Cutting Edge: British Theatre in Hard Times

Saturday 25 April 2015, 10.00am-6.00pm, at Central St Martins, King's Cross, London

I'm co-organising a conference, look.

In 2007 at our conference, How Was It For Us?, we asked what happened to theatre in the Blair years. Now we ask what's changed under the coalition - for better or worse. In this day conference, organised by the British Theatre Consortium and hosted by the MA in Dramatic Writing at Central St Martin’s, a group of leading theatremakers and thinkers will reflect on the fortunes of British Theatre since the 2010 General Election. The arts have been subjected to substantial cuts in funding; newspapers have been firing theatre critics; evidence suggests that the arts are being drained from the school curriculum; concerns continue to be raised about theatre’s diversity, in the audience and onstage. And yet, there are success stories; audiences have held up strongly; the percentage of new work is higher than it’s been for a century; there seems no diminution of the quality of new plays, great productions, and extraordinary performances. Is this all against the odds? Or has the theatre found new purpose and power in the age of austerity?

Speakers include Adjoa Andoh (actor), Kate Bassett (critic), Suzanne Bell (Royal Exchange), David Brownlee (UK Theatre), Chris Campbell (Royal Court), Giles Croft (Nottingham Playhouse), David Edgar (playwright), David Eldridge (playwright), Chris Goode (performance maker), Christopher Gordon (Rebalancing our Cultural Capital), David Greig (playwright), Sarah Grochala (playwright), Fin Kennedy (Tamasha), Lucy Kerbel (Tonic), Phyllida Lloyd (director), Chris Megson (Royal Holloway), Elizabeth Newman (Bolton Octagon), Mimi Poskitt (Look Left Look Right), Dan Rebellato (playwright, Royal Holloway), Joe Sumsion (Dukes, Lancaster), Laura Wade (playwright), Sam West (actor), Erica Whyman (RSC), Julie Wilkinson (playwright, MMU), Roy Williams (playwright), Jane Woddis (theatre researcher).

Doors will open at 9.30am for 10.00am start. Refreshments will be provided. Tickets can be booked below:

The Writers Guild has kindly subsidised a limited number of tickets for its own members; these can be booked below:

This conference is organised by the British Theatre Consortium, hosted by the MA in Dramatic Writing at Central St Martin’s, and kindly supported by the Writers Guild. 

Photograph © Tristram Kenton.

Gay Naturalism

In the next few weeks, I am presenting two further revised versions of my paper attempting to explore the curious (to my mind) absence of homosexuality from the Naturalist stage. Naturalism sought to use the latest scientific discoveries to fearlessly reveal the social problems afflicting contemporary society, with a particular emphasis on sexual taboos. In all of these respects, homosexuality would seem to be an ideal subject for Naturalism but, with very few exceptions, it does not seem to have been represented. This paper attempts to account for this.

I've given the paper a few times already. A truncated version was given at the TaPRA conference in September 2014, and longer versions to the London Theatre Seminar on 9 October and to University of Manchester's drama postgraduate seminar on 2 December.

This revised version will be given an outing (ho ho) at Edinburgh University on Friday 27 February at 4.30 and at the University of Sussex on 11 March at 4.00. Sussex have created the rather delightful poster (pictured) to publicise the event. It shows Boulton and Park, two celebrated and notorious Victorian cross-dressers who went under the names of 'Fanny and Stella' and whose arrest in 1870 was a public scandal that, if you'll forgive me, dragged in the seated gentleman Lord Arthur Pelham-Clinton, who was living with Boulton  (seated on the floor) when the scandal broke. The day after he was sub-poenaed to appear at the trial, Lord Arthur was pronounced dead. The official cause was scarlet fever but there are competing theories that he killed himself or that he fled abroad. Fanny and Stella were eventually acquitted since there was no proof of immorality (i.e. anal sex) and wearing women's clothes was not a crime.

Dario Fo

Rebellato, Dan. 'Dario Fo.' In Fifty Modern and Contemporary Dramatists, edited by John F. Deeney and Maggie B. Gale. Routledge Key Guides. London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 82-86.

I've written a short article on Dario Fo for this new collection of essays. It's a reference book but the articles have enough length to give a fuller labour of the writers involved. 

It's a good volume. At these moments it's always interesting to see who the living British writers deemed worthy of inclusion. The latest snapshot of the contemporary canon, then, comprises April De Angelis, Alan Ayckbourn, Howard Barker, Alan Bennett, Edward Bond, Jim Cartwright, Caryl Churchill,  Martin Crimp, David Edgar, David Hare, Terry Johnson, Martin McDonagh, Frank McGuinness, Mark Ravenhill, Peter Shaffer, Tom Stoppard, debbie tucker green, and Timberlake Wertenbaker. There are also some dead British playwrights in there still considered contemporary  (Pinter, Kane). It's not a bad selection; I might swap out Terry Johnson for David Greig, but hey it's not my book.

Static

from the original production...

from the original production...

My play Static is getting its North American premiere at the Third Rail Repertory Company in Portland, Oregon, opening 0n 24 April this year and running until 17 May. It's directed by the company's artistic director Scott Yarborough and cast announced so far are Maureen Porter, Kelly Godell, and Sam Dinkowitz. Obviously book early to avoid disappointment.

The original was co-produced by Graeae and Suspect Culture and sought to integrate sign language and English into one production, offering slightly different experiences for each community. We used BSL, but this production will use ASL, and it's not a disability-focused company, so it'll be interesting to see how the play feels different in its new context. Also, in 2008, the play was very contemporary in its references. I've suggested they might want to update them (particularly the music references) so that will also be interesting to see. Not sure if I'll be able to get out there but it will be good to see reactions. 

Out of the Unknown

OOTUDVD.jpg

Well it's always been an ambition of mine to become a DVD extra and now it's finally come to pass. The BFI has just released all of the twenty surviving episodes of the 1960s BBC TV science-fiction show, Out of the Unknown, on DVD. It's a bloody gorgeous box set and on the first episode, No Place Like Earth, an adaptation of two short stories by John Wyndham, you can, if you wish, choose to listen to a commentary by Mark Ward, a great expert on the series, and me. The thing is moderated by the quietly magnificent Toby Hadoke, actor, comedian, television researcher and fan, who I met when he acted rather brilliantly in my Dead Souls in 2006 and we've kept in touch ever since. Toby is a Doctor Who fan of a depth and intensity that makes me feel like a rank amateur, though we didn't make that connection at the time. Toby invited me to take part in the commentary because of my adaptation of Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos in 2003 and in the naive belief that I might have interesting things to say about Wyndham and this adaptation. Whether I did or not, you'll have to judge for yourself. I thoroughly recommend the box set, by the way, which I've only started working through, but it's a beautifully curated collection of some genuinely challenging and progressive television.

Critical Mass

Last year I was given a grant - as part of the British Theatre Consortium - to investigate theatre audiences, what they do, how and why they value theatre, and the roles it plays, if any, in their lives.  The principal investigator was Janelle Reinelt at Warwick University, and Chris Megson (Royal Holloway), Julie Wilkinson and I were co-investigators, with playwright David Edgar as consultant and Jane Woddis (Warwick) as project manager. We partnered with The Royal Shakespeare Company, Young Vic, and Drum Theatre, Plymouth taking nine shows from their 2013-14 seasons and exploring audiences responses to these shows by a series of questionnaires, interviews and workshops. 

The findings are necessarily provisional and offer, more than anything, suggestions for new directions of research. What is clear from all the research is that the theatre is highly valued by its audience and that its value is entwined in its audience's lives: we had evidence of people using the theatre as an opportunity to inform and articulate their political views of the world, to reflect on their lives and relationships, and to come to terms with ageing, mortality and loss. We suggest also that theatre spectatorship might be fruitfully considered as a long-term activity, in two senses: first, there is evidence that the memory of a single show matures and changes over time, beginning with an appreciation of the theatre's sensuous immediacy and then, within a couple of months, becoming a more reflective, cognitive memory; second, there is plenty of evidence that theatregoing is something that enriches a person to the extent that it may be considered a key part of life-long learning.

You can read the report by clicking on the cover (above) and David Edgar wrote a valuable article for The Guardian about it, which you can read here. There are some more commentaries on the report here and here.