Oak Tree: story -II
The story of An Oak Tree is relatively straight forward.
A father, Andy, has lost his daughter, Claire, in a road accident. Claire was hit by a car driven by a hypnotist. It seems it wasn’t truly the hypnotist’s fault as Claire was listening to music on a walkman/ipod.
Andy’s wife, Dawn, grieves for Claire but takes the attitude that one has to pull it together and soldier on, to deal with the facts; particularly to keep it together to support Marcy, Claire’s young sister.
Andy has a very different reaction to Claire’s death.
“Dawn went to the mortuary. I refused. If anything, in those first few days, Claire had multiplied. […] She was indentations in time, physical depressions, imperfections on surfaces, the spaces beneath chairs, surrounding blunt pencils, inside plastic buckets.
[…]
Dawn was diminished, She clung to material evidence. To her, Claire was a hair left on a bar of soap, some flowers taped to a lamp post. She was the photograph farmed and hung above the piano. For me, these things were no more of Claire than of anyone else.
[…]
I came to the roadside. I needed a hug from my girl. I looked at the a tree. A tree by the road. I touched it. And from the spaces, the hollows, the depressions, I scooped up the properties of Claire and changed the physical substance of the tree into that of my daughter.”
Just like Craig-Martin suggests.
Dawn tells Andy she is losing her husband and Andy doesn’t know what to do. He sees the sign for the hypnotist and goes to the show thinking that the hypnotist can help. Here, we also discover the hypnotist has his own reaction to Claire’s death manifesting physically in his ability to hypnotise anyone anymore, except Andy who he doesn’t recognise at first when he comes to the show.
Oak Tree: theatrical twist III
The story is relatively simple, however the performance structure adds a brilliant theatrical and transformative layer.
Tim Crouch plays the hypnotist, but the father is performed by a different actor each night. An actor – male or female – who has not seen or read the play until the performance begins. [I think it may be better with a female, but did not get a chance to see it with a male.]
In this way, not only is there an honesty to the performance but the imagination of the audience that transforms the actor into the father in our minds is paralleled by the transformation of the oak tree into Claire by Andy (and by the glass of water into Craig-Martin’s oak tree).
Brilliant.
The piece examines:
The layers of grief and our reactions to them.
The power of the mind, to suggest, to imagine, to transform “ the fact”
The power of the actor to transform a performance
The imagination of the audience to transform the actor
Cost of Edinburgh fringe shows
In this Guardian article, Paul Arendt talks about how expensive fringe shows are.
Most lose money. The director and performers are unpaid and he’s still almost 10k down (see budget below). My last show Lost in Peru, which was paid at equity rates (although producer’s and writer’s fee were low) at the Camden People’s Theatre came in on a lower budget (our set cost much higher, but PR was handled by producer and no accomadation cost) and had good ticket sales.
If you can get a slot, it suggests to me that the regular London fringe is a more “cost effective” show case, although of course you don’t get the same buzz or (one if you are lucky) perhaps the same exposure. I also think if at all possible performers should be paid a fair (ie equity) wage.
Expenses so far for the show Faultless and Torrance Take Their Faces/Off
Producer: £1000
Director: free
Performers: free
Public relations: £900
Technician: £260
Magazine advertising: £584.27
Fringe brochure entry: £242
Venue hire: £3,900 (or 40% of box office, if greater)
London previews venue hire: £300
Accommodation for three: £1,500
Train travel for three: £123
Poster design: free
Poster printing: £145
Flyer printing: £200
Set costs: £36.20
Rehearsal space: free
Photography: £100
Replacement umbrellas for umbrella fight: £27.40
Stuffed dog: £13.50
Miscellaneous props (elastic, lampshades, silly string): £31.70
Costumes: £27
Music: £24.98
Photocopying: £8.20
Alcohol: £80
Total: £9,503.25
Recommended shows at Edinburgh
Shows I’ve seen and recommend
An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch at the Traverse. It’s a moving, clever, meditation on grief.
Snuff by Davey Anderson at the Traverse. Fast paced, menancing Glasgow lowlife; also comments on the wider violence in today’s world ie Iraq.
Daniel Kiston in stand up at the Stand Up Comedy Club or his story telling: Stories for the Wobbly Hearted at the Traverse. Quirky, wonderful, funny, extremely well told, modern day love & loneliness fables.
Shows I’d recommend on strength of reputation, hearsay or interest:
Chris Goode and Signal to Noise’s: Home Made -it’s performed in yourown home or space, call 07914 629851
Ben Harrison and Grid Iron’s piece, The Devil’s Larder, set in the actual Edinburgh Debenham’s.
Other things to do:
go and see some puppets and children’s shows almost always interesting,
go and see some outdoor shows (the one in the botantical gardens: Children of the Sea is meant to be good),
try some “visual, physical theatre”, some thing strange sounding, things that won’t be coming to your howm town
go and see photographer Cartier-Bresson, artist Paula Rego and the Francis Bacon exibition.
Defending Saffron Burrows for £100
Theatre bloggers Ben Yeoh (see benjaminyeoh.com) and Krazy Kritic (see http://blog.theweddingcollective.org/) are having a debate.
Krazy contends Saffron Burrows can’t act and that too many celebrities get cast because of fame and looks, not talent.
Ben doesn’t necessarily contest this, but offers explanations and thoughts on the matter, and reserves judgement on Saffron as he has seen her in anything.
So, to extend the debate, Krazy has offered £100 to the best defence of Saffron’s acting to really see if anyone thinks she is any good.
Do you know anyone who would come to Saffron’s defence? Spread the word.
Please see benjaminyeoh.com and archives at http://spittingyarn.com/benjaminyeoh/archives/16 and http://blog.theweddingcollective.org/
Talawa: funding concerns
Arts Council England has threatened to withdraw Talawa’s revenue funding when the current funding agreement runs out in March 2006. This would mean the demise of one of the UK’s most prominent and established Black theatre companies…
See Talawa here
Oh dear.
Talawa building funding
Lyn Gardner writes in the Guardian about the conflicting views of the Arts Council withdrawing its money to fund the development of a “black theatre” in Victoria, London.
Altough in many ways, as I’ve said before, this is a bit of disaster, going forward I hope they spend the money on something good.
Any ideas?
Actually, the situation has become worse with Arts Council suggesting core funding will be dropped, as well see other post.
Terrorism: Stop & Search
Things I remember
She was left handed
She used a black biro
She could not spell “Surrey” or “Mansions”
She was transport police
She had half the form filled out ahead of time
I told her it should be electronic – she agreed
Things I felt
I’m already running late
I’m not white
You didn’t really think I had a bomb in my rucksack
You marked me as slim-medium there fore I am not fat (yet)
Things I did
Filled in the ethnic classification as Chinese
Smiled and walked away
Things that did not happen
She asked for my number, smiled seductively and told me what time her shift ended
A naked body search
Acting Standards III: collective judgements
A remarkable thing about extraordinary pieces of theatre is that the audience acts as one. Shared experience.
Conversely, for bad theatre, we all can suffer differently.
For fairly good but not outstanding theatre, one can seemingly obtain differing opinions [I wonder if anyone liked Saffron Burrows in Powerbook?].
In another life, I studied behavioural neuroscience [yes I know a lot about finance and a lot about neuroscience, odd fish that I am] and an interesting property about supposedly qualitative judgements is that you often find very good agreement.
Find a group of people and ask them to rate “beauty” on a scale of 1 to 10 and that group will for the most part agree [there are interesting cultural differences occasionally when this experiment is run].
This comes back to Krazy’s assertion that “everyone knew” Saffron Burrows could not act.
One might argue that differing quality judgements makes this a hard assertion to substantiate.
Strangely, work on collective judgements would suggest that maybe everyone did know, which does begs Krazy’s question of why did she get cast?
On the other hand, for theatre which is not outstanding but merely fairly good, collective judgements are harder. Indeed, rating beauty is the hardest for “fairly pretty” people or people who have quirky features.
I relate this back to my recent thoughts on Shoreditch Madonna, which has not met the collective “outstanding rating” and has had two critics on very split views on Alexandra Moen’s performance. See earlier post.
One more suggestion, I could make is that Powerbook did not meet “outstanding” which Krazy, myself and others who care, aspire too. So poor Saffron came off badly in Krazy’s eyes and given Krazy’s high ambitions, this simply was not good enough.
I didn’t see Saffron so would not like to pass judgement but if she was cast on looks not talent then, it is bad. Further, it is up to people like Krazy, critics and people who should know, to say and do something. I imagine Krazy Kritic thinks those who should know better and are in control aren’t doing enough. Then again, no one said creating good art was going to be easy.
Scarier than London Bombings IV
I find this article in the Guardian more worrying than the 7/7 bombings in many ways.
This is because it shows how we’ve become desensitised in ordinary life, and we can let indifference, fear and effort become real obstacles to helping somoneone obviously in need, in saving some one’s life.
The article describes how no one helped a stabbed man on a bus.
It’s also just the type of indifference that I hope my writing and all good theatre fights against. If theatre is about the human condition, then good theatre can celebrate and inspire what is the best in humans.
[see Nadia's comments where it looks like people did stop to help. She raises the good point that it is the media re-telling which is quite scary. Although I seem to remember it was written by the real person as a non-paid non-journalist]
Acting standards II: a partial reply to Krazy
Krazy Kritic (see comments) brings up some more excellent points (all of which I will comment on in due course), such as:
(again see my post on differing views on a recent performance of Shoreditch Madonna).
There is occasionally that magic moment in the theatre when the audience lives as a collective. A shared experience. A time when everyone laughs or cries. When everyone’s heart is racing, or breath is still and a silence more profound than that of the desert because it is a silence generated by a full space not by an empty space.
As a writer and some time director, this is one of the great achievements of the theatre, which tv and film can find hard to match. The collective experience for film, is not the same. The immediacy is not there. Music and gigs can recreate a similar feeling, but not that same quality of waiting to see what happens next (although I admit gigs produce the europhic collective experience for people probably more often than the average play).
This brings me back to Krazy’s critique of Saffron Burrows. I haven’t actually seen Burrows so I take Krazy’s view at face value [Krazy also has the help of a Sinclair C5 in judging this thus dating Krazy’s preference to that golden age of computing]. However it is obvious that Burrows did not produce that magic for Krazy that I just described. So for Krazy (and I suspect others), the production failed.
Krazy suggests there were rumours that Fiona Shaw / Jeanette Winterson may have wanted Burrows for her looks (although I believe Deborah Warner as director would have had final say but the same rumour would hold – looks may have an overly important role in casting today). Krazy also asks why Nick Hytner let Burrows ”through the checkpoint” and that maybe it was all a marketing strategy for his Transfomrations season.
I simply do not know if Krazy’s suggestions have merit or not. They may be completely true. However, perhaps she actually performed a good audition, or Warner thought she mad the right mix of character for her cast, or maybe (if Krazy’s thesis that Burrows can’t act and everyone knew it, is true) they gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Krazy would argue that you wouldn’t give that benefit of doubt to dentist or F1 racing driver, but maybe you would for a dentist’s first few forays and F1 racers do go through F2, F3 (if they crashed a lot in F£ I doubt they’d mkae it to F1) etc.. [It looks like Burrows trained at the Anna Scher Theatre school, so might have been expected to be able to act].
My next observation is that Burrows (seemingly from her PFD CV) has only been in 3 major stage productions Earthly Paradise (Almeida), Powerbook, and Two Lips Indifferent (Bush, dir Vicky Featherstone) so by the time the Powerbook came round she had not been in many stage plays.
Perhaps she did a good audition, got on well with Warner and if there was a suspicion on her stage skills, she was given the benefit of the doubt. The fact she has not had many theatre roles since may suggest Krazy is not alone in being a critic of Burrow’s theatre performances (or maybe theatre just doesn’t pay as well).
Then again, maybe Krazy is right and she was cast because she’s pretty and a bit of a celebrity.
Acting standards
Krazy Kritic at the Wedding Collective blog satirises the lack of acting standards of celebrities getting roles based on fame rather than skill.
On the one hand, it’s definitely a good thing to have standards. However, judging those standards can be difficult (especially when critics disagree see my post on critics who are split Alexandra Moen’s performance in Shoreditch Madonna).
It’s a humourous piece, but I think it’s wrong to actually say there are no standards. The audience (and some times the critics) judge the quality. And yes, maybe some times they will tune in or watch a show because someone is famous but they will only have their heart racing and their mind spinning when the show is great.
Krazy ends with a slightly tongue in cheek
“If you have the nerve and self-belief. If you are prepared to ignore the knockers, mockers and critics, who’s to say you’re wrong and they’re right? Who’s to say you won’t be up there with the greats one day? No one.”
But actually, I think there’s a lot to be said for that. You’re not going to become great without determination and trying. And maybe you won’t but I don’t think we can knock Denise van Outen for trying (maybe for her performance) but not for trying.
The Cut (Ravenhill), my only stage performance
To finish off my trio of posts on Mark Ravenhill… I had the opportunity to assist John Tiffany in directing a first draft of The Cut, a play Ravenhill wrote for a Paines Plough Wild Lunch series.
They needed an extra (non-speaking) actor for a very very small part of the reading, so I was volunteered! Therefore, I appeared in the Young Vic studio along side Chiwetel Ejiofor (aka Chewie) and Corin Redgrave for most probably the only time on the London stage.
It now looks like The Cut will go on at the Donmar in 2006 directed by Michael Grandage and including Ian McKellen.
More on Mark Ravenhill
From a Guardian interview
“In Product, Ravenhill plays a script executive who’s pitching his film to a young, unseen starlet, ‘a Sienna Miller type’. He tells her the story as a Hollywood action adventure, though actually, it’s about her falling in love with a suicide bomber. ‘So there’s always this tension between corny story-telling and quite real story-telling,’ he says. ‘Sometimes it’s almost Bridget Jones goes Jihad: because she falls in love with this man, she’s prepared to go on this suicide bombing mission.’
Ravenhill is interested in both the idea of terrorism as a subject (‘it’s been floating around for a while’), and as a form. ‘An al-Qaeda bomb, or planes going into a tower, doesn’t have a story, unlike an IRA bomb. That had a story, in that the IRA would say, “This is going to happen”, then there would be a bomb, and afterwards there would be a claim saying, “Yeah we did it, and we want troops out of Ireland”. That’s your beginning, middle and end. But with al-Qaeda, there’s nothing like that, they just do it. I think that’s one of the things that unsettles us, because we want a story. So my character tries to give suicide bombing a story.
‘Also,’ he points out, ‘if you look at today’s TV news, it’s always oscillating between a real emotion and a Hollywood one. We do it ourselves: you find yourself telling a story of your life that’s quite true, and then slipping into a way of talking about your life that you’ve learnt from Heat.’”
Mark Ravenhill in New Mark Ravenhill play, Product
Mark Ravenhill stars in his own new play, Product, directed by Lucy Morrison. [At Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre from 17-28 August (not 22). Box office 0131 228 1404]
This should be intriguing.
Mark is playing in his own play. Trained as an actor and director before settling on writing, it will be interesting to see how the play comes off.
Here’s the press blurb:
Amy is a hot young starlet. Now all she needs is the script which will save her from B movie hell. A script which balances artistic integrity with blockbuster bucks. Mark thinks he’s got the perfect pitch – a script which combines a torrid love story with the dark spectre of terrorism and big, big explosions. If he can only persuade Amy, he’s got the perfect Product.
Mark Ravenhill is one of the most successful and respected writers of his generation. He burst onto the scene in 1996 with his smash-hit debut Shopping and Fucking which opened at the Royal Court, quickly transferred to the West End and has since been produced all over the world. He followed this with a series of further successes including Faust Is Dead, Handbag, Some Explicit Polaroids and Mother Claps Molly House. This is his professional acting debut.
Critics: acting
As in my other review post on Shoreditch Madonna, I note that Alexandra Moen was slated in the Sunday Indy by Kate Bassett. However (I assume they saw the same performance) Nicholas de Jongh of the Evening Standard loved it.
NdJ writes:
“Alexandra Moen’s powerhouse of a performance as the drug-prone, distraught Christina, apparently sleep-walking into her sexual past or laying hands and lips on the exploitative Devlin, deftly treads a fine line between pathos and dark comedy.”
This compares to KB:
“Alexandra Moen’s performance as Christina is absolutely excruciating. She is, as they say, extremely easy on the eye. But the poor thing appears to be permanently auditioning for Lady Macbeth’s sleep-walking scene, histrionically rubbing her hands. I think Christina was also meant to be sexually mad for it, mincing around in stilettos, seemingly unable to sit down and often crawling around invitingly on her knees. Or did she just have had a shocking case of piles?”
Were they watching the same person? Go figure.
Shoreditch Madonna, Soho Theatre
In the end it’s about love. Once that thought crossed my mind somewhere in the second half, I settled down to enjoy the play. It charts the tangled relationships between 6 characters tied together by their hopes for love, art and an upcoming workshop (by Devlin a formerly great painter) at a squatted gallery space in Shoreditch
I have to declare a possible bias. I know Alexandra Moen, who plays Christina [and incidentally received one of the most appalling reviews from Kate Bassett in the Sunday Independent that I’ve read – not justified in my opinion, although it is true that Alex does spend a lot of time on her knees and is beautiful – see other post].
Rebecca Lenkiewicz received rave reviews for Night Season at the National, but Shoreditch Madonna has been more mixed. Lyn Gardner at the Guardian argues that it is all style over substance, whereas Kate Kellaway (Observer) argues “there is great pleasure in the play’s dazzling, amorous geometry”.
I liked the play, although it took me a little to settle in to it. I think I know what Gardner is suggesting, the production is slick, the acting good, the people beautiful and at the heart there’s no major statement particularly about how we live life today.
Except there possibly is, as the play follows 7 or 8 characters (I count two of the characters as never seen, the son and Christina’s ex, Charlie] search for love in the face of death, loss and the struggle to live life/make art. And it’s this relationship and hope tangle that proves compelling and I think will resonate with some who have seen, experienced or imagined the same conflicts in love and loss. What draws us to those we can’t obtain, why do some lovers linger on in the memory when we should move on, we don’t we show we care before it is too late.
The language of the play is multilayered, sharp and lyrical at turns. Some might find it slightly hollow, others supportive of the overall play structure. It’s also peppered with a fair few art and literary references through out.
The direction was slick but with many short scenes and hence scene changes, there was a constant fight in not letting the tension drop. I think there was a fine balance between the comedy and the intelligence of the play as well. By this, I mean, much of the play could have been played for laughs or played to make you think and there was a balance between these two modes. The night, I saw it, the balance was more cerebral, which suits me and I think was the right choice by director, Sean Mathias.
Acting was strong from all the cast. I liked a particularly tender scene in Act 2 between Francesca Annis and Lee Ingleby but I feel it was a good ensemble effort.
In the end, as in the beginning the play is all about love and specific relationship tangles and is satisfying on this level. A should see if you like relationship plays, a could see if “the big idea” is what you want.
To Aug 6, 2005
Soho Theatre: 0870 429 6883
Warren Buffet & Theatre
I was reading through some comments by Warren Buffet [major investment guru; I happen to know quite a lot about investing in another life] and one of the questions he asks managers of companies is
What keeps you up at night?
I think this is a good question to ask a director. What does he worry most about when putting on a production. I also think it’s pretty relevant for writer’s too not only in the work about to be staged but what worries them most in their writing currently.
He also asks, if you could get rid of one competitor with a silver bullet, who would it be and why? I don’t think this is so useful for directors but if they had an answer it would be intriguing….
Jude Kelly new artistic director of the South Bank
Jude Kelly has just been made new artistic director of the South Bank complex.
She was a folk singer and actress before she turned to directing and moved from the BAC in London to run West Yorkshire playhouse.
Also known for her producing, I think it’s great that a female director has been given this post. British theatre needs more.
It’s also one of the reasons I’m pleased Natalie Abrahami has won the James Menzies-Kitchen directing award and her production of Beckett’s Play/Not I is currently receiving good reviews at the BAC
From a Guardian article in 2001.
Judith Pamela Kelly
Born: March 24 1954, Liverpool.
Education: Calder High School, Liverpool; Birmingham University 1972-75.
Married: Michael Bird 1993 (one daughter Caroline ’86, two sons Johnnie ’88, deceased, Robbie ’89).
Career: Folksinger 1970-75; actress Leicester Phoenix Theatre ’75-76; artistic director Solent People’s Theatre ’76-80; artistic director Battersea Arts Centre ’80-85; director of plays National Theatre of Brent ’82-85; freelance director 86-88; West Yorkshire Playhouse artistic director ’88, chief executive ’93-. Some theatre productions: The Messiah, National Theatre of Brent ’85; Sarcophagus RSC ’86, York Mystery Plays ’88; WYP King Lear ’95; Beatification Of Area Boy, ’95; Blast From The Past, ’98; The Seagull, ’98; The Tempest, ’99; Singin’ In The Rain ’99; Johnson Over Jordan 2001; Othello, Washington DC ’97.
Survey of 1990s UK theatre
Aleks Sierz created the in-yer-face theatre website to go along with his book, which “celebrates the best in new British drama today.”
It’s here and is a good resource on new writing and the British theatre scene in Sierz’s opinion. His A-Z collects together many of the important names of 1990s and today’s British writers and directors.
Sierz, I believe, is theatre critic of Tribune and reviews regularly. He’s also a part-time academic teaching modern drama at Boston University, London. (as of 2005)
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About me
I'm a playwright and investment analyst. I have a broad range of interests: food, gardening, innovation & intellectual property, sustainability, architecture & design, writing and the arts. I sit on the board of Talawa Theatre Company and advise a CIS investment trust on socially responsible investments.
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Recent Work
Recent plays include, for theatre: Nakamitsu, Yellow Gentlemen, Lost in Peru, Lemon Love. For radio: Places in Between (R4), Patent Breaking Life Saving (WS).
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Nakamitsu
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Yellow Gentlemen
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