A Pimp, A Eunuch, A Courtesan And A Virgin Walk Into A Bar…

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From L to R: Michael Jenkins,Grace McCabe,Toby Davis,David Harvey at All Bar One, Brindley Place. 

Part of the fun of performing in a big Crescent musical is the people met, the friends made,and the stories swapped.
I met with four members of the ‘Forum’ cast at All Bar One in Brindley Place; Michael Jenkins,who plays ‘Hero’ ; Toby Davis (Marcus Lycus) ; Grace McCabe (Panacea), and David Harvey,who juggles a number of roles in the play. They all very graciously made time for me to talk to them,before what was to be a very energetic and demanding Sunday afternoon’s rehearsal.
They’re all young, bubbly,enthusiastic…eager to share how much fun this production has been for all of them.
“This is, by far, the most enjoyable show I’ve done” says Toby, a relative Crescent veteran, who’s been a member since 2007. He’s a big, barrel-chested, naturally friendly guy, with a booming laugh,who also just happens, to have perfect pitch (to the envy of musical theatre types everywhere).
His is an impressive Crescent pedigree, with roles in ‘The Threepenny Opera’, ‘Sweeney Todd’ and most notably, a menacing chauffeur/gangster in ‘Grand Hotel’.
Has he used anything from his personal life to inform his character in ‘Forum’?
“I play, essentially,a pimp” he notes drily. ” And I work in a bank. So this role is a complete flight of imagination for me”.
I throw the question out to the others.
Michael considers this carefully. “I’m pretty shy with women, especially ones that I like,on a one-to-one basis.” he says,weighing his words. “So I’ve used that quality with Hero, who’s inexperienced and shy with girls.” ( If I didn’t know Michael fairly well, I’d say he was being disingenuous…he has an easy charm which disarms most people,particularly the opposite sex. He seems affectingly unaware of it.) Michael’s first production at the Crescent was last years ‘Grand Hotel’, where his talent and commitment were noted; he’s since appeared in ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and the Christmas Wassail.
Grace, a trained actor, feigns outrage at the question; ” I’m playing a courtesan!” she says, laughing,mock-aghast. “So NO!”
At 5’11”, Grace has the striking look of a catwalk model ( unsurprisingly, she has modelled in fashion shows for fellow students in her undergraduate days.) She has two Crescent productions under her belt ( The Christmas Wassail and ‘Merchant of Venice’) despite having been a member for only a few short months.
David, an Oxford graduate in Psychology, has an infectiously enthusiastic mien. He talks in rapid fire staccato bursts: ” Well,the thing is, I play characters that, essentially, are there to feed the story.” He says. “A bumbling eunuch, a bumbling soldier. I think the common thread is ‘bumbling’ ” ,he smiles.
David did a lot of productions while an undergrad: ” I did,I think,an average of one production every term. Some good,some not so good”
He tells of productions as diverse as ‘Peter Pan’,performed in a dorm room, and acting in a resident Don’s translations of Voltaire,complete with rhyming couplets and iambic pentameter.
I ask a question that I like to ask actors: What would be your dream role, stage or screen?
“I’d very much like to revisit a role I did at school”, says David “in the play ‘Not For Heroes’, about the relationship between Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Other than that, ‘Posner’ in ‘The History Boys’.”
Grace is lucky enough to have already played one of her dream roles; at Arts University Bournemouth, in her final year, she played Katherine Hepburn in a one woman show,written by herself. “I was scared to death on opening night. It was a big challenge, but it went really well.” She says she’d love the chance to play Scarlett O’Hara.
Michael would relish Sweeney Todd, or interestingly, Pseudolus from ‘Forum’. Toby, after much thought, plumps for ‘The Hound’ character from ‘Game of Thrones’ ( I tell him he’d make a fine ‘Javert’ from ‘Les Mis’. Better than Russell Crowe, anyway.)
As new,or new-ish members,what has their experience been like, performing at the Crescent?
The collective positivity is overwhelming.
“You always worry at the beginning of any production whether the end result will be any good, and whether the cast will gel” says David. “I’ve always had a great experience here, whether working in props, where I started, or onstage.” Toby and Michael nod in agreement.
Grace sums up their thoughts nicely.
” When I joined the Crescent last year to do the Wassail, I didn’t know a single person here. Now I feel like I’ve made friends for life. It’s a great place to be.”

‘A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum’ at The Crescent Theatre, May 25-June 1.

Photo taken, and additional ambience created, by Tiffany Cawthorne.  

Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Senex, But Were Afraid To Ask…

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It’s 2pm outside Costa Coffee in Brindley Place,and Dave Rodgers seems as uncertain as the weather.
He’s a quiet and unassuming interviewee, and seems genuinely nonplussed as to why I should want to ask him particularly for his thoughts on ‘Forum’. At 65, he’s the most senior and experienced member of a diverse (and very talented) cast. He’s a modest guy; adept at self-deprecating banter. “My character’s name is ‘Senex’. It sounds like a laxative. Maybe they cast me ’cause I’m a crap actor.”
Dave first hit the stage aged nine,in a church group production in his home town of Manchester. He came to Birmingham to attend teacher training college in 1968, and soon fell into acting in college productions, because “there were girls to be met”. He first performed at the Crescent in 1972,an outside production of “Carmen”; he played the small part of a soldier.
Other roles with other companies followed, and it wasn’t until 1989 that Dave became a full Crescent member,landing a role in that year’s production of “Strippers”.
“I’d turned down a part in ‘Pal Joey’ to do ‘Strippers’, and really enjoyed it, mainly because I was acting with Bob Carradine, Mike Venables, Geoff Poole…terrific people to be onstage with”.
“It was done in the studio, the audience were quite close”, he says, smiling. ” And what never occurred to us until we did it was the kind of audience we’d get. The first night, the front row was full of seedy looking men in raincoats. They didn’t come back after the interval. It wasn’t exactly what they were expecting.”
Roles in musical theatre and straight acting followed, at the Crescent and elsewhere. He tells this story of playing ‘Bottom’ in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at Birmingham Botanical Gardens,as part of the summer tour: ” I was wearing an old demob suit a cast member had donated, it had been her dad’s and was a perfect fit. In the scene where Bottom falls asleep, I had to lie down onstage, for around twenty minutes…this was in the pouring rain. It was bad enough that I was getting soaked to the skin, but what was worse was that the rain released about forty years worth of foul stench from this demob suit I’d had to wear…it’d never been cleaned. It was so bad my eyes stung! I can smell it now,to this day.”
His favourite Crescent production? “I was lucky enough to be in ‘Faustus’, directed by Alan Marshall…an absolutely brilliant production,and one of the best experiences I’ve had at the theatre. There were scenes that terrified the audience!”
Does he have a process for preparing for roles? “When I read a part, I tend to see it in terms of other characters I’ve seen,and base it on that to begin with. It gives it a starting point. Senex, for instance, I saw as the Hedley Lamarr character in ‘Blazing Saddles’…his line of patter, his walk. Then I add aspects of me,and over time the character morphs into something different, sometimes completely different.”
What advice would he give to younger members of the ‘Forum’ cast? ” I feel like an elder statesman amongst all these kids”, he laughs. ” It’s a lovely cast. And it’s a very busy show, which is good.
But what I always say to people is, no matter what’s going on onstage, even if the focus is somewhere else, someone in the audience is always watching YOU. Even if there’s forty people onstage, and you’re in the background. If you switch off for a minute, someone will see it. Always be acting.”

‘A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum’, at The Crescent Theatre, May 25-June 1.

Photos by Jack Fitzpatrick.

Additional social ambience created by Gerry Lucas.

 

Ariel Dorfman on the relevance of Death and The Maiden for today.

Aside

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Ariel Dorfman on the relevance of Death and The Maiden for today.

‘It happened yesterday but it could well be today. A woman awaits the return of her husband as the sun goes down. The dictatorship that plagued her land has just fallen, and everything is uncertain. The woman is full of fear, gripped by a secret terror that she only shares with the man she loves. During the night and the day that follows she will have to confront that fear, she will bring to justice in her living room the doctor she believes is responsible for having tortured and raped her years ago. Her husband, a lawyer in charge of a commission investigating the deaths of thousands of dissidents under the previous regime, must defend the accused man because without the rule of law the transition to democracy will be compromised; if his wife kills that doctor, the husband will not be able to help heal a sick and wounded land.

…its main drama is echoed in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Nigeria, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Iraq, Thailand, Zimbabwe and now Libya. In fact, because torture became widespread after the criminal attacks on New York on 9/11, because the most powerful nations in the world, and particularly the US, justified or were complicit in egregious abuses of human rights in order to make themselves feel safe, because they unleashed terror to fight and avenge terror, it could be ventured that the core dilemmas of Death and the Maiden are more relevant today than they ever were.

I’m thrilled that Death and the Maiden has not aged over these 20 years, that it still moves people to tears, confronts them with a tragedy that has no clear solution, that it speaks to our world today with the same passion it embodied yesterday. I’m thrilled that the relations between men and women that I explored, the intricacies of memory and madness, the aftermath of violence, the uncertainty of truth and narrative, continue to capture the imagination of so many. Thrilled, yes, but it is also sobering to realise that humanity has not managed to learn from the past, that torture has not been abolished, that justice is so rarely served, that censorship prevails, that the hopes of a democratic revolution can be gutted and distorted and warped.

I can’t help but ask if 20 years from now I will be writing this phrase all over again: this story happened yesterday, but it could well be today.

http://http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/14/death-maiden-relevance-play

Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden

Characters

PAULINA SALAS

Paulina has been living with the secret of the details of her torture for fifteen years. References to her youth reveal her to be a spirited, passionate and politically astute individual. She describes herself as ‘wild and fearless, willing to do anything.’ At the beginning of the play she is isolated in her own terror, agitated by the unfamiliar, until the opportunity to put her torturer on trail is for her the chance to speak.

‘And I can speak – it’s been years since I murmured even a word, I haven’t opened my mouth to even whisper a breath of what I’m thinking, years living in terror of my own…’ 2.1 p.25. She has lost all trust in the world and those in it, living in a state of perpetual anxiety as a result of the repeated beating and rape during her torture fifteen years ago. As she confronts Roberto, whom she believes to be her torturer, her language becomes base and her actions threaten take on those of her torturers.

GERARDO ESCOBAR

A human rights lawyer, Gerardo is ruled by intellectual analysis of any given situation or person. At the play’s opening he has been chosen by the President of the new government for his Investigating Commission into ‘human rights violations that ended in death or the presumption of death.’ 1.1.p.5. His task to mediate between the torturer and tortured is stretched to the limit by playing various roles of husband and lawyer simultaneously.

ROBERTO MIRANDA

He claims he has a wife, two sons and a daughter. He professes to ‘ happen to like to help people, – I’m a doctor…’ 1.1.p.10. Roberto rescues Gerardo from a punctured tyre at the roadside, takes him home and then returns with Gerardo’s spare tyre. Has he found himself embroiled in a macabre domestic or has destiny delivered him into the hands of his victim?

 

 

Youtube links:

 

GENERAL PINOCHET & BARONESS THATCHER – YouTube

 

 

Margaret Thatcher Defiende Al General Pinochet/ Margaret Thatcher defends the General Pinochet – YouTube

 

The Overthrow of Democratic Chile Part 1 (Salvador Allende) – YouTube

 

The Crimes of Pinochet – Chile – YouTube

 

 

 

Timeline:

 

Pinochet dictatorship (adapted from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1222905.stm)

1970 - Salvador Allende becomes world’s first democratically elected Marxist president and embarks on an extensive programme of nationalisation and radical social reform.

1973 - September 11th Gen Augusto Pinochet ousts Allende in CIA-sponsored coup and proceeds to establish a brutal dictatorship.

1988 - Gen Pinochet loses a referendum on whether he should remain in power.

1989-90 - Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin wins presidential election; Gen Pinochet steps down in 1990 as head of state but remains commander-in-chief of the army. Ariel Dorfman publishes Death and the Maiden

1994-95 - Eduardo Frei succeeds Aylwin as president and begins to reduce the military’s influence in government.

Pinochet’s aftermath

1998 - Gen Pinochet retires from the army and is made senator for life but is arrested in the UK at the request of Spain on murder charges.

2000 March – British Home Secretary Jack Straw decides that Gen Pinochet is not fit to be extradited. Gen Pinochet returns to Chile.

 

 

FROM: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4050655.stm

 

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Chile torture victims win payout

The Chilean government has offered lifelong pensions to more than 28,000 people tortured by agents of Gen Augusto Pinochet’s military government.

President Ricardo Lagos made the offer as an official report was published on the internet detailing abuses committed between 1973 and 1990.

Mr Lagos said the report, based on survivors’ testimonies, proved that torture had been state policy.

The document says the victims included some 3,400 women and even children.

It lists 18 major types of torture, including suffocation, electric shocks and repeated beatings.

Many of the crimes were carried out by the Chilean army and police.

 

Mr Lagos said: “The report makes us face an inescapable reality – political imprisonment and torture constituted an institutional practice of the state, which is absolutely unacceptable and alien to Chile’s historical tradition.”

He said many thousands had suffered in silence but had finally come forward to tell their story.

He said nothing could make up for what the victims had suffered – but he said he would ask Congress to approve pensions worth about $190 a month.

This figure represents about 93% of the Chilean minimum wage.

Gen Pinochet has never faced trial. But a Chilean judge is due to decide in the next two weeks if he is mentally fit to defend himself against allegations of human rights abuses.

‘Old wounds’

There has been no reaction from the general himself to the publication of the report by the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture.

However, his former spokesman, Gen Guillermo Garin, told the BBC World Service’s World Today programme: “The investigation has failed to prove people were really tortured.

“This issue is now being exploited for political purposes, and will simply reopen old wounds that have already healed.”

The document says many victims were arrested from their homes in the middle of the night and taken to one of 800 detention centres.

 

It says one favourite tactic was to force detainees to watch other prisoners being tortured or even killed.

Some 12% of the torture victims were women and almost all of them said they had suffered sexual abuse.

The victims included children and 88 of those detained were 12 years or younger.

The report concluded that aside from broken bones and injuries, most of the suffering was psychological.

The personal files of the torture victims will remain secret for the next 50 years unless individuals choose to release them.

Earlier this month, the head of the Chilean army, Gen Juan Emilio Cheyre, accepted institutional responsibility for past abuses.

 

 

 

 

From : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/233801.stm

Here are excerpts from General Augusto Pinochet’s letter to the Chilean people which he described as his “political testament”.

I have been prevented from going home to my country and I am living through the hardest and most unjust experience of my life. The country knows I never sought power. That is why when I exercised it I never clung to it and when the moment came to hand it over I loyally did so. Everything I did as a soldier and ruler was done with my thoughts fixed on liberty for the people of Chile, on their welfare and on national unity.

 

Pro-Pinochet supporter demonstrating in London

At the end of my life, in spite of my fatigue and the suffering produced by so many injustices and misunderstandings, I want to say that even when I still must face greater adversity, my spirit will never feel defeated.

I have been the object of an artful and cowardly politico-judicial machination, which has no moral value.

Whilst in this continent, and specifically in the countries which are condemning me via spurious trials, communism has murdered many millions of human beings this century, I am being prosecuted for having defeated it in Chile, saving the country from a virtual civil war.

I am absolutely innocent of all the crimes and of the actions irrationally attributed to me. However I fear that those who are doing so never have been nor will be prepared to agree and accept the truth.

I have never wished the death of anyone, and I feel a sincere grief for all the Chileans who have lost their lives during these years.

I love Chile above all things and not even the most painful circumstances will keep me from repeating from a distance once and a thousand times with all the strength of my spirit, Viva Chile.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum…The Blog!

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Welcome,friends, to the official blog of this year’s Crescent musical!
The production has been graced with a very talented cast and crew, and an exceptionally dynamic directing duo in Tiff Cawthorne and Keith Harris, who have, between them, made the rehearsal process (we’re about seven weeks in) challenging (in a good way), productive and fun.
If you’re not familiar with the play, it’s 110% feel-good,high octane, slapstick fun. Double, and treble entendres take the place of the darkness and foreboding that is sometimes associated with Sondheim’s work.
Stage business has to be razor-sharp. Characterisation needs to be credible and comic-book BIG at the same time. Much laughter is had-and banter exchanged-in the rehearsal room. It’s great!
Tiff-who is also choreographing the play-has managed to turn a company of avowed non-dancers into a creditable work in progress. I usually dance with all the grace and finesse of Wreck It Ralph, but Tiff has already got even me busting a few moves (the sobriquet ‘Miracle Worker’ has been used. And not without good reason).
I’ll be posting more as rehearsals,and Keith/Tiff’s master plan,unfurls.
Between now and then,you might want to book your ticket(s)…while the going is good. Avanti!

DIRECTING SOLDIERING ON – A TALKING HEADS BY ALAN BENNETT

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I have been so blessed to have been given an opportunity to direct one of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads monologues, and feel very lucky to have been given Soldering On as the one to make my directorial début with.  This week as we enter the week of dress rehearsals and welcome audiences to our performances I thought it’d be time to reflect on the past couple of months of rehearsals and bringing our interpretation of Muriel to life.

The Crescent Theatre is an awesome theatre – both as a building and as a company.  They’ve given me opportunities in the past to perform in a family show, a show that was so dark even the most cold hearted people may have found it difficult and also appear semi naked in a calendar due to me appearing in Calendar Girls at the start of this current season.  I’m also in rehearsals for my first Shakespeare for Merchant of Venice opening next month, but for the last few months I’ve had the chance to direct – something I’ve wanted to do for several years.

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Directing is strange but exciting.  You can read a play and imagine it in so many different ways, and your way may and will vary from another’s perception.  When you’re working with a cast, whether it be of one in this case or many, you have to try to persuade them to give your way a try and it might work, but it might not work too.  You have to be able to let go of ideas you may have had for a while to give something else a try and those things, more often than not, work better!! It’s not compromise though – both director and the cast and anyone else involved are all trying to create the best thing possible.  Ideas don’t get compromised, they get improved and they evolve.  One that has become apparent is that the role of director isn’t to dictate ideas, but to be the ringmaster of the ideas and to work out the solutions, transitions, the props and the furniture, the routes the actor takes and to discuss things through with the wonderful team of creative people working behind the scenes.

Anyhow, let’s go back to how this all started.  I originally had submitted to direct another play in the season – as did Ellaina, the director of the second monologue (Cream Cracker Under the Settee) that’s playing alongside Soldiering On. As both of us were first time directors it prevented us from getting the other play but the theatre’s art managers still wanted to give us a chance to train us up as it were.  There were two Talking Heads monologues left over from the last season and so these were offered to us.  On the same day both myself and Ellaina were both involved with the opening night of Calendar Girls, both appearing towards the end of the play and so we spent a lot of that week in discussion about which one of us would direct which and coming up with some very early ideas.

It might not be the right way to do things, but one of the first things I did was think about music.  My original idea was to use sections of Bach’s Cello Suit which didn’t last long before I considered Gymnopédie.  Both well known pieces of music which would suit the monologue quite happily.  But then by chance I stumbled upon the Cinematic Orchestra’s ‘To Build a Home’.  The first thing that struck me were the lyrics and how they reflected the general plot of the monologue and then the music had haunting tones and also managed to sound like time passing that I felt as though this was the music I needed.  I debated for a while whether to have the lyrics too but made the decision early on that it could be distracting and so instead chopped up the instrumental version to give us different variations to use throughout.

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After casting Jo Hill to play Muriel we started rehearsals and for the first few rehearsals all we did was talk. We would find questions we wanted to answer in the text and discuss them coming up with our own ideas.  These answers might not be what Bennett would want us to come to, but they helped us interpret the text for our production.  We also produced a time line detailing all the important family events and details from when Muriel and Ralph met up to the end of the monologue.  We created back stories for all the characters mentioned, some more serious than others though, but all the same important steps for us to take.  Quite by coincidence we managed to spend a full rehearsal on each scene so that by our Christmas break we had had a concentrated rehearsal on every scene and managed to run it through a couple of times. Seeing words come from a page to a performance is really quite exciting.  Jo has done a fantastic job of bringing Muriel to life and to take on constant changes and suggestions as well as bringing in her own ideas.

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It’s been apt that I have been directing a show called Soldiering On as just before the auditions I found my personal situation changing massively.  If it wasn’t for the play I don’t think I’d have hung around in Birmingham for long.  This project has at times been the one thing that has kept me going when times have got really tough and the one thing I would leave my house for on some occasions.  I remember keeping a lot to myself and it wasn’t until a couple of weeks into rehearsals when I admitted what had been happening.  The support I had from everyone – whether they know they’ve helped or not – has got me through an incredibly tough time and has kept me motivated for the future ahead.

So, tonight I go to the theatre to see the first dress rehearsal.  I cannot wait for Thursday to come along and I can share my experiences with an audience.  I’m not usually one to blow my trumpet or to self promote, but I’m so proud of what we have achieved with this and want audiences to come and enjoy the show as much as I have enjoyed directing it.  I will be a very proud director at the end of this – in fact I already am.

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Talking Heads by Alan Bennett at the Crescent Theatre Birmingham.

Thursday 21st February to Saturday 23rd February 2013 at 7:45pm
Matinee Saturday 23rd at 2:45pm
Tickets £8

www.crescent-theatre.co.uk

 

Rehearsal photos taken by Graeme Braidwood

Youth Theatre Comments from Assistant Director Sharan Clair

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12/01/2013

Just finished another excellent rehearsal of Blood Brothers with the talented Youth Theatre and I am so excited for the audience to see the work they are creating. The best thing I have found working with them is how much they are ready to contribute; a huge amount of what the audience will see has come from these kids. They come to rehearsals full of energy and ready to engage with the big issues of the play. They have lent their voices to this production and I feel come March the audiences will enjoy seeing their work come to fruition.

Sharan Clair (Assistant Director) 

Youth Theatre Update!

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The Cresent Youth Theatre’s production of Blood Brothers is coming together nicely. I am so lucky to have a wonderful cast and amazing assistant director (Sharan Clair). We have stripped the play version down to an hour of fast paced action and are beginning to work on added some short devised sections to enhance the world of the brothers. The talented young actors are a joy to work with, constantly being creative and foused in their quest to produce the best production they possibly can. I am enjoying working with the young actors and can’t wait for you all to see the final show. More information to follow…

James David Knapp (Director)

Through A Glass Darkly

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Over the coming weeks and months I hope to tell the story of how we bring Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film “Through A Glass Darkly” to the stage. The adaptation by Jenny Worton premiered at The Almeida Theatre, London in 2012 and is the only adaptation of the film and was personally approved by Bergman and received critical acclaim.

To have the opportunity to bring a powerful ensemble piece to the Crescent Studio Theatre is a huge privilege. My excited grows daily as we near the date for auditions, and I can’t wait to announce my cast!