Fish Dramaturgy: Michael O'Halloran @ Edfringe 2017

Avenue Stage Presents

Fish Food

Long before he was President, he really liked to buy hotels.

It’s 1990 in Boston. Like the Berlin Wall, Joe Bacon’s life has been reduced to rubble. On the day of his father's long-overdue burial at sea, a bizarre interview leads to a job in the basement of the Plaza Court Hotel.  

Celebrity financier Avery Grand (bestselling author of that 1980s classic The Deal Is Everything) has promised a facelift for this faded beauty, but furniture and fine wine are disappearing at an alarming rate.  

Joe finds a ready-made dysfunctional family among his rather unhinged co-workers, who will go to extreme lengths to protect their livelihoods. But will scuttling around town with unmarked bags of cash really help him get ahead

Listings Information: FISH FOOD, by Avenue Stage

Venue: Paradise in The Vault (V29)                     

Dates:  4^th – 19^th Aug 2017 (not 13^th)                  

Times: 11.25, 5^th-19^th Aug (1 hour)                     

              19.25 on 4^th Aug

Tickets: £7.00/£5.00

Box Office: 0131 510 0022

Online: www.avenuestage.org

What was the inspiration for this performance?

In 1989, at the age of 19, I went to work in a hotel in Boston, receiving meat and fish and produce on the loading dock. The hotel was a well-known (if somewhat faded) local institution that had recently been sold to an out-of-town group, and longtime employees were scrambling to keep their jobs. 

In the midst of this, a dashing young financier named Donald Trump blew into town for a visit, and was feted in the Grand Ballroom. I was fascinated not only by his apparently shameless narcissism (his "people" made sure his name was emblazoned on everything, from bottles of spring water to a large whole salmon) but also by the way people deferred to it so readily.

The incident stuck with me, and a year later I made it the centerpiece of a play I wrote for a creative writing class at my local university. The play was given a reading, then promptly placed in a drawer where it lay for more than 25 years. The bizarre political rise of Mr. Trump inspired me to dust it off and see if there was anything interesting in it. Over the course of a year it became "Fish Food." The themes and characters of the current version are completely different, but the core incident -- the disastrous visit of celebrity financier Avery Grand -- remains.  

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

I have to say yes. I have a blind faith that putting more than ten people in a dark room and focusing their attention on a live performance is good for the individual and for the society. (I also think it's a good thing to sit in a church once a week.) That being said, most performances I go to do not foster a public discussion of ideas -- at best they are beautiful or amusing, at worst ineffective. I think sometimes beauty or amusement are enough.

From time to time, though, something strikes a nerve, and we see how dangerous performance can be. 

This has been the case recently with the Julius Caesar in New York, with the Trump-like figure as Caesar. I haven't seen it, but I was interested to know that in 2017 Shakespeare In The Park can cause abject rage. And while grand public discussion might be rare, more often than not the new plays I see are well worth a private discussion on the subway home. Good writing persists.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I was very quiet at school, but I discovered that I could be loud and confident on the stage. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, you had teachers and an educational system in the US that believed in the value of the arts. We got to try everything. We were taken to see an incredible variety of performances. I played the Duke of Ephesus at the age of 10, in a marvelous purple costume.

I also had an aunt that would take me to the theater. 

In those days Boston was still getting pre-Broadway previews, and I particularly remember seeing Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson in Macbeth. I think the production may have been considered a disaster, but I was fascinated. We sat near the front, and the reality of the actors sharing the space with the audience -- divided only by light -- hit home.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

The play (in this version) was conceived as a circular "year in the life" of a young man, where he ends up roughly in the same place he started (if somewhat wiser). The challenge has been to get that feeling of the passage of time between scenes without marking it with obvious exposition. To that end there has been a great deal of revision led by the actors.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

We perform in a cafe in a neighborhood where theatre-going is not the usual thing. Our audience comes for dinner and a show. Our first goal is to entertain -- to make it seem a worthwhile evening out. We have been (mostly) successful in choosing plays that hold the audience's interest enough that the themes begin to resonate. "Fish Food" certainly strives for that balance. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope that audience members will be immersed in the story, amused by the characters, and that they will find beauty in their resilience. I also want those who experienced the era (late 80s, early 90s) to have that pleasure or recognition of an earlier time of their lives.  (I love a good frisson of nostalgia.)

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

We have tried to tell a very personal story in a straightforward and honest way, in the hope that it will resonate. And we tried to write good punch lines.

FISH FOOD, written by Avenue Stage co-founder Michael O’Halloran, is an eccentric ensemble comedy that chronicles a young man’s turbulent entry into the joys and sorrows of the workforce. It has delighted audiences with its quirky characters and its nostalgic look at the fashions and mores of the late eighties.  From shoulder-padded jackets to telephones with cords, FISH FOOD takes us back to an era when talk was cheap and capitalism was (almost) sexy.       

Since 2012, Avenue Stage has produced innovative theatre in a café setting in Dorchester, a working-class neighborhood on the south side of Boston. FISH FOOD, its 6^th production, sold out its initial performances in May, and will enjoy a pre-Fringe run at Boston Playwrights’ Theatre in July.

www.avenuestage.org        

Dramaturgy by Night: Emily Adams @ Edfringe 2015

Collaborative Yanks bring theatrical family

 

fun to Edinburgh Fringe Festival


C’TAIT LA NUIT

Mid-West America favourites GreenHouse Theatre Project are invading the UK! This dynamic company will perform their hugely popular original production C’tait la Nuit at Paradise in Augustines.

This Anglo/American company has had five years of success in Columbia Missouri and are thrilled to launch the start of its sister company in Stoke-On-Trent at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.



C’tait la Nuit
Welcome to 1930s Paris, the city of love, wine and creative inspiration! Here we find Sebastian, a young man from the mountains of Tennessee, determined to be reunited with his mother and father and discover his true bohemian roots. 

But with tight lipped nuns, snooty maître d’s and mysterious book sellers, will he ever get the information he needs? Who is the illustrious singer La LadyBird he hears so much of? And what surprises await him in the famous cabaret, Moulin de la Galette? Join us as we venture with Sebastian in this coming of age tale about identity, family and most importantly, love.

The Fringe

What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?Emily Adams: We actually started with a location. We really wanted to create a whimsical piece based in Paris. Co-artistic director Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri then took a trip to the Blue Mountains in Tennessee and on seeing its beauty, we decided to combine the two locations in our story.


Why bring your work to Edinburgh?
GreenHouse is based in the States and was co-founded by british Emily Adams and American Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri. In the summer of 2014, Emily moved back to the UK and is due to launch a sister company of GreenHouse in Stoke-On-Trent. Both artistic leaders though the fringe would be the perfect platform to launch this.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
It's a beautiful, light hearted coming of age tale with plenty of vibrant characters and fun music so I hope they will feel energised, joyful and having laughed a lot!


The Dramaturgy Questions


How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
I think the way that Elizabeth and myself, (Emily) work is that we write the piece and have a vision for it and a style we are aiming for, but almost let the actors be the dramaturges. We allow them to shape the piece, make it fit, do away with bits that don't work on stage or words/lines that need adapting to fit the work once it is on its feet. We love the actors to play and have creative input and in that sense, we all become the dramaturge. Ownership of an ensemble piece is key to the fluidity of a production.


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?
Elizabeth and myself are very influenced by very visual and physical theatre makers such as KneeHigh Theatre Company, Matthew Bourne, Propella Theatre Company, Punchdrunk and Jeune Lune to name a few. All of our performances back home in Missouri are site specific - Romeo and Juliet in an urban amphitheatre, Macbeth in a yoga studio, A Christmas Carol in an art gallery; and all the spaces are part of the performance - another character helping to tell the story. 

I'm launching a sister company in Stoke-on-Trent that will follow the same model, using local spaces as the back drop of performances. Companies like Dream Think Speak and Punchdrunk are definitely an inspiration for us in this.


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?
At GreenHouse we love to collaborate. It is one of the key elements in our process. Elizabeth and myself will come up with construct and the play, but each performance has a different collaborator using their creative input. This could be in terms of space/venue but we have also had live DJs in our performances curating the music for the show, local artists and local produce makers; farm foods, yarn makers and Ariel silks artists to name a few!


What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
I think live theatre does well to remember that it works purely down to the relationship you create with the audience. This doesn't mean they (the audience) have to like everything you do or say, but you do want it to make them feel something; joy, disgust, shock, peace - all of the huge range of human emotions. Without them there, engaging, your work doesn't have any meaning. You can write the most amazing script and hire fantastic performers, but if no one sees your work - or wants to come back, it's just a rehearsal. The audience make your piece come alive and that is a very important, but also at times, rather complicated relationship to foster.

Paradise in Augustines (Venue 152) 17th-22nd Aug @ 14:10 (50mins)


DIRECTED BY: Emily Adams and Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri

WRITTEN BY: Emily Adams and Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri

DESIGNED BY: Emily Adams, Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri and Rob Glauz

LIGHTING BY: Rob Glauz

CAST: Emily Adams, Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri, Rob Glauz, Matt Ingram, Rhian Mclean, Ian SobuleThis enchanting family show with its poetic storytelling, beautiful imagery and colourful characters will be sure to entertain children and adults alike. A perfect ‘pick-me-up’ performance to ease into the afternoons of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Brown Dramaturgy: Winsome Brown @ Edfringe 2015

The Fringe
What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
Winsome Brown: It was January, 2014. Brad Rouse, the director, and I were working in my apartment in New York City on another project. He turned to me and: “I think you have a more immediate story to tell. One that will touch many people.” 

“What’s that?” I asked. 

“The story of your mother,” he said. It was like a veil fell from my eyes. 

“I’ll call it This is Mary Brown,” I said. I had the title before a single word of the show was written. Brad had heard me tell stories about Mum and found her both hilarious and very human.


Why bring your work to Edinburgh?I hope that the themes of This is Mary Brown will resonate with the Edinburgh audience. It is about an Irish woman, an emigrant, a woman of great humor and pathos, who raises her family far away from home, in Canada. As she ages, she turns to alcohol to soothe herself. Her family use various tactics to try to persuade her to give up drinking. 

Then, when she has succeeded in kicking the drink, she is sidewinded by lung failure. It’s a cruel turn. But it brings out an incredible amount of love and tenderness—emotional honesty – in all the characters. Everybody goes through the painful death of a loved one. It is a universal theme.

Also, practically, This is Mary Brown is a very simple play. I am the sole performer, there are just a few pieces of furniture and some lights. It travels easily and so is a great play to show in Edinburgh, and hopefully to tour with afterwards. The whole magic of This is Mary Brown is in the air between the stage and the audience.

What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
The show is simple and honest. Audiences in New York both laughed and cried when they saw it. The New York Times called it, “Lovely… honest… touching…. poignant.” I think audiences naturally think of loved ones in their own life – my play takes them inside their own heart.

The Dramaturgy Questions

How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
While the show is on the surface, simple – a personal tale – structurally it is modern and challenging. I worked hard to find a kind of elastic tension between scenes, so that each scene propels the next. The play jumps through time, place, and character. Some scenes are simple audience address. Some scenes have three or more characters on stage, in dialogue with each other. And I’m playing all of them. It is a fairly complex dramaturgy.

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?
Yes. I have been inspired by other artists who dare to find that just a simple story about real people is enough. Some of these are: Terence Davies in The Long Day Closes, Chekhov in his willingness to write about mundane things like family finances and the stultification of habit, Spalding Gray, who sat before an audience with just a desk and a glass of water and brought us into a world.

Also, I have been inspired and instructed by the gentle and long-form rehearsal process of André Gregory and Wallace Shawn. I was lucky enough to perform in The Master Builder, and see that incredible work up close. Their process of stripping away artifice – even within the confines of art – is something I aspire to in my own work on This is Mary Brown.


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?
I developed this play in a rehearsal space in my own home. Brad Rouse, the director, and I, invited small groups of eight or ten people at a time to come in and see the play. We were all in a small room together, with all the lights on all of us. I could feel how the play worked in the space between me and the audience. 

After each performance, I would talk with the audience – find out if there were moments where they were confused by anything. As I said, the play is structurally complex, but I worked hard to make it feel simple. So my collaborators have been, from day one, the director, and the audience.

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
The most daunting challenge of making a one-person play is loneliness. There’s no other actor to share the ride with on stage. So my partner in the performance is the audience. I have developed this show over the course of a year and a half, showing it to a few people at a time. 

Through this process, I have come to trust the material, trust the audience, and be inspired and moved by the communion that happens between us. It’s a very vulnerable piece. I am putting it all out there – surrendering, if you will. The audience is my partner in that. And the faith that grows between us brings its own reward.

Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
No, but here’s one more answer! I feel This is Mary Brown takes some of its structure from cinema. In cinema, we now know that we can make jump cuts, sharp turns, show flashbacks, and have it be clear to the viewer what is happening. 

I directed and edited a film called The Violinist, and my work on that project has helped me to trust that even a bold structure can be the foundation for a simple, profound play.



Paradise in The Vault (Venue 29) ​
13:15
Aug 8-15, 20-21, 24-30
1 hour
Suitability: 16+ (Guideline)
Country: United States
Group: Winsome Brown
Warnings: Adult themes - alcoholism, death.

It's War

Mark E Smith out of the Fall - a man I have to thank for my enthusiasm for contemporary dance and ear-splitting music that respects no boundaries - has a song about people like me: Beware the Middlemass. I think it is about how a generation that has grown up without a war will be less wary of the dangers of armed conflict, and see it as a bit like a computer game.


He wrote it before the Gulf Wars, which suggests that he has some interesting clairvoyant skills, as well as a knack for a tuneless melody.






My firm belief that theatre can bring home those issues that I have not experienced is usually tested and broken: it's too easy to use war, and violence, as a metaphor on stage, reducing literal horror to a trite parable. But what if war can be portrayed on stage?








Sunflower Theatre are giving it a shot with Adele's Heart. Originally in Italian, the show has had great reviews in the Italian press - the writer, Giampiero Rappa, has been called “one of the greatest talents of Italian theater” by Il Manifesto, but has been translated for its UK debut.






The play is a modern love story set against the backdrop of an unnamed war. Two contrasting characters are forced together, and act out the stages of a relationship in the high pressure situation of being surrounded by guns and fighting. A little bonus is that the two actors are lovers in real life: they met on a film set and the rest is history.














The Space on North Bridge, Theater 1(V36) August 6-11 @ 22.30











Next up is an interesting one: it won an award from the Daily Mail.




For any readers outside of Scotland, I would like to make it clear that I do not endorse the opinions of the Daily Mail. Most people in the arts like to make cheap jokes at the newspaper's expense - it's obsessed with house prices, immigrants, cancer scares and that. And doesn't Richard Littlejohn write for it?




Hang on, is that the Daily Express?







Having said that, theatre is all about the challenges, and a play that seems to celebrate the plucky British spirit in the face of World War II is so unexpected, I am thrilled. The Picture House was devised by a group of students at Mountview Academy; the action begins in 1939, when a new cinema is opened in Yorkshire and becomes the pride of the community. Through all new songs and dances, the tribulations of WWII and the titular building are sketched as... I have to admit that this isn't my kind of thing, because I am a miserable pessimist with a typical pseudo-intellectual cynicism about patriotic feelings. And musicals. However, it has a cast of thirteen, plus band and gets away from the sort of po-faced seriousness that I call art.




















theSPACE on North Bridge (v. 36) 3rd-4th Aug (Previews) 6th-18th Aug @ 6:20pm



























Being properly confused by the idea of a musical about war, I spoke to Michael Wilkinson from Revolution! The Musical. Billed as a politically appropriate staging in the wake of the Arab Spring, it goes back to the 1993 Bosnian battles.






"Musicals have never been more relevant, especially British ones," he explains. "We all seem to have a real appetite for them these days. At last though the Lloyd-Webber stranglehold on musical theatre is being dismantled and emerging and relevant musicals like ours are catching the public eye for the first time."






"When we first set out writing the show we had no idea that the Arab Spring was just around the corner. But just months down the line we soon found ourselves being surrounded by headlines coming out of Egypt, Libya and now Syria. The show is set in Bosnia in 1993 but the parallels are simply astonishing. We hope that this is going to make us one of the most topical shows out there at the Fringe in 2012."
















Revolution's composer Nicholas Keyworth added: "One of the great things about the musical as a genre is that it can contain an eclectic range of musical styles which know no bounds. In our case this ranges from epic, classical moments to traditional Balkan music, show-stopping blues, jazz and razzmatazz to 1990s turbo-folk."










Paradise in Augustine’s (Venue 152) 6-27 August 8.25pm (excl. 13 & 20)






Back to my inbox, with a vague feeling that my original project - to discover whether war could be depicted on stage with accuracy and meaning - is in ruins. I am tempted to give up and mention Allo Allo, Practical Magic's live version of the Lloyd and Croft sitcom (Spotlites@The Edinburgh Fringe, 4th – 11th August, 2012), but I am clinging to my hope that there is a work that brings it all back home...



If I go back in time, I turn up a possible trump. Everything I Own presents Rémy, set during the Napoleonic Wars. It does have a love story - I guess that is inevitable, and a hint of hope but it is a one person show, written and performed by East 15 graduate Claire Gaydon. Plus it is set in a prison and is in the Vault at St Augustines, which makes it site relevant, if not specific!
















Remy is inspired by Napoleon and his story leads him through Europe - he sees the first use of guerilla warfare, which is now so popular amongst insurgents, the charisma of the totalitarian leader and tells the tale of those broken by the mad grab for power. There's a sense here that history can teach us lessons and that the reality of war and political greed does not change across time...










And I am rather keen on the idea of a woman telling the story of a man. It has that "magic of theatre" vibe, where the illusion is obvious but powerful...














Paradise in The Vault4th – 5th Aug 8:45pm (previews) 6th – 27th Aug (not 15th, 30th) 5pm.










I am on the home straight now... and thank God for Freshblood Theatre. They are doing a mash-up of two Brecht texts - How Much Is Your Iron? - the explores the build up towards WWII in the way only that German fourth-wall smasher can.


The plot is nicely pitched between allegory and realism: Dansen has pigs, his neighbour Svendson is an iron trader. Then people start to get murdered, a mysterious stranger rolls up and Freshblood got out the puppets, went for the dark laughter and won the Warwick Clive Barker Award in 2011.


The company are from Warwick University, and have a reputation for both cabaret shows and some neat satires - Vile Bodies is on their list of past shows, so I like them already.


The promise of a "new" Brecht is bold, but the style looks intact: the mundane and the mythical, the bleak humour, the willingness to use whatever helps get the message across. It's another young company, so it's a relief to find that there is still a market for tough theatrical choices and the heritage of Germany's master maker.



Sweet Grassmarket, Apex International Hotel, Venue 18 Aug 11th-17th@14:25