An Affinity with Dramaturgy: Helena de Crespo @ Edfringe 2015

ELECTIVE AFFINITIES

By

David Adjimi

Performed by Helena de Crespo

August 10/30 15.45 Acoustic Music Centre at St. Bride’s (venue 123)

Elective Affinities is like the curtain-raiser for some horrific tragedy that hasn't begun. TIME OUT NY

Written by award-winning American playwright David Adjmi, Alice Hauptmann (dazzlingly portrayed by Helena de Crespo in this one-woman play) invites you to tea and reveals a furious intolerance and alarming myopia on social issues and how wealth has isolated her. 

‘The remarkably talented de Crespo refuses her audience space for detached analysis. She holds their gaze and delivers her own astute analysis of love and decay’ 

This tea party becomes an unmissable, if terrifying, experience. Refreshments will be served! ‘...her infallible timing ... makes the production gleam’ (Steffen Silvis, WK). 

‘The remarkably talented de Crespo refuses her audience space for detached analysis. She holds their gaze and delivers her own astute analysis of love and decay’ (Johanna Drouba, Willamette Week).

The Fringe
What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
What inspired this production hit me on a flight back to the States from SE Asia.  There was a copy of the New Yorker on the plane with a review of a theatre piece performed by Zoe Caldwell twice in her home in Manhattan.  The writer's name was David Adjmi.  

A one woman show with obvious political and humanitarian overtones, powerful and important. I spent the next few months trying to track down a script or contact with the playwright.  

Amazingly, by accident I contacted someone who knew David, and

was able to make my pitch.  When he realised the humanitarian impact of my work through Save World Art he gifted me with the rights.  We were on our way.  His portrait of the charming face of evil, its insidiousness and cause of most of the tragedies perpetrated on this planet are profound. The more I worked on the script, I realised that it was a mini masterpiece carrying an enormous punch.  
Why bring your work to Edinburgh?
Edinburgh is the arena for it.  Length wise, theatrically and internationally. 

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
The audience will be led down paths it didn't expect and reject what it finds, or maybe not.  Sweet tea and terrorism are part of the action; the isolation and power of the wealthy leading to dire results; a portrait for our times and evaluation of values that have left audiences with sleepless nights, asking questions of how, what and when can they counteract these brilliantly chosen words of the playwright.  The questions are provocative, the humour fierce and funny.

The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
This is a masterpiece of brevity and seamless language using a vocabulary that is so precise in its intention and dramatic impact that to change a comma is to undermine its impact.

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?
This piece is creating its own traditions.  It stands alone.  As the actress inside the persona of Alice Hauptman, I cannot intellectualise or analyse.  My task is to be.  Being not acting is the art required here.  This persona exists around us.  The spotlight is being focused brilliantly to allow the audience's participation.

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?

There has been the collaboration of a brilliant director, playwright and performer targeting the destruction of the fourth wall.

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?
The audience is part of the discussion; participating in an invitation to tea and biscuits.

Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
This brings the theatre into another arena.  A private drawing room in a private house.  It was not written to be seen in a theatre per se.  

We will endeavour to create a drawing room ambiance in a theatre space.

David Adjmi is an American playwright. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writers' Award, the inaugural Steinberg Playwright Award, a Bush Artists Fellowship, and the Kesselring Fellowship for Drama.

Born in Barcelona, Spain and educated in Bristol, England, Helena entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London for her theatrical training at the age of 15 under full scholarship. She was also awarded the drama diploma from the University of London, and has many awards from the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Now resident in the United States, Helena has performed, directed, produced and acted in theatre, film, TV and radio in 16 different countries having toured extensively in Europe, North and South America and South East Asia. She is bilingual in Spanish and English.

All revenues will go to: SAVE WORLD ART