After Cinderella
By Liz Chan and Daniel Weyman
(work in progress)

Inspired by the meeting point between fairytale and real life, After Cinderella is a short physical theatre duet exploring the world beyond the ‘happy-ending’.

Liz Chan and Daniel Weyman both performed in Cinderella at the Lyric Hammersmith, which inspired them to work on the ‘afterlife’ of the fairytale. The two performers work beautifully together. They demonstrate interconnectedness in their movements, and a dramaturgy to their synchronicity whereby each new sequence of movement alters the one before.

It’s riveting to watch two performers transform their bodies from raw material to dancing figures in a dark fantasy world. Repetition and deconstruction play key roles in this piece as the same movement sequence that opens the performance is re-enacted at the end. The difference is this time the two bodies are not separate, they work as a single entity.

There are a number of moments in the performance that have a dangerous but beautiful quality – shifting between violence and tenderness - and that is something I would like to see develop in establishing the stage language of a fairytale lost in its own future.

I’d also like to see the duo play more with the darker side of the happy ending, adding a wider range of movement and vigour between the two performers. As it stands, After Cinderella is a grippingly raw, physical exploration of fairytale.

Violet Smile
By Sweetshop Revolution
(work in progress)

A piece with a great sense of humour, Violet Smile is a physical monologue that explores the experiences of a waitress in Transylvania. The performer, Tamzen Moulding, plays with plates, ropes and sticks in an energetic performance that goes through the emotions of a vampire waiting for its prey, from lust and greed to desire and attack.

The piece integrates circus and movement with vigour and breadth. Tamzen arranges and re-arranges her plates, moves around them, climbs above them and balances her weight, skilfully descending in the space of play and danger she has created. There is a balance between instability and equilibrium as she goes through the different qualities of a vampire, building upon her routine as a waitress.

The physical storytelling in Violet Smile and the playfulness of the situation is not fully explored. The two guiding emotions of the piece, sensuality and innocence, are too closely knit. Where Violet Smile could really excel is entering the uncharted territory it so strongly wants to toy with.

The experiment is a result of the collaboration between psychologist and theatre practitioner Tania Batzoglou, director Anouke Brook, and project leader Nessah Muthy. I invited Tania, Anouke, Nessah and one of the performers, Lea McKenna-Garcia, to discuss the project in more detail.

Diana Damian: Nessah, where did the idea of Accidental Art come from?

Nessah Muthy: I attended a workshop given by Ruth Little, the literary manager at the Royal Court, in which she was discussing alternate ways of making theatre. She is currently collaborating with scientists to develop what she has called ‘Metabolic Dramaturgy’ - the dramaturgy of non-linear living systems, I wanted to do something similar with psychology, to look at alternative methodologies that could translate into structures and exercises for a new process of making theatre.

Diana Damian: And how did the collaboration emerge between the three of you?

Tania Batzoglou: I have similar interests as my practice based PhD looks exactly at how we can use methods from psychology, particularly from dramatherapy, to allow actors to free up their imagination and access their unconscious, incarnating a character that is not far from who we are. The drama and movement method I have been trained in, Sesame, facilitates this process where the unconscious reveals itself. So we decided to implement this method that works through symbol, metaphor and the use of myths to aid the actor in finding honesty and embodiment in the work.

Anouke Brook: I am also interested, in my directing work, in alternate ways of making theatre, and in the universality of mythology. We chose a Greek myth and looked at the parameters of the project, what structures to build in and how we could implement Tania’s dramatherapy techniques to devise a performance based on Oedipus.

Diana Damian: Nessah, how did the project develop into the twelve hour experiment at the Roundhouse?

Nessah Muthy: The twelve-hour day with Tania and Anouke was influenced by the most successful elements of two previous experiments. The first experiment lasted three hours, and brought together a psychologist, a director and three actors to make a piece of work. Although loose, some interesting ideas came out of it related to how psychology can create a particular relationship between two actors, as well as creating or stimulating empathy rather than sympathy in the audience. There was a very delicate balance that had to be achieved between creating a safe environment for the actors, whose reactions were unscripted, spontaneous and sometimes surprisingly emotional, and stimulating the imagination. The second experiment was a lot more safe and structured, as we chose to look specifically at the unconscious.

Georgia Christou and Tania Batzoglou in rehearsal for Accidental Art

Diana Damian: Lea, you were in the first two experiments and one of the first collaborators. As an actor, how did your process of working develop?

Lea McKenna-Garcia: What carried through was a personal awareness of how to work this way, being available to your first instinct as a performer. It made it much easier to be fresh with a character because of the sense of play and spontaneity. In terms of dealing with the unconscious, you delve into a lot of aspects of yourself that you are not aware of. You act very instinctually, which helps find moments of honesty with the character.

Diana Damian: How did the twelve hours at the Roundhouse unfold?

Tania Batzoglou: We followed the structure of the dramatherapy method Sesame, which focuses a lot on the body as key to accessing the unconscious. We adapted it to the needs of the day, working towards a specific artistic outcome. We were not very strict on following the myth of Oedipus, it just happened that we covered most of the story. The actor was the main attention on stage, and we used few books, torches and even drums that played different roles in the process and the final product. Both what you are attracted to and what you are avoiding belong to you, and we tried to open that to the actors, not let them indulge in one character or moment. Thanks to the build up, it was a smooth process when we reached the free improvisation..

Nessah Muthy: It was important to filter through the exercise, which is why we brought Anouke in, to serve the audience, not to become self-indulgent but to work with limitation and structure.

Anouke Brook: We did not want to invite the audience into a rehearsal, but we wanted to create a finished piece, with a narrative of sorts with drama, pace, variety. We took that on as a challenge in the twelve hours. We played with chronology and created scenes that were not necessarily from the myth. We wanted to give the actors the safe environment and permission to play and explore. As a director you feel a strong responsibility throughout and register empathy, but you have to keep an eye on the overall, you are analytical rather than sympathetic.

Lea McKenna-Garcia: You watched the performers transform themselves, everyone played Oedipus more than once. The audience was seeing that all these people exist amongst these performers, so they can exist in themselves. There was a rule of performance where we accepted that anyone at any point could change. This was a result of the process, where we worked with instructions, playing emotions, characters and situations in various ways. Anouke, Tania and Nessah made sure we never stuck to one character but took the twelve hours to delve into our own selves as well as the myth. This was so valuable.

Daniel Pinto and Georgia Christou in rehearsal for Accidental Art

Diana Damian: How did you negotiate your presence within that character, how did you stop yourself from looking in on yourself?

Lea McKenna-Garcia: In one exercise I ended up playing Oedipus for a very long time, from the discovery of his identity through the blinding. I was blindfolded and the other performers were taunting and pushing me, and this really disorientated me. It got quite scary and uncomfortable, to a point where I wanted to say stop, but was aware that was my reaction. I think you really have to negotiate what kind of personal agony you are willing to get yourself through to find the real experience of a character, and what becomes too much. You don’t have to go kill someone to understand how it feels.

Diana Damian: How do you feel about the audience observing the whole process, not a final performance?

Nessah Muthy: We were considering streaming and filming, but confidentiality was a problem from the beginning. One of the main reasons that stopped us was the lack of power you have in such a situation. This kind of work needs to happen in a safe environment, and any outside presence becomes problematic.

Anouke Brook: I would love it if the audience would just watch the process, since I think there is a real niche for that.

Tania Batzoglou: It would be great if people could watch the twelve hours, but, indeed, audience would affect the intimacy.

Daniel Pinto, Georgia Christou, Tania Batzoglou and Lea McKenna-Garcia in rehearsal for Accidental Art

Diana Damian: What have you discovered about the relationship between psychology and actor training?

Anouke Brook: I am interested in seeing how methods from these experimental processes can directly influence the training of an actor, giving way to more authentic performances. Theatre is always going to involve parameters and limitation, and I want to see how we can use this method to free up, authenticate something that is still traditional.

Tania Batzoglou: I think it could work perfectly. If in a classical training drama school you had the ability to experience this for several hours every week, you create a connection with yourself, your material comes from you unconscious, imagination, your own body.

Anouke Brook: I think it should be part of drama training. As someone who works in drama school education, I think there should be a special period a week where actors can access these parts of themselves, give up the useless hours of fencing and allow these explorations to be part of the curriculum.

Nessah Muthy: I would like to be involved in the process as a playwright, takeing my inspiration from what happens into the rehearsal room, so the script can emerge from these psychological explorations. I want to be able to write from what I see.

Anouke Brook: We see this as the first phase of development, and funding would be a blessing, since it would allow us to develop the project, delve further into the experimentation.

Whether or not a West end production would utilise the technique’s full dramatic potential, chances are it would have the budget to overcome some of the technical issues that blight the Almeida’s production, Slung Low’s Last Seen.

The company use chunky ear-defender type radio ‘phones and miked-up actors to ensure that even those in the audience who can’t see the action can at least hear every nuance of the dialogue. A sound tech accompanies the procession around the streets of Islington, armed with a bulky backpack that broadcasts incidental music and sound effects to accentuate the actors’ voices or underscore silent sequences. The technology vastly improves the outdoor promenade format, helping maintain an atmosphere that could otherwise easily be shattered by background noise.

There are three routes, and each audience member only gets to see one, but occasionally you can catch glimpses of set pieces not intended for you: a fully laid dinner table through a park gate is a reminder that the stories you see are never the entirety of what the city has to tell. Every passer-by wearing headphones or a hands-free set feels like they could potentially be a player. Though all you ever do is follow and listen, there’s an exciting sense of exploration and discovery without the attendant dangers of the unknown.

But – and though it most probably isn’t the company’s fault, it’s still a big but – the headphones pick up interference far too easily. Some of the dialogue sinks under waves of static, which can be physically painful on the ear, and the music under one potentially very poignant moment has to share the airwaves with a local pirate radio station broadcasting from a nearby window.

The technology is simultaneously the best and worst aspect of Last Seen. Without it, the production would be at best pedestrian and at worst inaudible. Because of it, the production will be discussed more for its technical flaws than for its dramatic merit (as I’ve demonstrated). What the production definitely is, though, is a glimpse of how the technology could positively impact theatre, whether as a dramatic technique in itself or as a facilitatory tool, once its shortcomings are ironed out. The theatre world might just have to wait until the technology catches up to its vision.

Sam Wilkin’s eponymous rover is an engaging, boyish rake, perpetually half-sozzled, and with the morals of a sewer rat. As Florinda, Rebecca Shanks survives a great deal of attempted ravishment with self-possession, and without recourse to the waterworks. Adura Onashile balances poise with passion as an unexpectedly susceptible courtesan. And Blunt, the hapless butt of an extravagant gulling, is played with impressive restraint and a wealth of compassionate detail by an appealingly modest Jonathan Warde.

In the cavernous spaces of the Southwark Playhouse the young cast do well to sustain their diction and clarity. A few lines get lost in the more chaotic melees and scene-shifts, but the swordplay, music and dancing sweep with boisterous energy through the show’s various playing-spaces. The promenade aspects of the production sometimes feel contrived, but pay dividends in the acquisition of a real bar and balcony. And as the actors dash about, Mika Handley’s glamorous costumes glisten seductively through torchlit gloom.

Behn’s impossibly neat happy ending is a triumph of blithe forgetfulness on the part of most of the play’s protagonists. Still, the prevailing mood of ‘what happens at the carnival …’ feels a bit of a cop-out given the seriousness of some of the sins being muffled by wedding bells. Ebulliently broad-minded, Jones’ production tends to skip over the deepening shadows that dog its heroes’ heels. But despite this unsettling oversight, The Rover remains a stylish, pacey and bawdily pleasurable entertainment.

The four performers shift sensitively and with unobtrusive skill between the different levels and strands of the unfolding narrative. Slipping between speech, song, mime, dance and clowning, they move with supple effortful purpose, deep concentration, and an appealingly earthy sense of humour.

Three would-be heroes explode from the baker’s sleeping mind, brilliantly making a mountain of their own misdirected exertions. An off-balance mid-Channel flirtation provides a deliciously absurd comic interlude in the protagonist’s optimistic wanderings. A fabulous eagle carries a young man caught in its talons, beating giant wings with thrillingly possible weight and friction. And in the long, dark silence of an overnight drive, dreams are reassessed, and plans altered.

The show’s polyglot vocal score gives all comers the opportunity to stand in the bemused shoes of the outsider, while its plaintive, pungent and haunting harmonies weave dreams and real-life losses into a single thread of yearning. As yet unfinished, but already roughly enchanting, The Glass Mountain has the potential to become something rather special. The finished version will tour in autumn 2009, and looks set to be a hopeful, heartfelt and most rewarding journey.

The man in the King’s shoes is David Harewood, who seems to be aiming for a career playing inspirational black leaders (he’ll soon appear on TV as Nelson Mandela). Harewood convincingly recreates the booms, swoops and tremulous vibrato of King’s legendary oratory, maintaining the vocal cadence of a preacher even alone in the privacy of his motel room. He evokes a man consumed continually by a struggle he ironically believes he alone can carry to conclusion.

He’s matched and challenged by Lorraine Burroughs as motel maid Camae, who surprises King with her views – rooted in the same beliefs as his own, but a step removed in their conclusions – and by proving no mean orator herself. Her presence brings out King’s roving eye and patriarchal views to contrast his civil rights work, which makes for much more interesting theatre than a blindly reverent onstage beatification.

Camae is also the crux of that sudden supernatural gear-change, which, far from derailing the play, not only provides some unexpectedly surreal and comic moments (mostly involving one-sided telephone conversations) but also allows us to experience anew through King’s eyes events he didn’t live to see. Thus The Mountaintop is upgraded from period character study to a history with an immediate bearing on the modern world, drawing causal links between the life and death of King and the appointment of Barack Obama to the White House.

Oddly, however, the set of Stephen Keyworth’s production contains no practical doors. This design choice follows Grochala’s instruction that we should never see the prisoners’ actual exit, but it also undermines her subject’s rootedness in the most appalling and atrocious realities. We watch actors scurrying embarrassedly on and off a not-quite-blacked-out set, when we might be faced with human beings walking through a doorway leading to annihilation.

In fact, just what lies beyond the doors of the photographer’s closed world is a persistent difficulty. The very young company tackle the play’s series of one-on-one encounters with earnestness and clarity, but no discernable sense of what they’re supposed to have suffered - or fear. And it’s unfortunate that some of them end up playing multiple roles, leading to an understandable focus on differentiating their characters, rather than making them ordinary, unremarkable, un-actorly people who just happen to have stumbled into hell.

There are a couple of exceptions to this atmosphere of well-intentioned vagueness. As Col, Tom Reed brings a riskily contemporary edge to his physical bearing and his bitterness. Pippa Nixon’s May has a hunched, defensive, accusing roughness that makes the worst of her actions seem possible, and an intense, ravenous imagining of a landscape beyond prison walls that burns through the closing stages of her performance.

S-27 is a series of fictionalised testimonies, talking heads and tortured images. It would perhaps work better in a staging stripped of scenic realism, focussing simply upon faces, words and photos. But this production represents an uneasy compromise between naturalism and the demands of a limited budget, and the result, while committed and sometimes compelling, lacks detail, credibility and grit.

The Moon The Moon explores, with escalating surrealism, the blurred relationship between perception and reality. His memory and identity fractured by grief, the Man must choose between his human rescuers’ kill-or-cure approach and the unfathomable alternative offered by his supernatural suitor, the Moon (Helen Cassidy).

The Moon represents the Man’s memory of his wife, a dour but sentimental Scot, whom he must rediscover and petition for forgiveness before his keepers will be satisfied that he’s ready to leave the safety of his prison. Cassidy’s performance is restrained, and consequently cannot save the odd over-prolonged scene, such as when the couple read aloud from one another’s diaries, from becoming static and dull.

The Moon, a redheaded deity with a dirty mind and a knowing, mischievous kink in her cheek, makes no secret of the fact that she desires the Man romantically, whereas the mortal couple feel a more clinical responsibility to fix what’s broken inside him. Yet while they advocate rose-tinting and distorting his past as a route to recovery, she encourages him to acknowledge and own his grief rather than amputate it. Cassidy proves herself a versatile and confident character actor, successfully conveying the fickle and unknowable, yet flawed and human aspects of a being that wouldn’t look out of place in the ancient Greek pantheon.

Rhys Jarman’s set – a stark, bare stone basement – is full of nifty concealed compartments containing cupboards and windows.

Rhys Jarman’s set is walled with dozens of doors which allow the various competing forces in to influence the Man, but none of which can be opened from his side. The only way for him to reach back towards any of them is through Jarman’s giant moon – part window, part spotlight, given a cool luminescence by lighting designer Ben Pacey.

At its best, art invites multiple valid interpretations without becoming so diffuse as to sacrifice the clarity of the creators’ intentions.

The Moon The Moon is many overlapping things, but never feels like collage. Its elements complement rather than contradict one another, allowing interpretations from the supernatural to the naturalistic to coexist without ever suggesting that Unlimited Theatre are in anything less than complete control.

The First World War setting of Jack Shepherd’s naturalistic production makes it all seem frighteningly possible. In a dingy field hospital, shell-shocked and dying soldiers, and the women wearily tending them, provide the appalled, grieving and feverishly delusional voice of the tragic chorus. Instinctive regimental loyalties replace self-preservation and logic in the minds of traumatised Tommies. And their underscore of tuneless whistling and mirthless laughter suffuses the drama with the mutedly gut-wrenching music of men past hope.

A slow start and a subdued first movement are ratcheted up into something like a political thriller centering upon Toby Wharton’s Teucer, a public schoolboy in khaki, desperately clinging to untenable moral absolutes amid ethical and emotional carnage. He receives first rate support from the character actors in the company, with John Giles as a repulsively pompous Menelaus, and Dan Mullane as Agamemnon, scarred, scared, vindictive and possessed of a laugh like a death rattle.

Matthew Sim’s Odysseus wanders and watches, lighting his roll-ups with tell-tale shaking hands, exhausted beyond vengeance or triumphalism. As his divine confidante Athena, Jody Watson offers damage-limitation rather than salvation, appearing ex machina in a blood-stained nurse’s uniform. And Iarla McGowan makes a convincingly shattered hero of the suicidal Ajax: his detailed and understated performance reveals the charismatic and loved leader, the careful professional soldier, as well as the embittered victim of fate.

Ajax is playing in repertory with Macbeth and A Skull in Connemara, and the company have the attentiveness, authority and gravitas of a proper acting ensemble. In their grimy, bloodied hands, Sophocles’ drama acquires an unpretentious, slightly battered and totally compelling integrity.

Apparently, the play’s usual flaw is Bertram, the male romantic lead. When the King of France forcibly weds him to Helena, in return for her curing him of a fistula, Bertram’s reaction is one of extreme distaste. He proceeds to abhor his wife for the rest of the play, joining the army to avoid her and promising to consummate his vows only if she fulfils certain nigh-impossible conditions. Then, when she duly fulfils those conditions, he turns on a sixpence in the interests of a happy ending.

Here, Bertram (George Rainsford) is a snooty child of privilege whose rejection of Helena is a reactionary response to their class difference, and his sudden turnaround is the logical result of his confidant Parolles’ exposure as a coward and fraudster, which shows Bertram that his judgement of character isn’t as sound as he thinks it is. It’s then perfectly natural for him, upon his reunion with the wife he thought dead of heartbreak, to be grateful for a second chance with a woman whose praises are sung by every other character, but whom he foolishly dismissed without a second look.

More importantly, Bertram’s change of heart is a victory for Helena, who takes the traditionally male role of dogged suitor and stubbornly refuses to take “no” for an answer. Michelle Terry, who deftly handled multiple roles in season opener England People Very Nice, here deftly embodies Helena’s strongest aspects – her determination and her good-humoured mischievous streak. Perhaps fittingly, her performance is weakest when showing Helena’s weakness; the monologues mourning her unrequited love are drastically overplayed.

The only ‘problem’ aspect remaining is what Terry’s independent Helena sees in Rainsford’s spoiled Bertram in the first place.

None of which is to say that this is a flawless production. The stylised silent vignettes Elliott uses to cover scene changes seem pasted in, at odds with the dark gravity of Rae Smith’s imposing, tumbledown set; and Helena’s ‘resurrection’ is greeted with saccharine streams of golden light and a rain of sparkly rose petals. All that’s missing is a choir of angels.

Perhaps under other circumstances having ’solved’ All’s Well would be enough of an achievement, but this is the National we’re talking about; it’s perfectly justifiable to demand more.