage and demanded we pay it attention. I thought, I want to write a play like that. I’d just written my first short play, a piece called At First Sight about the memory of a failed affair, which was very romantic, and wanted to try something different. This uncompromising portrait of real life, not commenting, just showing, struck me as an exciting model.

The story of Fear Of Music started with two ideas. Firstly, I thought I could write about the experience of sharing a bedroom with your brother; secondly, I wanted to explore an image Alice’s mother Jane had put in my head. Jane told me that on the day she had moved out of her childhood home, the last time she looked into the kitchen, she had seen herself and her family five years earlier in the room – not remembered it, but seen the memory taking place in front of her eyes. I thought that was an amazing trigger for a play, so I wrote about two brothers refracted through the lens of memory. Alice didn’t think it was very good. I did a workshop and a reading and discovered she was right. The play went on the back burner, a story without impetus I put in a drawer.

Then, in 2010, I walked past an army recruitment poster that said ‘this is my life: I want to do more with it than flip burgers’, and knew at once that I had to go home and get back to writing. The slogan struck me as an incredibly offensive piece of bullying – a targeted belittling by the state. The idea that the Army marketing department might play on the insecurities of ordinary people suffering from a lack of opportunity in order to put them in the line of fire seemed abhorrent: so I went home and wrote another layer into my story. I organised another reading, and Alice and I began to plan a production.

I’m cautious about sounding rabidly anti-army. This November 11th the company of Fear Of Music went to the Remembrance Day service in Andover, where the play is set. We were struck by the beauty of the idea the army presented of itself at that ceremony, which strikes me as the central ritual of our society (it seems to me that England in the last century has been, above all, a story about the war). My grandfather lost three brothers in the Great War, and still lives a hundred metres from the memorial where their names are inscribed. The sacrifices made by soldiers for my life are woven into my family’s identity, and at that level, the level of the individual soldier, I feel conscious of a tremendous debt to the people who make up the army. But my argument wasn’t with them. The army is an arm of the state – and it’s a failure of our state if, rather than working to improve conditions for those on low incomes or in deprived areas, we exploit their insecurities and aggress them into barracks, a systematic practise documented by Forces Watch: http://www.forceswatch.net/what_why. It’s feudal.

Andover: around the world, shoes over a telegraph wire can mean a drug dealer’s patch, the death of a gang member or, presumably, boredom.

I hadn’t known at first that I wanted to set the play in Andover. But then the Tories got into power and in late 2010, while I was working at the Bush Theatre, announced new benefit caps for families. People I knew on benefits in Shepherds Bush just laughed at these: there was no way a family could live on that in that area. I learned that on the day these caps had been announced, Hammersmith and Fulham council had block-booked B&Bs across Brentford for the weeks following the date the new rates were due to come into effect. They weren’t aloof or disconnected; they had done the maths, and knew families on benefits would have to leave the area. It was planned social cleansing, ideological violence.

I wanted to engage with this, but I didn’t want to write about ‘now’. Seamus Heaney has said that at the height of the Troubles, he and his contemporaries avoided writing about the situation around them because such an attempt tended to produce what he called ‘Troubles trash’. I felt like I read and saw a lot of ‘banking trash’ being made around me too. So I looked for a time when what I wanted to write about – the shuffling of the working class out of city centres, a receding jobs market, a lack of opportunity, a sense of powerlessness, the overpowering shadow of the city on the lives of the people around me – had also been relevant. And I ended up looking at Thatcher.

Andover became the setting because I grew up there and could do the accent; because it’s a military town, a natural setting for this story, and because during the 80s Andover became a battleground for the abnegation of social responsibility. From the 60s, the London Overspill relocations project transformed Andover from a town of 5,000 to one of 50,000. Facing overcrowding in the metropolis, the GLC paid to turn places like Andover into overspill towns, and relocated people in social housing out to the country. In Andover, this wasn’t the end of the story: by the 80s, it was clear the new housing was so badly built it would have to be done again. Andover Council got a lot of coverage when it had to bring a suit against the GLC before they made a settlement to pay for this second draft of the new town. Nowhere was it more painfully clear how unwanted the public were by the state. So that seemed like a good place to write a play about forgotten people.

Watch Fear of Music

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Songs and Poems

Filed Under: Backstage, Our Country's Good, Rehearsing by Jon — Comments Off
26th September 2012

Actors’ Songs

We asked actors on twitter whether they listen to music before going on stage, and if so what helps them get in the right mood or headspace. You can find their replies, plus a link to a Spotify playlist, here. It ranges from classical to the Beastie Boys. Replies included:

“I once played a rancid, racist thug and got myself wound up with Asian Dub Foundation’s Fortress Europe” @robertsoftley

“Got the civil war, mudered father, blood-lust stirrings to play Richard in Henry VI using Arcade Fire’s Intervention.” @andycurry1

“I make playlists from the period or for each character. Those playlists are as good as production stills to reminisce to.” @flisswalton

Convict’s poems

Our co-producing theatre for Our Country’s Good, the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, host live poetry events themed to their shows.

Dave Jones brought together poems inspired by the play, including those directly about and by convicts, and these were read by cast-members of the show. Dave has kindly pulled them together into a document,and has supplied notes on their backgrounds too.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE POEMS

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