The Script
The Script, May 2007. Issue 5.

Dear Drama lover,

Hello again! The theatre scene has never been hotter with some great plays and performers showcasing their talents this month. Summertime is back at the Prithvi Theatre with some phenomenal theatre for people of all ages.

On the QTP front, we are taking it slow this month after successful shows of our 2 new productions - Crab and The President is Coming.
Also, Thespo at Prithvi rolls into its third month with shows of some of the best youth theatre in this city. On the first Tuesday & Wednesday of May The Final Rehearsal directed by Pawan Kumar will be performed. There will also be a platform performance before the shows. Do come and encourage the future of theatre.

Apart from that, in this month's edition of The Script, we have Avinash D' Souza reviewing 'When Pythons Followed The Actor' and Tim Supple's toast to the immortal life of William Shakespeare, whose birthday was on 23rd April.

And not to forget, our monthly Great Texts reading is on the last Monday of May. Look forward to seeing you there.

Happy reading.

Yours Sincerely,
On Behalf of Q Theatre Productions,

Himanshu.
Editor, The Script.

Quick Links:
Corno-Q-pia:  The President is Coming ,Crab and Thespo at Prithvi & Great Texts
Point of View:  Avinash D'Souza reviews When the Pythons followed the Actor.
4 Corners: Tim Supple raises a toast to the immortal William Shakespeare.
Up & Coming:  All the exciting plays happening in the city!
Great Stuff:  Auditions and much much more!
Curtain Call:  James Agate on the people who go to the theatre.

Corno-Q-pia
The horn of plenty of QTP events and happenings.

QL

Point of View:  
This month Avinash D''Souza reviews When the Pythons followed the Actor. The views expressed in this article are those of the author. You are welcome to agree, disagree or comment by emailing us at qtp@vsnl.com.

WHEN THE PYTHONS FOLLOWED THE ACTOR

 I’m scared of self-proclaimed sidesplitting, rip-roaring, bring-your-enraged-other half comedies. Mortified. Petrified. Often as not I’m left howling at my naiveté rather than the humour embedded (somewhere) in the script. A performance claiming to be a double-bill…is when I start taking them seriously. Pun unintended. No one would lay claim to two funnies if one was a stretch.

 Staged at Rang Sharda, Version one dot oh!’s “When The Pythons followed The Actor…” was to consist of an adaptation of Christoper Durang’s “The Actor’s Nightmare” followed by a couple of Monty Python sketches. As an aside, I loved sitting in not-quite-paid-for seats thanks to Sree Krishna, the director, open-ending the seats up in front. I’m not going to talk about the Monty Python sketches…that’s the Pet Shop sketch (The mortality of a parrot is hotly disputed by a French woman who bought it), the Book Shop sketch (a bookshop owner’s worst nightmare comes true when a woman who can’t read comes in to buy) and the Pope and Michelangelo sketch(Religion and artistic liberalism lock horns over the depiction of The Last supper). That’s because I’d never stop talking about them. Let’s just say that  the adaptations were deliciously irreverent and matched by pitch-perfect performances.

 “The Actor’s Nightmare” brings the classic thespian nightmare to life, as an accountant, George Spelvin (Amjad Pervez), saunters backstage where he is informed by the stage manager (Anusha) that one of the actors, Eddie, has been in a god-awful something and George will have to go on in his place. George doesn't know his name, doesn’t think he’s an actor, and has no idea of the play he’s supposed to be in. Basically, the best parts of a family wedding. The other actors, such as Sarah Siddons (Malathi Nayak), Dame Ellen Terry (Surabhi) and Henry Irving (Kishore Aacharya), bundle George through plays that might be Private Lives, Hamlet and Endgame. George manages to wing it while they’re around but flounders like an Indian parliamentarian as they exit scenes. As his hysteria mounts, the protagonist breaks out into the Lord’s Prayer, the Act of Contrition and even the alphabet! If time permitted I’m sure an operatic aria would not have been beyond him…After blundering through with bravado and the carte blanche of a urbanized Godzilla, George finds his own in the climactic scene from A Man For All Seasons, finally spouting the right line. This after much pleading the chance to recant and redeem himself (he’s the unlucky Thomas More). Sigh. ‘Tis not Hans Andersen but Durang and the dream takes on a bittersweet tinge of reality as the executioner's axe (Avishit) sends poor George to the Neverworld.

 On a slightly technical front, the lighting…was non-existent. And I don’t mean that in the sense of inadequacy but hopeless ineffectiveness. I’m a not a lighting wingnut but I don’t think that bathing the stage in giant washes of light takes very much. Not when one has 20 lights at hand (I asked…I wept). Quite a few monologues had George…and ten feet around him lit up. It took a lot away from the dramatic tension that was possible; which is tragic because Pervez played the character really well. The Force was definitely not with that one…That said, Krishna did mention they had hell getting their lights together given that they had come into the city the previous day. Yodaesque though the blocking of the play was…for most of the play, Spelvin warped upstage and downstage with Jedi-like precision as did the rest of the cast. The movements were seemingly amorphous as the actors walked their pathways. What was interesting is that it made perfect sense the minute it ended. It’s a damned nice feeling to be lost for a bit and then find yourself exactly where you think you should be. For example, when Spelvin(Hamlet) is spouting verse he does this wicked pirouette around a clothes stand. He’s about to fall when you realize he’s walking away from a page (?) but he also expects the page to follow. I hope that particular bit involved deliberation by the director but even if it didn’t, it worked brilliantly as a metaphor for the dream-like subconsciousnesses that often pervade our physical realities.

 The Actor’s Nightmare can be classified as an exploration into meta-acting. That said, the piece is far more a soliloquy than a play in the truest sense. There’s much of the monologue-monologue-monologue-dialogue-interior monologue that we Bombayites have become accustomed to. This is one of the few times I can say that’s not really a bad thing. The macabre hues and sub-texted tragedy are the pivotals. There is a real fear because the protagonist knows there is something to be afraid of. But he doesn’t know what. Autosuggestion at it’s best. However, while there is a real sense of empathy for George’s character, it is the sheer pace and twanged wit of Durang that keep the piece from becoming a soporific kill-me-kill-me-now. Another metaphor is that of the usage of the name Spelvin…it’s a pseudonym for an actor who does not want to appear in the credits. One who chooses to remain unknown. A master stroke…delicate but suave. The play is perhaps starkly relevant because of the parallels one can draw between our urban realities and its dreamlike landscape. It’s pretty fair to say that we sometimes do things we definitely don’t want to but just end up following through. The darker side of the Red Queen Effect was that you ran, not merely to stay in the same place, but because you never wanted to know what would happen if you stopped running… The clincher for me, is that this play attempts to molest the classic actor-audience umbilical. There is an actor who does is terribly reluctant to perform but does so in surreal fashion for an audience that can’t stomach an accountant on stage. There is an off-beat yet endearing commensalism between these two that makes them both stick around. This, in a play abstracted from catharsis or a journey.  

 I think they stuck around for the same reason I did…it was spanking good fun and unless you were the snoggiest banker this side of the Atlantic you’d arrange to have a ambulance cart you out!! Cos you’d die laughing mid-way…

Avinash D' Souza is a theatre enthusiast and an investment banker.

QL

4 Corners:
April 23rd is William Shakespeare's birthday. Each year his home town of Stratford-upon-Avon host festivities celebrating the greatest of all playwrights. This year at the official lunch, director Tim Supple was asked to make the toast. Tim is in Stratford with his production of A Midsummer Night's Dream comprising of a completely South Asian cast and crew (QTP is being represented by Q and Toral). The following is the speech he made before raising his glass to the Bard of Avon.
 

The immortal memory of William Shakespeare

 Firstly I wish to thank Nick Walsh for the entirely surprising gift of being asked to propose this toast today. I first met Nick in 1985 at York Theatre Royal. I was a 23 year old director fresh out of university, Nick was an awfully grown up General Manager whose two beautiful dogs kept continual guard in his office I remember. I left York in 1987 and did not cross paths with Nick again until last year when our Indian Dream came to the Complete Work’s Festival here in Stratford. And I guess that it is this production that has led to the invitation to speak today.

 What does it mean to talk of the immortal memory of this man who lived for a mere 5 decades or so and who was born and died in this small Warwickshire town? Certainly the fact that we have all travelled here today, 400 years after his death, confirms an importance that has endured way beyond his brief mortality and that shows no signs of diminishing. The strange and difficult question is why? What is it- in these plays - that has elevated him so? Compelling attempts to answer that question are to be found in the pages of book after book, two major institutions- the RSC and the Globe- are now dedicated to the continual production of his work, he stands at the centre of the study of both English literature and theatre and he remains by far the most consistent single challenge by which a theatre actor, director or company will win or lose their reputation.

 I have grown up with this monolithic presence, this edifice that dominates the British theatre.  But from a very young age, as I peered into the words themselves- Feste and Olivia, Lear and his fool, Hamlet, Lady Macbeth- I sensed a fragile and tender clarity. A precise and modest detail of character and thought that I felt to be at odds with the grandeur of the institution of his name. Years later I saw this quality of human scale come alive when we toured The Comedy of Errors from the RSC to India. With Indian audiences I saw the substance of the play hit home: the relationship between masters and servants, the family torn apart by distance and epic separation, the debates between the sisters about marriage, duty and freedom. The delicate, fine tune of commedia- the laughter that comes when we recognise truth about ourselves- was heard loud and clear. The picture of the play was sharper, the sound less muffled, and I understood a striking double image. The heart of the drama is personal, precise, detailed and concerns the individual and the family within society.  But the drama is big enough to fill the minds of a thousand people and bring all their attention to one point- to enthral, amuse and move the gathering. This scale and impact is achieved because the content, unique and original, is magnified and made recognisable by characters, situations and ways of telling stories that are deeply familiar within collective memory and widely shared across human experience.

 I think I saw Shakespeare so clearly in India in 1997 for two reasons. The more obvious one being the fact that the content of his world- the beliefs, habits and stories of his time- are more alive today in India than in Western Europe. But it was the second, less tangible reason I found even more compelling: away from the UK and the layers of shared meaning and habit we have imposed on the name of Shakespeare, and away from the highly cultivated theatre world that we have developed, in no small part around his name, I felt the relationship between the play and the audience to be more direct, simple, clear- and so more alive. I wanted to find out more and this curiosity was the seed of the Midsummer Night’s Dream project for which I started travelling in India, meeting and seeing the work of artists, in early 2005.

 While my first experience of Indian theatre had been superficial, limited to the metropolitan, English speaking elite, the research for the Dream introduced me to a wider world of folk and classical, physical and musical performers- few of whom acted in English. The distinction is important. The further away I got from those actors who were most like our own, the closer I felt to certain aspects of Shakespeare that lie out of reach to us.  On make-shift stages in courtyards, huts and jungle clearings I saw great tragic figures, clowns, battles, dances, spirits and the symbolic representation of transformation, death, ecstatic love and encounters with the gods themselves. And as I began to work with performers- of all kinds, in all languages- I began to hear in Shakespeare, as never before, the echo of the ancients. I understood the unique clarity of his split-personality. On the one hand the dramatic shapes of the ancient world- ritual, stock characters, symbols and patterns, the active presence of magic and transformation- and on the other the essential qualities of modern theatre- character, psychological action and reflection and narratives that embrace the full sweep of human society: royalty, aristocracy,  merchants, craftsmen and con-men.

 I felt in India the living vitality of Theseus/Hypolita and Oberon/Titania- mythic figures upon whose sexual union and harmony the balance of human life depends; of the family battle that rages between Hermia and her father and the extreme problem faced by her and Lysander;  of the real mechanicals, that great group of characters so misunderstood and abused in the British traditions of casual buffoonery and corrupted commedia del arte and of the potent and playful spirit world Shakespeare created for the Dream with unique brilliance.

 To an extent this was simply my particular experience of the much-remarked on phenomenon of Shakespeare’s commonality and adaptability. He is surely the greatest example of the simple fact that writers become great in their ability to communicate with their contemporaries, but to last they must communicate with those who come after.  As Ted Hughes put it, every line of Shakespeare seems to reach into the soul of the religious conflict that tore England apart at the time. And yet throughout the ages, and never more so than during the last 60 years, we see Shakespeare relocated with profound resonance to eastern Europe, the far East, the near East, the United States and so on.

 However what struck me in India was the living connection between traditions of performance thousands of years old and the rich inner world of this most English writer. And how much easier it was for Indian performers, with no knowledge or experience of Shakespeare to access certain core qualities of the work than British actors steeped in his writing. The journey was not one of relocation but of the Dream emerging from different soil- and emerging in many ways, illuminated. It was not a question of me ‘taking Shakespeare to them’ or even ‘setting Shakespeare in India’. We have much to learn, if we can open our minds, from those whose theatre art remains closer than ours to certain demands that Shakespeare makes of the performer. At present in the UK we naturally look first to the text and it’s delivery as the key to bringing Shakespeare to the stage. However we struggle with making the plays work in the larger theatres- how much more successful often are productions in the Swan and the Cottesloe than the RST and the Olivier? And I mean successful in touching the hearts and holding the memory of audiences? This is in part our need to perform the plays in the modern style of acting- largely realistic with fully realised characters and compelling psychological action. This is where our actors are most convincing, and what our audiences are most used to seeing. And without question command of the language and truthful representation of character are essential aspects of Shakespeare in performance.

 But they are not all, and we must never be fixed in our expectations. Fixed expectations come from established ideas and established ideas come from received habits. This way lies stagnation and gradual decline. If Shakespeare’s memory is immortal then that means that his work is alive on stage and to be alive it must be continually rediscovered. For this to happen those of us who seek to understand his plays in action and to share this understanding with audiences must remain open to different ways of performing. And that includes looking outside the accumulated rules of English verse and prose speech and looking beyond the horizon of Western Stanislavskian acting. We can trust what has been learnt before and passed on but we must not rest with it. We must not let the discoveries of the past become structures that confine us. There are always others whose ways of performing ritual, bringing magic or transformation to the stage, embracing music and dance, of showing fighting, sex, chase, flight or death and of performing the extreme actions of rage, ecstasy or terror will be more convincing, more Shakespearean than our own. And these others may not be found in smart theatres, nice rehearsal rooms or established companies. But their skills may be older- their knowledge may reach back through generations and bring us closer to that part of Shakespeare that is not modern or to that modern Shakespeare whose characters, narratives and actions invite us to gaze beyond the immediate and glimpse our more eternal selves.

 It has been pointed out by many- most recently and notably by Jonathan Bate- that his brilliance aside, a large part of the Shakespeare’s remarkable fame and endurance is thanks to the industry that has built up around his name from Garrick on and emanating from the very place in which we celebrate today. Without the engine of this industry and the resources, audiences and interest it generates, much of the institution of theatre that my generation takes for granted would not exist. I was humbled by the reaction of the Indian company when they first came to Stratford last year.  How remarkable, how wonderful they said, must it be to have theatres so well equipped, so well staffed, with audiences so engaged with and in love with theatre. And that such a place should exist here, in so calm, quiet and concentrated an environment. And of course we have many buildings, institutions and structures that help us work in conditions beyond the dreams of all those who make theatre in India. And yet I envy my Indian colleagues every bit as much as they might envy me. For these buildings and institutions do not help us retain the naked flesh or the spirit of what we call theatre. In those courtyards and clearings in India I saw more joy, more urgency, more that made my pulse quicken in a few weeks than I had in years at home. What was this I wondered? It is life, life itself.

 The living memory of Shakespeare lies in the actions of his characters brought alive on stage. It endures because of its transparency, its openness to endless re-birth in the shape of different generations and societies. The substance of his work, the only thing that matters as we raise our glasses today is the fragile glimpse of life- brief as the lightening in the collied night, we are gifted by those shadows he creates on the stage. So fragile are they, as hard to coax out at night as the fairies, we must take care of them. We must recognise that not only are buildings and institutions sometimes of no help to us, they can lead us to lose our way. Buildings and institutions can enshrine received ideas and habits. Let us make sure that we look beyond, that we accept the world is great and that we know little and ask our buildings and institutions to help us in our search and to keep their doors and windows open for our return.

 Like many have before and many will after, let us raise our glasses to the immortal memory of William Shakespeare.

 Tim Supple is an English theatre and opera director and is currently staging the multi-lingual production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

QL

Up&Coming:
The following is a list of shows you should watch out for this month. The code to it's deciphering is as follows:
red is the Theatre Club show 
and in blue are QTP events. 
Those with an (R) next to them means that we have reviewed it, and if you require a review simply email us at qtp@vsnl.com asking for it. 
Those with an (PP) next to them means that it is a platform performance, entry free!