Elephantine Dramaturgy: Rebecca Monks and Madison Maylin @ Edfringe 2016

Tyke - a gripping new play by Rebecca Monks that imagines the events leading up to the true story of an abused circus elephant’s tragic break for freedom. We're taking the show to this summer's Edinburgh Fringe Festival for a full (month-long) run, with three previews at Above The Arts Theatre in Leicester Square. 10% of all our takings at the Fringe will go to a (soon to be chosen) animal welfare charity.


So, what's it about?
Proudlove’s world-famous circus is crumbling. Faced with a financial crisis, his enterprise could fold within a year. The ringmaster knows he needs to bring in the crowds to save it, and for this, he’s relying on his prize attraction: Tyke the elephant.

Stefan – Proudlove’s protégé – is tasked with teaching Tyke new and more demanding tricks. He hires a skilled and passionate apprentice, Veronica, to assist him. The two fall in love, but their relationship is tested when she rebukes the circus’ brutal training methods.

This touching new play is grounded in the true story of Tyke – who killed her trainer in front of thousands of circus spectators, escaped, and died in a hail of gunfire. The play uses puppetry to explore love, power, morality, and animal nature.

Tyke Q&A, with writer Rebecca Monks and director Madison Maylin

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Rebecca Monks: Tyke is based on a true story. In 1994, a circus elephant (named Tyke, naturally), killed her trainer on stage during a performance in Honolulu. She then went on to rampage through the area, and was eventually killed in a hail of gunfire. The incident really stayed with me because it was tragic on so many levels: the death of the animal, the death of the trainer, the fear instilled in the audience members. I wanted to write this piece to examine who was to blame, and the idea of conflict within human and animal nature.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

RM: Initially, Tyke was going to be produced by my own production company (Peacetime Productions), but due to scheduling conflicts, our Artistic Director had to pull out. As a playwright, I was left with a new play I was excited about, a good Fringe venue and a time-slot in the programme, but no creative team to bring it to life. I thought I was going to have to cancel it, and I was absolutely heartbroken.

I went for a bit of a Hail Mary pass before I gave up, and contacted everyone I knew in the theatre industry asking them to pass on a message to everyone they knew in the theatre industry. It explained the basis of the play, what I needed (a director, cast and crew), and what I could offer (a full script and some feet on the ground since I'm based in Edinburgh).

Madison got in touch with me about a week later, and it felt like fate (though I don't believe in fate, nor do I believe in being this cheesy. I apologise profusely). She said she was an actor / director, has worked closely with PETA, and had campaigned against the use of animals in circuses. She even had a pet named Tyke. 

We chatted about the project, I watched her show-reel, I sent her the script and after that, she assembled a crack team that have been doing a fantastic job pulling the piece together in London. I couldn't be happier with the team taking it on, and I'm excited to watch it come to life under her vision, and the vision of those involved - Madelaine Cunningham as co-director, and James Lawrence as producer to name another two.

Madison Maylin: I on the other hand, do believe in fate. I was meant to work on this play. It's an important message, one I feel very strongly about as a storyteller and as an animal rights champion. I am very lucky to have worked with some incredible people who know even more incredible people, so it was almost easy to bring the right team together - and who wouldn't want to work on something that could help shape how we view our world?

How did you become interested in making performance?

RM: I have been involved in various theatre projects from a young age, mostly amateur acting and a very brief stint studying at the Moscow Arts Theatre. But my main love is creative writing, and so writing plays felt inevitable. I wrote my first play, Scour, last year and it got some great feedback.

MM: I come from a very gregarious family. On my mum's side there are jazz club owners, artists, and market-stall sellers. On my dad's side there are session musicians and 80s pop stars. My brother (who helped co-found Black Sheep Productions with me) works in the TV and film industry. It makes sense that I'm a writer, actor, director, and all-round show off. It was either that or be a shrinking violet. And purple doesn't suit me.

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

MM: I don't know about typical, but everything I've done before this very moment has shaped how I approach theatre-making. I've worked in Advertising for six years so I also value preparation, strategy, organisation, delegation and structure. That's my first step when making theatre. I'm also a writer, with a BA in English and an MA in Creative Writing, so table work and focus on the words is paramount. Setting up parameters ensures there's overall vision and cohesion. But at my core, I am a performer, so I value creativity, beauty, collaboration, freedom and playfulness above all else.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

RM: The main thing is empathy for Tyke. The incident should never have happened, and Tyke's death (and the death of those involved) could have been avoided. But this play isn't a black-and-white, blame-the-baddy story. It is complicated, and asks you to consider the various pressures put on each character, and what motivated them to behave badly in the first place. I hope the audience will think about the challenges we all face within relationships, work environments and society. More than anything, I hope it will trigger a conversation about the way we treat animals and each other.

MM: I want people to leave our show having experienced something truthful - no matter what that might be. Anger towards humanity. Empathy for animals. No matter what it might be, truth transforms into action: An urge to donate, a pledge to never visit a zoo again, a demand on our government ban wild animals in UK circuses.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

MM: I'm not sure you can shape an audience's experience. Our job is to tell the story. There is no right or wrong experience of that story. As theatre-makers and performers, we put our everything into a show - but once it's out there, in front of an audience, it's completely out of our hands. That's what makes theatre so thrilling.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

MM: Every show that Black Sheep Productions brings to life is bold and dynamic. We put on 'Full Circle' at The Arts Theatre in Leicester Square last year - a play based on ancient Greek women - but the modern aesthetics (drum and bass / 1950s mixes alongside electrifying lighting) were essential to the story-telling. Expect the same adventurous style with Tyke.

Rebecca Monks gives Dramaturgy a good scouring

From Peacetime Productions comes this new one man play about the true value of life, and the lengths we go to when protecting the ones we love. It is an exciting piece of new writing from author and journalist, Rebecca Monks, performed by actor Joshua Considine.

The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
It began with an idea, or more specifically a memory, and the need for catharsis. The play follows the story of an individual’s reaction to the news that both he and his girlfriend are HIV positive. Her reaction is to live life as well as she can; his is to shut himself away and ensure that he never gets sick again. 

This is loosely based on my own experience. When I was 20, I

Joshua, yesterday

found myself in a situation where there was a strong possibility I had contracted HIV. For an accurate result, you have to wait three months, and my reaction during that time was to close myself off from the world. I kept myself in a bubble, and it wasn’t healthy. In the end, the result was negative, but the experience marked me. 

It left me so much more cautious, anxious and afraid of new experiences. The way the protagonist encounters the disease in the play is entirely different to the way I did, but in every other way our experiences were similar. I found that plotting his development and exploring those feelings again through my writing was necessary, useful and, to some extent, therapeutic.

Why bring your work to Edinburgh?I have been a part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in one way or another for the past seven years, and during that time I have taken on a variety of roles, from my early days holding the spotlight in the Pleasance Grand, to my current job as a writer and reviewer. 

It’s been a long-running ambition of mine to see my own play put on at the festival, because there’s nowhere else quite like the Fringe: it’s a place to experiment with new work, to be as creative as you can and to immerse yourself in a world of like-minded performers, audience members and critics. 

Josh (the sole performer in our one-man show) and I both felt like this was the right time to take this play to the festival, as we had a story to tell and a message to share, and Edinburgh is the place to do that in August. It’s full of people who are there to listen.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
This is a difficult question, as I can only say how I hope the audience would react. In my opinion, you can never really state how an audience can expect to react to a piece of theatre - it’s the immediacy and intimacy of the moments on stage that creates honest audience reactions. 

Rebecca, today

Any anticipation of that would, to my mind, render it less effective.

That being said, I would hope that the audience would feel appreciative, empathetic and at times, uncomfortable. There are moments in there designed to shock, but that’s because life too can be shocking.


The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
Being a one-man show, it would have been very easy for this work to have become a reading of an experience - more storytelling than theatre. It was my job as a writer, and Josh’s job as the performer to ensure that this work developed into a structured performance, rather than a series of short stories and monologues.


Dramaturgy was relevant to this piece as it shaped the written work into a dramatic composition, and connected the performer physically to the words I had written. Our motto is ‘show, don’t tell’, and we found ourselves remembering that as we were working on the way we expressed the language - always trying to ensure it was suited for the stage.

As a result, throughout the process of the show’s creation, we were constantly aware of a need to represent dramatic elements, be it through Josh’s physicality, through my own adaptation of the words, or by using further theatrical elements, such as lighting and sound to bring meaning to the play.


What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
I am going to focus here on a playwright that has inspired me: Mark Ravenhill. His play, Pool No Water, removed the ‘he said, she said’ tradition of script writing: the prose was free-flowing and unhindered by inter-character dialogue. He presented simple words, assigned to no characters or ultra-specific situations, and left the rest to be interpreted.

Josh and I performed Pool No Water together several years ago, and the concept stuck with me ever since: plays don’t have to be linear. They can be works of prose that the performer brings to life through theatricality. 

As I mentioned earlier, I presented Josh with a free-flowing length of writing that we adapted for the stage as a company. Ravenhill’s play worked because it allowed the performers to bring out of the prose what they saw in it, and to adapt it how they felt fit - in many ways, that’s how this play works for us.

Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
For this play, it began with me writing the opening monologue, and Josh and I discussing our immediate reactions to it. Without thinking about it in depth, we asked ourselves: how do we imagine this being performed, and why? 

It’s an interesting method, as it explores our instinctive reaction to a play's themes. As a point of reference, we said we can imagine the opening monologue being performed in a bath tub. That’s not the direction we went in, but we did draw on those themes of vulnerability and cleanliness, and they were included in our final staging of the play.

Josh and I collaborated in a loose sense throughout the process - I kept him up to speed on the writing, he discussed staging ideas with me. But we kept our boundaries, meaning that neither of us could suggest changes to the others’ area (mine being writing, his being performing) until we both had fully-formed ideas of the directions we wanted to take. 

It’s important to get an initial sense of where you want to go alone before you take advice or suggestions from somebody else.


What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
My meaning and the audience’s meaning are two different things. My meaning is to get across a message, a story, a sentiment. Theirs is to appreciate that message, story or sentiment (or, just as likely, to not appreciate it).

As I touched on before, an audience’s reaction is also singular, intimate and immediate - so two people sitting next to each other may find different meaning in the same work - but as a performer the meaning is the same: to get across your message.


Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
What would the role of dramaturgy be if you were staging a play about the role of dramaturgy? (That one’s for you, Gareth)

Thanks for the cheeky suggestion, Monks.