Universal evocation. Nice idea if you can nail it. Setting a play in a school gets you 100% audience buy-in. Young or old, we have all been there and have our memories of it. For some it is perhaps the best days of their lives. For most, probably not. VL, written by Kieran Hurley and Gary McNair, is set in a secondary school and the ghost of that place clearly comes flooding back for a good deal of the audience.
Read MoreTime-shifting is a guaranteed way of manifesting avenues for drama and comedy. Dropping characters into time-zones clearly alien to them yet recognisable to the audience is, at least, amusing. However, it requires a clearly delineated development to control the dramatic irony. Allowing the audience to always be one-step ahead of the character risks a punctured performance.
Read MoreWhat could possibly be more reasonable than making common ground with the company you’re in? Aligning your personal view with your audience is a reasonable thing to do, right? But in theatre, we need conflict! What if we shifted the conflict a few feet from the stage into the guiding mind of the audience? That enough conflict for you?
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