A year ago tonight, Dance The Colour Blue played to its last audience. My first professionally produced play was an entirely unexpected affair…as well as something of a revelatory experience!
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Body shaming is such an ever present feature of modern day society it’s surprising that it retains any remnants of power to surprise yet further…and then you discover, as a man, the extent to which 51% of society are shamed: women.
The Vagina Monologues has been a presence in theatres ever since creator V’s (formerly Eve Ensler) performance off-Broadway in 1996. 27 years later it is still finding new audiences - this one in Dundee - and still has the power to shock.
27 years later it is still finding new audiences - this one in Dundee - and still has the power to shock.
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The rotating stage at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre moves to the slow rhythmic climes of the Deep South. Maggie, played by Ntombizodwa Ndlovu, enters like she owns the place - and for the first half hour, she does. Regaling Brick (Bayo Gbadamosi) with her half-formed thoughts and remnants of gossip. Gossip, it so transpires, with which she has more than a passing relationship. Her partner, Brick, has little room for manoeuvre figuratively or literally (having recently broken his leg) and can do little but to lie around on bed and listen. It is better than risking the alternative
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Time appears sometimes to sit on two different planes, connected orthogonally to one another. On one, it travels so fast so as to seem wired to the energy meter. On the other, sloth-like: easy to forget we were in lockdown at the start of the year.
Every year, I try to make the most of January and February: the sleeper months where the world feels like a town called ‘Sunday’. Prepare then, and you are able to bolt from the hatches in March. By the end of February, I had completed two read-throughs of two new plays. By March, I was once again editing when I decided to do something I had not done before: apply for funding to put on a play.
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Anarchic talent, stuffy TV execs, pleading intermediaries,Spike trods the well-worn turbulent path of unchecked ambition brought before an establishment clique who like to tell their charges ‘the war is over’ whilst simultaneously not having noticed the world has moved on. The set up to the play is readily familiar - a little known but talented man, surrounded by bigger names - AKA The Goons - has ideas his superiors think are above his station and nigh impossible to execute with any measure of success. What ensues is the classic ebb and flow of advance, retreat and entrenchment. A handy juxtaposition, as it happens, to Milligan’s time in the war where the intransigence of his erstwhile military high command perfectly mirrors his experience within the light entertainment department at the BBC. Robert Wilfort effortlessly captures the garrulous energy of Spike Milligan; refusing to buckle before the lethargic behemoth. He corrals his better-paid peers Peter Sellers (Patrick Warner) and Harry Secombe (Jeremy Lloyd) to contribute towards a vehicle of explosive post-dadaist humour. Much to the chagrin of his BBC betters.
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If suddenly you found yourself involved in immersive theatre, which play might you choose? The Cherry Orchard? Into The Woods? You’d probably avoid Medea and steer well clear of Titus Andronicus. You might also want to put Trainspotting Live into the latter group. That is not a reflection on the sheer dynamic tour-de-force of the production. Just, if you’ve read the book…
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Be careful what you wish for: a scarecrow so successful in their endeavour…may scare the birds away forever…yet rue the reverb of redundancy. Perhaps not their doing. Who knows? Certainly not the scarecrows.
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Crocodile Rock, by Andy McGregor, is the story of a teenager who, uncomfortable in his own skin, escapes to a world where he can breathe more comfortably and be more himself. We first meet Steven in his bedroom, Millport - population: 1500. His life seems all but mapped out by his father who wants nothing more than for his son to learn the tricks of the trade at the Pier Inn. Steven lacks the confidence and communication skills to banter freely with the regulars…an awkwardness stemming from somewhere deeper within. Running a guest-house, his mother is constantly busy cooking meals and cleaning, so Steven mucks in at ‘reception’ from time to time. During one such occasion, he checks in a guest like no other: exotic and disturbingly exquisite in his eyes. And so the world of drag lays bare its charms and dreams and possibilities, and also a route out from the claustrophobic confines of Millport. A route littered with pitfalls and danger around its glossy edges.
Read MoreThere is always a tendency in my writing to give agency to those who seemingly have none. My play Dance The Colour Blue is about loss: of companionship, of love, of identity. What does it mean to be so absorbed by another that you can become as easily subsumed as the air that they breathe? You become a void: a repository into which any hint of a notion or scintilla of an idea can be tossed. All of it equally able to stick. Not a single joule of resistive energy anywhere to be found. Literature is littered with such examples - and they are overwhelmingly women. Take Shakespeare’s Cordelia in King Lear, or Ophelia in Hamlet, or so many supporting females in contemporary dramas able be replaced by a ‘sexy lamp’ without impacting the narrative. Or Penelope in Homer’s The Odyssey. Often seen as enigmatic, Penelope is the centre of the mythological strand of Dance The Colour Blue,
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Rabbie Burns often feels like an elusive character - sinusoidally ephemeral, not with respect to content, but in prominence. You think you’ll get a better sense of him next time around. But if the last decade is anything to go by, turning up the frequency merely turns up the translucency but at the expense of ambiguity. Despite multiple versions of this man, the more you try to delineate the one and true Burns, the more frustratingly opaque he becomes.
Burn by Alan Cumming is a one-man tour-de-force; a packet of energy to burn the surface of the facade in the hope of laying bare the man below. Whether it succeeds depends entirely on the knowledge and relationship you have with Burns as you take your seat.
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(Le) Pain is a genre-hopping performative tour of life and bread. I had no idea the etymology of ‘companion’ had latin roots (com: ‘together with’; panis: ‘bread’)…sprinkle with a little French et viola: ‘to break bread with one another’. Lovely. As is this whole show.
Read MoreI first met Ruby in 2015 when I enrolled for an MLitt in Playwriting & Dramaturgy at the University of Glasgow. I wasn’t very present in those early days as I was in between jobs whilst supporting members of my family who were in hospital. I was so pleased to meet Ruby. Here was a working class Glaswegian like me…but one who had directed students in plays in the US. Her presence assuaged my fears that I would be confronted with a monolith of middle class mores from the literary and performance world. Hers was a voice of place and warmth…one who reminded me of the good people I grew up with and cared.
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Ahead of tomorrow’s launch, the last conversation finds interviewee Jill Korn turn interviewer to speak with Kenny Burnham.
Kenny is a theatre-maker, dramaturg and playwright. His work for stage includes Hollow and They’ll Get You Now You’re Gone. Kenny also featured in the filmed theatre event, A Journey Around My Tenement.
Read MoreLast Thursday, for the first time since 2019, I stepped once more into a theatre space: James Arnott Theatre at the University of Glasgow. The School of Culture & Creative Arts is a department I know well from my time studying an MLitt there.
On this occasion, I was there to see Nicole Kovacs’ performative meditation on the life of Blanche DuBois - the doomed character from Tennesee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
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With the launch date of A journey Around My Room fast approaching, we continue with our sequence of interviews. Interviewee Lorenzo Novani turns interviewer to speak with Jill Korn.
Jill is an actor, director and playwright. She has written several audio plays including Collaboration, Confessional, Galore!, Sea Change and The Escort. Jill was one of the collaborators in the filmed theatre event A Journey Around My Tenement, shown 2020. Jill plays the part Madame de Hautcastel.
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The new audio play A Journey Around My Room will be available very soon. In the second of our interviews, interviewee David Sillars turns interviewer to speak with Lorenzo Novani.
Lorenzo is an actor, dramatist and playwright. He has written, staged and performed two plays Cracked Tiles and Loving the Enemy as well as having co-written the filmed-theatre event A Journey Around My Tenement. Lorenzo plays the part of Joanetti.
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Within the next week or two, the audio-play A Journey Around My Room will be publicly available. My first play as an audio-cast has been a fascinating experience. Journey is a story of self-discovery, solidarity and survival in an age of turmoil. During the recording sessions I had the privilege of working with a stellar cast and the atmosphere was always convivial. The spirit of these enjoyable sessions was captured in a series of interviews between cast members David Sillars, Jill Korn, Lorenzo Novani and myself resulting in conversations sharing our experiences of bringing the play to life. These interviews take the form of a chain reaction: an actor interviews a fellow actor and they subsequently become the interviewee for another actor.
The first of these conversations features actor, David Sillars, being interviewed by director Kenny Burnham. David is an artist and actor with fifty years of experience in theatre, TV, film and radio. Nominated for the 2016 Michael Powell Award for the Best Performance in a British Feature, he is joint screen writer of the award winning LGBT feature Seat in Shadow. David plays the part of Xavier De Maistre.
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I have recently received the final production of A Journey Around My Room…and I am really pleased with it! The actors have done a fantastic job bringing the characters to life and the world in which they live has been beautifully brought to life by sound engineer, Alex Bennett. Interviews between the actors will be published prior to release.
The audio play will be made available on this website very soon. I hope you’ll take the journey!
Read MoreA few years ago, I wrote a play that never saw the light of day. It was… not intentional, utterly frustrating and entirely enlightening. As I tend to write with a theme in mind, I conduct a considerable amount of research which often is more enjoyable than it sounds. However, it is always a job to ensure any research does not extrude from the narrative. The analogy of a double decker bus works best: top deck travels the story; inside travels the message. On this occasion, it didn't work: the play upon reflection didn't seem to hang.
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