Screwed Dramaturgy: Kathryn O’Reilly

Screwed by Kathryn O’Reilly

Theatre503, The Latchmere, 503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW

Tuesday 28th June - Saturday 23rd July 2016

Ticking time-bombs Luce and Charlene are 30-something binge-drinking soulmates. They clock in after a heavy night out on the tiles, popping caffeine pills and downing miniatures on the factory floor, boasting about last night’s sexual conquests. When you're living for today it's hard to think about tomorrow.

Screwed is a gripping and hilarious portrait of a dysfunctional friendship. This powerful play is a debut drama from Kathryn O’Reilly and is directed by award-winning Sarah Meadows (Where Do Little Birds Go?, VAULT Festival and Edinburgh).

This new play explores a variety of taboo subjects including socio-economic status and current attitudes to diversity in a setting that highlights ladette culture, the pervasive insidious nature of alcoholism and violence amongst women.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Screwed developed out of a two-hander poem I’d written for actress Eloise Joseph and myself that we used to perform at various events. Very basically it was two women, best friends who always fantasied about their ideal man whilst out on the pull. But, one of the two already had her ideal man. However, one night she found out that behind her back the ideal man was sleeping with her best friend. It was funny and a bit crude.

Once I decided to write the poem into a play, partly prompted by director Ramin Gray, it began to reveal itself to me. And as it grew, it got deeper and darker. The two women became more raw, volatile, harder. They became ladettes, promiscuous, binge-drinking alcoholics. Especially with the introduction of the fourth character Doris, I further explored gender roles, sex roles and gender identification.

I’m really interested in what it means to be human. How we live and survive the life we have been given. How we treat each other and ourselves. Particularly how relationships change, distort and breakdown. How boundaries not just between one another but between one and one’s world are blurred, crossed and broken, and through one wrong decision everything can change.

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

Different people have come and gone, come and stayed, but all of whom have been very generous with their time, skill, talent and support. The current team is the result of the plays journey over the past five years involving readings, work-shopping and development.

It all started in 2011 with a sharing at Arcola which lead to an industry reading later that year at Ovalhouse, by which time I had created the character Doris, and Rikki Beadle-Blair and Gary Beadle have both worked on the part. From that reading Cassandra Mathers who was then at Pleasance Theatre and Hannah Eidinow offered space for further development and an industry invited reading to take place there in 2012.

I first worked with Neil Grutchfield on my writing in 2010 and thought he was just brilliant, he is so clever and insightful. From the start Neil had seen the readings of Screwed and I knew I wanted to work with him on this so in 2013 I asked Neil if he would be the dramaturg, together we have been working on the script ever since, through many drafts! In 2014 Theatre Delicatessen very kindly offered space, and so myself, Neil, Eloise, Tas Emiabata, Nathan work-shopped the play with director Lucy Allan. Tas has been a major part of this project and is the educationalist for our accompanying workshops.

I always used the lack of money as an excuse to make it not happen, as I’d always been resolute in the fact that people had to be paid.

I guess I was always waiting for someone to go ‘I’ll put your play on and here’s 25 grand to do it’. After a discussion with Rikki Beadle-Blair I made the decision to produce Screwed myself and get funding. So I organised a final reading in 2015 in order to invite venues and get another producer to work with. 

I had met Philip & Christine Carne whilst I was at LAMDA and they supported me through my final year, and have never stopped supporting me. All through Screwed development they have been there and when they offered very generous financial support to get it on, that really encouraged me and boosted my confidence in getting more funding.  

Also all along Out of Joint and Max Stafford-Clark have very kindly and generously supported me and this play, Max has also has read many drafts and given me feedback and guidance. The final reading was at Out of Joint and I invited Sarah Meadows to direct and Stephen Myott-Meadows to play Paulo. Sarah’s agent Colin Blumenau then kindly offered support from The Production Exchange to help organise the reading.

Sarah, Stephen and myself had all worked together on a brilliant play by Mark Wilson called YOU, at Brighton Fringe Festival where we picked up three awards. I loved working with Sarah and Stephen so much I knew I wanted to work with them on Screwed.

However, after the reading it became apparent to me that I no longer wished to act in it, and be a producer and writer, it was one role too many. From that reading producer Maeve O’Neill came on board. For the production Eloise, Sarah and Stephen stayed, and Rikki Beadle-Blair was not available and so we began casting for Charlene and Doris. The designers, Catherine Morgan, Jamie Platt, Benedict Taylor and assistant director Monty Leigh are regular collaborators of Sarah’s and so she brought them onto the project. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

As a teenager I was part of a Saturday morning youth drama group, and the drama leader Nic Paris was directing a pro/am production of West Side Story. He cast me a Jet girl and it was thrilling. I was an amateur looking at these professionals and loving every minute of being in rehearsals and being on stage. Nic also gave me my first opportunity in performing my own poetry on stage. And so the journey began. Over the years I have worked as stage crew, a theatre technician, produced, ran drama workshops all the while pursuing writing with a dream of becoming a writer and having my work performed one day.      

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

Yes, I think I seem to take a very long time to finish things or see things to their completion.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope they will enjoy themselves. We are very fortunate to be able to make theatre and go to the theatre. It’s an invaluable tool for education and a great place in which to loose oneself, be entertained and inspired. I hope it’s a rollercoaster of a journey, I want the audience to be gripped, chewed up and spat out. I hope they laugh and are moved by the story, challenged the characters and the themes that are highlighted.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I guess it’s about making the characters and their situation as real and as truthful as possible, within the world you create for them.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition? 
I wouldn’t say it falls neatly into any bracket. However, I would say my writing at the moment in terms of story is very much in the realm of kitchen sink drama. Which I love. 

Domestic situations of the lower middle class and working class people to explore social issues. Where characters are victims of their own circumstance. Which we could say we all are. Within all that you’ve got the multi-layered intricacies of human relationships and interactions. Also with this play, there is a lyrical element to the dialogue, a rhythm to the writing, and a type of poetry. I love magical and dream like elements. 

At the same time it’s heightened, and stylised. I also break the forth wall with direct address. I also hope it also in-yer-face theatre. So I think ultimately that Screwed plays with different forms.

Writer Kathryn O’Reilly comments, My aim is to engage and challenge audiences in a way that’s both artistic and personal. I want to shine a spotlight on current issues that aren’t going away and put these stories on stage.

This production, accompanying workshops and post-show discussions will offer a platform for discussion, stimulating the debate surrounding gender, class, binge drinking, violence and promiscuity among women and its cultural impact on society. 

Screwed is more pertinent today than ever before with more than 2.5m people drinking more in one day than the 14 units recommended per week (Financial Times, March 2016). As a result of habits like these, there has been a rise in alcohol binge related deaths and hospitalisations from violence by and towards women.

Kathryn O’Reilly is better known as an actress and will be starring in A View from Islington North at the Arts Theatre this June.

O’Reilly was a member of the Royal Court Young Writers programme. Her play Scarred was long listed for the Bruntwood Prize. She has been developing Screwed over the past few years. 

Screwed

Performance Dates Tuesday 28th June – Saturday 23rd July 2016

Tuesday to Saturday, 7.45pm

Notes Ages 14+

Location Theatre503, The Latchmere, 503 Battersea Park Road,

London SW11 3BW, https://theatre503.com/

Box Office Tickets are available priced £15 (£12 concessions)

Pay What You Can Sundays Available.

We Wait In Dramaturgical Hope: Brian Mullin @ 503

We Wait In Joyful Hope

Theatre503, The Latchmere, 503 Battersea Park Road, London SW11 3BW

Tuesday 17th May – Saturday 11th June 2016

Brian Mullin’s debut drama is a frank and wry portrait of modern feminism, friendship and one extraordinary woman, determined to take on the world. We Wait In Joyful Hope is a funny and touching exploration of religion and capitalism in contemporary America.

Sister Bernie D’Amato is a force to be reckoned with. After thirty years running a women's centre in a New Jersey slum she's won battles with priests, police and even gang leaders. But now she's facing her biggest threat yet. With property developers buying up the neighbourhood, and only an ageing ex-nun and a 16-year-old X-Factor wannabe to help, Bernie’s mission to save the centre is becoming ever more of a challenge.

Staged during the biggest displacement crisis of our time, We Wait In Joyful Hope powerfully illustrates the importance of community and having a place to call ‘home’.

Brian Mullin was brought up in Boston by his aunt, a former Catholic nun who founded one of the first shelters for homeless women in New York City. He comments, I wanted to pay tribute to the strong women who hold communities together and, in my experience, few women are stronger, more dedicated – and more unsung – than nuns. When I was inspired to write the play, I ended up going back to the US where I interviewed a number of nuns, now in their 70s, about their lives and work. Sister Bernie is a product of this research – tough, rebellious and, sometimes, impossible to deal with. But, even as everything around her seems to be changing, she keeps fighting for the causes she's always believed in.

Sister Bernie D’Amato will be played by Maggie McCarthy whose theatre credits include Doctors Dilemma, Children of The Sun and Absence of War for the National Theatre. She will be joined by Deirdra Morris (The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant (Southwark Playhouse), The Trojan Woman (Empty Space) and The Women (Old Vic)) as Joanne; James Tucker (One Arm (Southwark Playhouse), Pocket Dream (Propeller) and The Life of Galileo (Royal Shakespeare Company)) as Grady; and Anita-Joy Uwajeh (Othello (Edinburgh Festival), Titus Andronicus (Greenwich Theatre), Ivanov (Boris Schukin Theatre Institute)) as Felicia.

Brian was selected from over 800 applicants to join the 503Five Writer-in-Residence scheme which offers mentorship, advice and support to emerging playwrights.

I believe that the inspiration for the script came from one of your relatives: what inspired you to take up this story?

I would never have decided to write about nuns if it hadn't been for my aunt Gerry, who was a Franciscan sister in the 1960s and 70s.  It was a time of change for nuns and the whole Church - together with other young sisters, she left the cloistered environment of the convent, took over a tenement building in New York City, and converted it into a community where homeless women and the nuns lived side by side.  The story of We Wait in Joyful Hope is fiction -- Sister Bernie is not my aunt! -- but the inspiration for it comes from her and the other extraordinary women of her generation.

Religion isn't a hot topic so often in contemporary theatre: what is it that made you decide to make it part of the conflict in your script?

According to conventional wisdom, theatre-makers and theatre-goers tend to be secular liberals, and stories of faith may not be the first thing they're drawn to.  Sister Bernie, the main character of my play, might upend some notions of what a "religious" person is like -- she's an activist, more concerned with changing the world than with imposing doctrine on others.  Having met amazing nuns who work for social justice, often with little recognition, I don't think that's uncommon.  You may never have met a radical nun, but I hope you can relate to the story of someone who's had big dreams and now must decide whether she's achieved everything she hoped to.


What made you decide that theatre was a good place to tell this story?

This play is traditionally constructed - it all takes place in Elizabeth House, where Sister Bernie lives and works with poor women.  Theatre, when it's done well, can create a charged sense of energy in a space, so that the room itself almost becomes a character.  Our wonderful designer Kat Heath is paying attention to every little detail of the set, so that Bernie's environment speaks volumes about the decades of life she's led.


What do you hope that the audience will experience?

There's lots of humour - Bernie is an unconventional nun, who talks back to priests, dresses in t-shirts, and sometimes rolls a joint.  Once you get through the shock of that unexpected portrayal, though, I hope the play makes you think about society, politics, and sisterhood of all kinds.  Though Bernie's shelter faces a threat from the forces of gentrification, I believe the plot is ultimately a hopeful one.  I want people to feel moved by it more than anything else!

Did you use any strategies that will enable this experience?

Well, 90% of a good production is in the casting.  Our director Lisa Cagnacci has assembled the most skillful actors to bring these characters to life.  In rehearsals, I am already enjoying the rapport between Maggie McCarthy and Deirdra Morris, who play Bernie and Joanne.  They are able to bring humor, toughness and all sorts of contradictory feelings to these two old friends.  I'm very happy to showcase older actresses in the leading roles, too!

What do you think of Aristotle?

What a question!  I know the Poetics pretty well, and often use its principles of dramatic construction when I'm teaching playwriting to first-time students.  Not all of my plays follow an Aristotelian construction of time, place, character, resolution etc. but this one surely does!  There's just so much history behind the actions we see on stage, I had to follow Aristotle's rules to create a sense of crisis and turning point. 


I imagine writers sit in their rooms and type all, drinking coffee: what is it really like when you write a script? Does the experience change on different projects?

I drink coffee before writing, but never during it!  And I try not to do it in my room, I need to feel that writing is my job and getting out of the house helps with that.  I have favorite spots around London which have desks and wifi to work at (but I'm not telling where in case someone wants to steal them).  When I'm working on a play, I tend to get up early and start writing as soon as I can for 4-6 hours; I don't think I've ever written anything good after about 3:00pm.  That's a pretty consistent practice I've developed over time.


If I say 'dramaturgy', what comes to  mind?

In addition to writing my own scripts, I actually work frequently as a dramaturg.  I teach playwriting to students and use the principle of dramaturgical analysis to help them devlop their plays into the best possible shape.  I'm also the official Dramaturg of a devising company called Babakas,, which create multi-disciplinary theatre through a collaborative process.  The Dramaturg's job is to help shape and collate the material so that it all comes into some satisfying structure!  It's a bit like being an architect.

Director Lisa Cagnacci comments, after a very competitive selection process we ended up with five fantastic playwrights on attachment with us for the last 18 months and we've really enjoyed working with them. We commit to producing one of the five plays written during the attachment and on this occasion Brian Mullin's We Wait In Joyful Hope has been chosen. I'm very excited to be directing such a beautifully written and finely detailed portrait of a very radical and complicated woman. Most people's ideas of nuns have been defined by Sister Act or The Sound of Music, whereas this play offers a more nuanced perspective on an extraordinary group of women.

Beanstalk Dramaturgy: Sleeping Trees @ Theatre 503

What was the inspiration for this performance?
We were keen to make a version of a pantomime that had a much wider appeal then the ones you see popping up round the country each year. We not only wanted to appeal to a mainstream pantomime audience but a fringe comedy audience too, whilst pleasing children and adults simultaneously. 
 
With this in mind we were inspired by a number of things, comedy shows we had seen at the Fringe, children's shows as well as the British tradition of taking the family to a pantomime. It was a big challenge but a thoroughly enjoyable process and we are hugely pleased with the product left at the end of it.  

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
We were initially approached by director Tom Attenborough in 2013 where the idea for the project first came to light. Through his connections as well as our own we were able to assemble a brilliant little team of creative people all of which we are very proud to have working with us. 

We acquired Mark Newnham who writes and performs all the music for the show very last minute and we couldn't be happier or more privileged to have him on board. We don't sing or dance normally in our other work so we must commend Mark's patience with us as well as Polly Bennet and Nancy Kettle our wonderful choreographers.

What made you decide on this particular venue?
We have always been a fan of the work produced at Theatre 503. Over the years they have continued to have an increasing involvement with new writing and experimental theatre. We always knew it was going to be a challenge for us making a pantomime, let alone our very first show suitable for all ages, so we thought there wouldn't be a better platform than 503 to do so.

The Latchmere pub underneath also does an outstanding roast dinner. This had absolutely nothing to do with the decision... 


Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Certainly not. The process was a completely fresh experience for everybody on board. Up until the pantomime (a genre of performance we had never created before) we had not worked with set, costume or props. 


To create Cinderella and the Beanstalk we worked with a director, musician, movement director, stage-fight choreographer band and even a magician to create visual illusions. It was certainly a lot to process at first but so beneficial to make this one of the most exciting shows we have ever created.

The challenge was marrying all these incredibly talented people with our stripped back approach to comedy-theatre and couldn't be more proud to have achieved that.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
The most important thing we wanted to achieve with this show is to get children and adults laughing at the same thing. We were very keen to not to have one joke for the kids then another for the adults. 

We want families to share the experience rather than wait for their turn. We also wanted to stay clear of all of the traditional smut in pantomime. It's not our style and we don't want to alienate kids by having jokes that go over their heads.


Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
We do. There are plenty of pantomime traditions in our show, some of them are modernised a bit, but there is a lot for pantomime aficionados to recognise. 

At the same time there is a lot of new things being added to the genre, we are originally a fringe theatre style company, so we bring a lot of that into anything we do, we feel this adds something new and fresh which hopefully people haven't seen before, while still being satisfied if they are fans of pantomime traditions.
 
 

Wink, Techtonics, Sneaky Musings from the past

I have a fundamental belief that every time anyone goes to the theatre, the world becomes a marginally better place. That is because I believe that being part of an audience, and having a shared experience, and being presented with a version of reality, is an intrinsic good. This also applies to art galleries, film showings, music gigs, anything where the artist dictates the location and  time. Community performance is probably even better, but I am still grappling with that.

Combined with this blog's need to be fed (I can't keep the big readership without constant up-dating. That is the way of the web), I am willing to write about as much performance as press agents can provide. Within that, there are plays I can get very enthusiastic about, and others I am less inclined to push.

This is a matter of personal taste. I don't want to become a shrill side-show barker, supporting all of Scotland's theatre indiscriminately. Equally, I don't want to just bang on about experimental physical theatre and ignore anything more mainstream. Just because I am pretentious doesn't mean that there is a true hierarchy of art.

I am  hoping that blogs like this one put my choices in context, and make it clearer why I favour certain artistic endeavours. I am trying to find a way to allow the reader to react to my opinion, and be aware of how I make them.

One trick I am trying is to insult myself. If a flame war begins, I have said far worse about myself.

My faith that the phrase "I don't know" is the best answer for any question more complicated than "what sort of coffee would you like?" has been shaken. After the passionate conviction of the crowds calling for a boycott of Batsheva at The Edinburgh Festival, and reading the spiritual autobiography of one of them out of Penn and Teller, which suggested that "I don't know" was the atheist's catchphrase (actually, I think he meant agnosticism, a far more tentative theology: the laddish antics that he constantly recalls, doubtless in an attempt to make atheism look cool, make me suspect that his brilliance in stage magic is matched by his social idiocy).

I have lazily maintained a bunch of beliefs that I hoped cut down too much metaphysical speculation: that art is intrinsically political by virtue of representing an opinion; that dialogue is the ultimate good; the establishment and all ideologies are inherently suspect and self-interested; criticism is an art form in its own right; atheists and fundamentalist Christians have the same vision of God, only one side rejects it; inclusion is more important than being right. Oh, and every action has both good and bad consequences.

I might style myself an anarchist (I refuse to follow a party-line unless I agree with it, I distrust Marxism and neo-capitalism with the same apathetic sneer), but I have realised that this is just thoughtless liberalism.

Apart from my unwillingness to share a catchphrase with an excellent TV magician, due to his complete lack of intellectual rigour, I have decided that I want a set of beliefs that are neither mind forged manacles nor idle, throwaway evasions. I quite like bits of Marxism, Existentialism, Christianity, Buddhism, Conservatism and Queer Theory in a thoroughly post-modern manner.

Not as much as I like going to see Hivver play a drone set, which is probably why I have fallen down.

The protests outside Batsheva really intrigued me. I want to be able to have an opinion on events like this that is coherent. To be honest, none of the critical responses I read were satisfactory. The Guardian let me down here. While I appreciated the liberal response that tried to see both sides, the comparison of the Israeli Government with Pussy Riot betrayed the paper's fascination with the latest drama.

I do have an opinion on the boycott, but I am not ready to put it out into the world until I know whether I can support it. This isn't about right and wrong - I am way past believing that there is an absolute answer. It's about having beliefs that encourage me to take responsibility for my actions, and grounding them not in the opinions of others, but through  my personality and intelligence.

Of course, that scuppers the project from the start. Perhaps my best bet is to have a few chats with people who might know what they are talking about.

Theatre 503 back for the New Year

Theatre 503

https://theatre503.com/