Dramaturgy and Aeneas: Robert Hersey @ Edinburgh Studio Opera

Director Robert Hersey | Musical Director William Conway | Producer Samantha Redfern

Join Edinburgh Studio Opera in their 50th year producing the highest quality student opera in Edinburgh with a double bill of beautifully reimagined and restaged classics. Journey from Virgil’s tragic love affair, Dido & Aeneas, to a hilarious comical farce forged in the fires of Dante’s inferno, Gianni Schicchi. Expect an immersive and exciting evening in one of Edinburgh’s most charming venues.

What was the inspiration for this performance?For me, my approach to creativity in general is this: there is no point in recreating something which has been directed and recreated on stage many times without having something new to say. Be it through the staging, reimagining narratives, the use of space itself, reimagining the performer-audience relationship… In these productions, I wanted to firstly challenge certain operatic performance conventions. 

By staging the operas in a traverse staging, you essentially take away the safety net of the conductor and orchestra set in front of the performer. It frees performers to communicate directly and in close proximity to the audience. This throws up certain challenges for the singers, but completely releases an energy in performance which is dynamic and exciting for both performers and audience. 

As well as this, in Dido & Aeneas, I have tried reimagining the narrative to explore some of the burning issues I see in today’s media and society more generally. These include issues of sexuality and gender, the objectification of women in the media and film, and the sexual predation of woman in the media industry. I wanted to up turn the audience expectations and create new energies and talking points.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?Yes absolutely - but, if we just view performance as entertainment and it sticks to clearly defined norms and expectations, there is certainly little to incline us to sit in bars afterwards and see any need for discussion or debate. Theatre has to tell the stories that need telling and in a way that only live theatre can.

How did you become interested in making performance?I trained first as a musician and a singer and quickly found a love for performance and theatre. I inherited a visual imagination from my artist Dad I think. I also trained at the School of the Science of Acting. 

Their founder and artistic director, a controversial figure in the London theatre world, always pushed us to ask more and more questions about our intentions in performance and what theatre was and could be. I have worked a lot of my life with young people finding their unfettered energy, imagination and non-conformity essential in creating theatre. It informs me still.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?The demands of staging both operas in the traverse, like an oyster, creates a certain restriction but generates creative possibilities which have been exciting. The time restraints of rehearsals have put some limitations to my normal rehearsal practice of much experimentation within rehearsal time. It has made me create the whole process within my imagination and then on stage. 

I’m then working backwards, as it were, taking that part of the approach and letting the actors/singers into the process for them to regain a creative foothold and ownership of operas. Both operas have demanded a very physical theatre and movement approach to staging. This puts enormous demands on the singers but they have worked very hard to master new skills and create dynamic stage picture on stage.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?Yes, both operas fit within my usual style but, of course, each new work demands a new approach. For me, it’s so important not to get complacent or to somehow impose interpretation without first working from the inside, really finding something fundamental that moves and excites you.  

What do you hope that the audience will experience?A sense of excitement at being so close, within touching distance of operatic singers in full flow. 

To feel a cathartic sense of tragedy at the end of Dido & Aeneas and to be shocked and challenged through the new narrative of the piece, especially the relationship between Dido and Belinda but also the predatory nature of Aeneas. In Gianni Schicchi, which many will not have seen before, especially never in this traverse staging, I hope the audience feels completely taken into the middle of the fast, furious and hilarious narrative of this absurd comic masterpiece.

Under the imaginative direction of Robert Hersey, the 27-strong cast will be performing in traverse, using the length of the stage to a create dynamic and fluid piece of opera. With a backdrop of 1950s Italy, Hersey’s retelling blends the glitzy world on a film set with the colourful home life of a band of cruel relatives. Recently hailed a “tour de force”, returning Musical Director Will Conway will expertly conduct the orchestra bringing with him “a flair for the unpredictable”.


Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9SU



Tuesday 27th February @ 7.30pm Wednesday 28th March @ 7.30pm Friday 2nd March @ 7.30pm Saturday 3rd March @ 7.30pm

Highlights from ESO50: A Concert Performance – Saturday 3rd March @ 2.00pm





Tickets £15 | Concessions £12 | Students £6.50 www.edinburghstudioopera.org

Ae Fond Dramaturgy: Paul Beeson @ Greenock

ALTERNATIVE VALENTINE’S NIGHT OUT WITH AE FOND KISS AT EASTWOOD PARK THEATRE

Literature lovers are in for a treat this Valentine’s as Eastwood Park Theatre brings Ae Fond Kiss, a musical journey through the life and loves of Robert Burns, on Tuesday 13 February.

The show is perfect for those who

want to ditch the Valentine’s tradition and get out as a group, go solo or know their love would prefer a night out to a red, red rose.

Eastwood Park Theatre is offering its special deal – bring a group of 10 people and one person can come free – for those who want to catch the quirky commentary of Burns and be captivated by his famous poems and songs.

Anthony McReavy from East Renfrewshire Culture and Leisure, said: “Our Valentine’s performance is not just for couples. Everyone is encouraged to come along, see the show and learn a little bit more about the life of Scotland’s most treasured and celebrated poet." 

What was the inspiration for this performance?

The inspiration was to tell the fascinating story of the life of Robert Burns; many will be familiar with some of his poetry and songs, but most will not know all the major events and people that inspired him and shaped his life and career.

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

Absolutely! I would argue it is one of the best forums for discussing and investigating ideas. Although a lot of commercial theatre is geared towards pure entertainment (which is also a good thing), I believe performance has the power to explore issues and bring them to life, to educate and inform, and to offer potential ‘what if…’ scenarios. If it can be done in an entertaining, visual and thought-provoking way, so much the better!

How did you become interested in making performance?

I chose to do Higher Drama when I was in 6^thyear at high school. I had no aspirations, needed another subject to study and thought Drama would be fun (and if I’m completely honest, a bit of a skive!) After the first few lessons, I realised how much fun it was and it was far from being easy… it was also the first time in my life I found something I felt I was really good at and capable of taking further. A good friend of mine had left school a couple of years before and done a Year Out Drama course in Stratford-Upon-Avon. So, after I left school, I applied and was accepted, then progressed to Drama college the following year. 

 

I became a Drama teacher a few years after graduating, as I struggled to find work and decided to get a full time job where I could use my skills. I taught for ten years before getting back into performing. Towards the end of my teaching career, I began dabbling in amateur theatre and remembered my love of performing… the pull was too much for me!

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

As with a lot of theatre making, we started with a script. The show is written in verse and is interspersed with Burns’ poems and songs, so tackling and understanding the text was the first challenge. There is a huge amount of scope for creativity when it comes to telling a story however and we have tried to make the staging as interesting as possible; we have minimal use of props and set, but what we have is used in interesting ways to quickly change location and time. Less is more as they say! We also have an open and honest dialogue with the director and the process is extremely collaborative; all ideas are explored, no matter how unusual!

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Most of the recent productions have had a small cast, with performers playing multiple roles and this production is no exception. There are only four performers bringing a host of characters to life, which can be challenging, but so much fun! The use of live music and audience interaction is another big part of our recent work and we are looking forward to having a singsong with people all over the country!

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience can emotionally connect with Burns throughout his story; Ae Fond Kiss has everything; it’s entertaining, heartfelt, funny, sentimental, sad, exciting… it is crammed full of facts about Burns’ life, so everyone will learn something they never knew before and hopefully see there was more to the Bard than womanising and drinking… some of the poems and songs will be familiar to the audience and participation is encouraged… 

Rabbie Burns is played by Paul Beeson who will guide you through the show with amusing and poignant interactions with key characters, played by cast members Gilchrist Muir, Shawney Henderson and Zoe Halliday. Featuring many of Burns’ famous poems and songs, including Red, Red Rose, Ae Fond Kiss and Auld Lang Syne, it will be a show to remember whether you love literature or just want to find out a bit more about the Bard. 

Matthew Brown, the No Nonsense Productions' show composer, said:“Robert Burns acts as both narrator and main protagonist on this journey through his life.  We meet the main characters he encountered such as his brother Gilbert, his wife Jean, the other loves of his life and his publisher to name but a few...”

Tickets cost £15 standard and £12 for concessions and are available to book now: www.eastwoodparktheatre.co.uk/boxoffice.

Ae Fond Kiss is touring around Scotland this February and comes to Eastwood Park Theatre on Tuesday 13 February. Tickets cost £15 standard and £12 for concessions and are available to book now: www.eastwoodparktheatre.co.uk/boxoffice.

Greek @ Scottish Opera

1.    All reviews – like opinions – are subjective, a unique combination of the experience under consideration and the experience and personality of the reviewer. They are not, despite the occasional attempts by certain critics to trick the reader into believing that this review is definitive, absolute or objective. If an objective review were possible, it would immediately make the entire process a waste of time, since there would only never be the need for one person to attend and describe an experience.

2.     This review is being written after attending Scottish Opera’s production of Greek, February 2018, and having had an experience both boring and irritating. After the first twenty minutes, during which the novelty of hearing East London chat sung in beautiful operatic voices hadn’t become predictable (or, as in the second art, dropped for a more familiar poetic language), the performance felt trite, the dramaturgy underdeveloped and the attitude towards the working-class culture it represented on stage patronising. Musically, Turnage’s score had plenty going on – there’s a nice drum accompaniment to the battle between Eddy and a pair of Sphinxes, and the rattle and clatter of its recognisably contemporary composition eloquently expresses the emotional depths of the characters. But the production itself felt lazy, with some ill-conceived interludes of physical comedy and a set – a blank wall with two entrances – that flattened the performances and, used only to rotate at certain scene breaks and as a projection screen, an unimaginative scenography for a libretto that is full of intriguing mythic detail.

3.    I returned to a computer, expecting reviews of the previous outing for this production – at the Edinburgh International Festival, 2017 – to express some of my frustrations. However, it had been universally lauded, and called ‘relevant’. I am especially surprised that no comment was made on the unimaginative staging, and the patronising representation of Londoners. I became aware that my opinion was very much out of step with the other reviewers (but not necessarily with a proportion of the audience with whom I had shared this experience).

4.    The reviews regarded Greek as ‘edgy’ and even satirical, seeing its political cynicism as reflecting a current set of anxieties.

5.    The audience at The Theatre Royal, in a large part, had cheered and applauded. Many people seemed enthusiastic. Other people were merely polite.

6.    There are three main reasons that I dislike the production: the apparent lack of imagination in the dramaturgy; the physical presence of the actors and the choreography of certain scenes; the lack of any sense of connection to my experience. I think that I rather liked the music and while the plot was incoherent, this didn’t destroy my enjoyment.

7.    Since the plot was the Oedipus story, made famous by Sophocles, its incoherence needs to be qualified. The juggling of plot points – Eddy marries his mother directly after killing his father (and for no good reason) – disrupted the elegance of the narrative’s inevitability; the introduction of Sphinxes and a plague into a contemporary London, with allusions to civil disorder and Margaret Thatcher, was a mythical interlude that undermined the London setting of the opera; the revelation of Eddy’s true parentage is not teased out but revealed in a single song, which could have happened at any point and had no sense of dramatic tension. However, these problems could have been addressed in a production that was willing to offer more than a blank canvas for its dramaturgical construction.

8.    Usually, I address a performance in terms of its intentions. This may come to be problematic in this case, because, having read other reviews, I am writing in response to the absence of my experience in those other reviews. There is also the problem that it was difficult to discern quite what this production’s intention might be: the projection of some relatively recent tabloids onto a screen doesn’t make it ‘a comment on contemporary social values’, the parody of Oedipus’s traditional self-mutilation isn’t quite strong enough to make this production a wry commentary on tragic values. The use of fetish wear on many of the characters – or, I’d say, a suggestion of it – doesn’t bring out a playful world of sexual pluralism but just looks like some opera singers dressed inappropriately.

9.    The singing was more than serviceable and the orchestra were great. This isn’t a critique of the quality of the artists’ ability, except in their acting and movement skills. The latter were so dismal that it becomes of question of why the production considered having tentative choreography as part of the production, beyond it being something that Greek tragic choruses did.

10.                   The dancing was mostly performed by three cast members, who did something suggestive of being riot police beating demonstrators and a pastiche of musical vaudeville. Not only was the choreography unimaginative, it was executed clumsily and undermined any atmosphere conjured by the singing, either comic or serious.

11.                   However, this is a sub-category of the problem of the dramaturgy. Dramaturgy, in this case, does not signify the work of the dramaturge but the process of adapting a script into production: it’s the time and space of theatre. It’s the choices of interpretation made, the use of design in scenography. It’s the vision of the director and the performance styles of the singers.

12.                   The scenography is a beautiful summation of the problems in the dramaturgy. It’s a white blank wall that doesn’t quite fit the proscenium arch of the Theatre Royal. It rotates every so often, with the two doorways moving over the singers, if they remain on stage. The stage-hand shoving it was visible, so it disrupted the integrity of the world on stage. That doesn’t matter, because Brecht introduced the world to the deliberate exposure of theatre’s mechanics and it’s not like the world on stage was an illusory depiction of London’s grimy underclass. But it was just a bit sloppy.

13.                   The wall had projections onto it, sometimes the lyrics, sometimes video montages that filled in the plot – notably how the mother had lost her son – and occasionally suggestive sequences of food splashed all over the place or tabloid newspapers. They were alluding to the wider context of the world of the opera. They were clumsy, obvious but not particularly enlightening, although the bit where some mayonnaise was squirted over beans was funny, because it was like a cum-shot from a naughty movie. Maybe that was the edgy part. And maybe the tabloid headlines were showing us how so little has changed since Greek’s first production in 1988. But having a picture of Boris Johnson isn’t enough to make this a satire of the Conservative government.

14.                   The dramaturgy relied on a blank canvas to add context to the opera. Funnily enough, that doesn’t work.

15.                   What appeared to be a theme in costumes – rubber fetish gear – was opaque. Some waitresses, the coppers and Eddy’s dad were wearing it, but it wasn’t clear why. For the police, it did seem as if their abuse of protestors might have a sexual element – you know, BDSM as law-enforcement, but the gear wasn’t that good: one copper had a t-shirt underneath it, so it’s wasn’t like a serious effort. The waitress outfits were more convincing but this idea – the fetishization of identity – wasn’t carried far enough. When Eddy sings about an apron as a symbol of motherhood, there’s something, but I get really bored by people wearing gear that meant to be sexy or mean something, but doesn’t really work.

16.                   These are problems in the visual dramaturgy: they don’t add up to a layer of meaning on top, or integrated into, the singing. While this was going on, the singers did their job, but it never resolved into any kind of clear interpretation. It was a bunch of stuff happening.

17.                   Did I mention how uncomfortable the performers looked during the vaudeville scene – which was a choral interlude? They did the sand-dance moves and a big of jigging about. It was simply crappy. There’s a critical word that isn’t used often.

18.                   Claiming that a theatre production doesn’t speak to my experience is a bit specious in most cases: an important function of theatre is about giving voice to other experiences, and I don’t have any meaningful experience that makes sense of Greek tragedy beyond watching and reading Greek tragedy. But in this case, I am simply using that phrase to repeat an earlier accusation, and hopefully clarify it. It presented the London working-class as being stupid and trivial caricatures. As it happens, my maternal family comes from the area that provides the setting of the first scenes. They were Arsenal supporters. They use the words that are presented for laughs in the libretto. I thought they were represented as a series of cheap jokes, and their culture was reduced to a parody.

19.                   There’s nothing wrong with being critical of a culture, only the question of an opera having a laugh at a marginalised group shouldn’t need too much elaboration.

20.                   In the end, all the characters were unsympathetic which, again, need not be a problem except when there’s a swelling of music signifying emotional engagement. If you don’t give a fuck about anyone on stage, the question of whether or not they did their mum becomes irrelevant, and Eddy’s final defiant acceptance of having got in his mum’s knickers lacks any force. It’s just more stuff that happens.

21.                   Equally, it doesn’t relate well enough to the absolute shit-storm that we are all living in to count as satire.

22.                   As it goes, I do like the fancy, detailed and expensively designed operas that Scottish opera produce. I know it’s not the only way to produce opera, and is probably a bit obvious, but I enjoyed it. The performers tonight had no gift for the comedy that lurks in the libretto, and it lacked chemistry for the sexy aria at the start of Act II. But since the comedy never landed, that’s another dramaturgical problem.

23.                   I’m not saying the other reviewers are wrong or stupid, but I wish that my experience had been represented.

24.                   But now it has been. And that’s the purpose of criticism.

The Dramaturgy Box: Richard Baron @ Firebrand

Firebrand in partnership with The Byre Theatre, St Andrews and Heart of Hawick

present the

Scottish Premiere of The Match Box by Frank McGuinness

The award-winning Scottish Borders theatre company will be touring Scotland in February 2018

with the Scottish premiere of Frank McGuinness’ compelling play, The Match Box. 

The production opens at The Byre Theatre, St Andrews with a preview on Thursday 1 February 2018 and finishes on Saturday 3 February prior to a short tour which includes Birnam Arts, Heart of Hawick, Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and the Citizens Theatre, Glasgow.

Richard Baron directs this new production of the monologue, written by the celebrated Irish Tony Award winning playwright, Frank McGuinness in 2012, which combines lyricism and humour in a passionate story of grief, revenge and the temptations of evil.

The play explores the ties that bind and the shockingly brutal events that bring Sal to a remote exile on Valentia Island off the coast of County Kerry. McGuinness has created an intriguing heroine, a woman to be pitied and feared in equal measure. Her intriguing story begs only one question of the audience; what would you do if pushed to the very edge?

Following the success of last year’s acclaimed production of Grounded, Firebrand have again joined forces with The Byre Theatre, St Andrews and Heart of Hawick to bring this production to Scottish audiences.

Director Richard Baron on The Match Box: “It is a complete encounter with grief and the will to forgive, with powerful resonances of recent Scottish news stories about gang-related shootings. With superb storytelling skill, McGuinness’s atmospheric revenge drama uses surprising humour, and influences ranging from Samuel Beckett to Greek tragedy, to dig fearlessly into the flesh and sinew of such an event, posing awkward questions about public, mass media, and private reactions to the concept of vengeance.”

www.firebrandtheatre.co.uk

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Firebrand is keen to find remarkable plays new to Scottish audiences that have strong female interest and characters, and Frank McGuinness' powerful monologue, The Match Box, has all these qualities. It is an exciting, moving and thought-provoking story of a mother's grief and revenge that we'd tried to programme for some time. 


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

We believe that the immediacy and emotional impact of good theatre is unrivalled for engaging hearts as well as minds. You can present the complexities of a situation without getting bogged down in the intellectual niceties allowing for that in-depth discussion instead to happen afterwards once deeper and instinctive connection to the material has been been established. 

How did you become interested in making performance?

As a student I was interested in writing theatre criticism but found the opportunity to direct plays in rehearsal and then mounting them on a stage in front of an audience a more rewarding way of engaging with a playwright's work.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show                                                                                   
The Match Box is set on a remote island in County Kerry but we wanted to use all the tools of theatre (sound, light, the actor, the spoken word) to inspire the audience's imagination and to tell Frank McGuinness' story with simple strokes but as eloquently and inventively as possible.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Yes. Firebrand has become known for presenting plays that hit you in the gut and make you think and The Match Box certainly does that.  Our mission is to make work which can be played in intimate spaces but has epic themes and ideas. We believe the visceral power of being in close proximity to the action can often lead to a more enthralling theatre experience. 


What do you hope that the audience will experience?                                                                                           
A thought-provoking and memorably moving and engaging experience of a fascinating new play that will inspire another visit to the theatre.

After her acclaimed performance in Grounded, at The Byre Theatre, this new production features actor Janet Coulson as Sal and the creative team is comprised of award-winning director Richard Baron, designer Ken Harrison and composer Jon Beales, whose successes with Firebrand include the sell-out tour of Rona Munro’s Iron, which starred the CATS Award winning Blythe Duff; the revival of David Greig’s Outlying Islands and the Scottish premiere of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect.

Liam Sinclair, Artistic Director of The Byre Theatre: “We are uniquely placed, at The Byre, to be able to play such a substantial role in the creation of touring productions for theatre in Scotland and beyond. Our involvement with Fringe First award winning Stand By in the summer of 2017 set a precedent which we are delighted to follow up with Firebrand’s latest production, which may be small in scale, but is huge in its ambition and power. This second-ever UK production of The Match Box fits perfectly with Firebrand’s mission to make intimate, emotionally charged theatre with epic themes, and will further endorse The Times recent claim that “Firebrand, the company based in the Borders, has the knack for identifying new plays destined to become contemporary classics.”

Sophy Delavigne, Operations Manager at Heart of Hawick: “We are delighted to welcome back Firebrand to the Heart of Hawick Theatre. It’s wonderful to be able to host such an innovative theatre company and we look forward to what is sure to be another powerful production.”

LISTINGS INFORMATION

The Byre Theatre, St Andrews, University of St Andrews, Abbey Street, St Andrews KY16 9LA

Thursday 1 February Preview 7.30pm, Friday 2 & Saturday 3 February 7.30pm

Matinee Saturday 3 2.30pm

Tickets: £14/£12

Box Office: 01334 475000 www.byretheatre.com

Birnam Arts, Station Road, Birnam, Dunkeld PH8 ODS

Wednesday 7February 7.30pm

Tickets £10/£8

Box Office: 01350 727674 www.birnamarts.com

Heart of Hawick, Tower Mill, Kirkstile, Hawick TD9 0AE

Friday 9 - Saturday 10 February 7.30pm Sun 11 Feb 2.30pm

Tickets: £14

Box Office 01450 360688 www.heartofhawick.co.uk

Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge Street, Edinburgh EH1 1ED

Tuesday 13 - Saturday 17 February 8.00pm

Tickets: £17, £14, £12.50, £9

Box Office: 0131 228 1404 www.traverse.co.uk

Citizens Theatre, 119 Gorbals Street, Glasgow G5 9DS

Tuesday 20 - Friday 24 February 7.30pm

Tickets: £16.50 - £12.50

Box Office: 0141 429 0022 www.citz.co.uk

We Have Dramaturgy: Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir @ Formation

Formation Festival

Formation is a new festival showcasing the talents of the Annexe Repertory Theatre company in four new shows: Chapel Street, Those Worrisome Sleeps, We Got Now and White Rabbit Red Rabbit.

They will also be Joined by Some Kind of Theatre and RFT with their most recent shows The Grandmothers Grimm and Vichy Goings-On along with a special one off performances from Tandem Writers Collective, Loud Poets and The Performadores.


Annexe Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) are the product of Black Dingo's new youth theatre initiative in the Annexe Arts Hub on Merchant Street. The company have received workshops with directors Tyler Mortimer, Sofia Nakou and Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir plus founder David McFarlane this autumn and winter, before being split into four smaller companies to work on their respective performances at the Assembly Roxy 3-8th of February.

We Got Now

by the company

We Got Now is a new devised work made by the company. Five remarkable individuals take stock of where they are now. The past has not been easy, but they can either let it define them or they can embrace who it's made them. Beyond stigma, beyond shame, beyond self. Full of humour, poetry and raw truth, We Got Now invites you to embrace this moment in time.

This is the show's world premiere.

February 4th, 5th and 6th

7.30pm

Tickets £10/£8 concessions

Directed by Kolbrún Björt Sigfúsdóttir

Starring:

Edie Goodwin

Georgia Knox

Heather Milne

Johanna Stewart

Sarah Schlesinger

What was the inspiration for this performance?

When deciding we wanted to do a festival of new work to showcase the Annexe Repertory Theatre company myself, founder David McFarlane, directors Tyler Mortimer and Sofia Nakou met up to discuss a theme. We wanted the work to have a red thread running through it. We all wanted to make work that was tackling the now in some way and that represented the reality we find ourselves in in 2018. 

So the theme we chose was We Here Now and all the work we chose to make as part of the festival fits into that, Chapel Street and Those Worrisome Sleeps are pieces of new writing that are in strong dialogue with modern living, White Rabbit Red Rabbit happens in a now that feels more present than in most performances and We Got Now is an exploration of the self in a space and time.

Our initial questions was who were the 'we' in the devising group? This lead us down a path of defining a 'self' based on experiences, hopes and habits. 'Here' was more obvious and less important, apart from in the fact that the audience will encounter these stories together with us in a specific time and place, and we remain aware of that throughout. The 'now', on top of being the time spent with the audience, needed the contrast of what came before and what might come after to be defined.



So I brought in Kate Tempest's Hold Your Own as a means to start a devising journey. To me it is an extraordinary piece of work on shaping a self, discovering aspects of yourself and coming to terms with who you are as a young individual. From there the group started really diving into the material their collective past and present experiences brought up. And so the initial theme inspired initial material that inspired the texts that inspired the devised work you will see at the festival.

How do you feel your work fits within the remit of the Formation Festival?

This show fits in really well with the other work as it was made alongside a lot of it. It isn't traditionally scripted, unlike all the other work at the festival, which makes it unique in this line up, but thematically, as I've said, it links right in. There's a lot of new writing on by local writers that bring their unique voices to the table, we are bringing our voices too but We Got Now is not a 'play' – it's a show and the movement is as much part of the 'text' as the rest. The cast are creators and no one else could perform this but them, so in that sense it stands apart.



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

I think performance has a unique position in discussing the things we are discussing as we are tackling some very heavy hitting, verging on taboo, subjects in this show. These are five young performers bringing into light some serious issues in a way that is not easily done outside of performance. In a different setting it would need to be discussed differently and that would take the agency away from them. It would make their stories a part of a narrative they might not want to associate with.



But theatre is their form. Their medium. And so they chose how to tell these stories and what to leave out, what to say and how to say it. There is space for fragmented voice delivering a universal experience on stage. There is space for incredible candour and the wonderfully silly to step side by side on stage. I can't think of a platform that would allow these particular stories to be told with the amount of raw poetry this show offers that wasn't performance.



How did you become interested in making performance?

I became interested at the age of 14/15. I joined a youth theatre in my school and suddenly I had friends. I had a creative output and I really enjoyed being part of the group. But I didn't like acting and for the longest time I stayed away from theatre because I thought that was the only route to making it, by being an actor, playing parts. When I discovered a theatre makers' course at the Academy of the Arts in Reykjavik that focused on creation rather than interpretation I was hooked.



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

Yes, the method to making this show is very much based on work I've been exposed to by companies like Forced Entertainment, Gob Squad, She She Pop, Hotel Pro Forma and Frantic Assembly. The art of devising is something these companies have perfected and I draw a lot of inspiration from them. I also used Viewpoints as a starting point for this work. But each devising process is different and each group that devises brings their own methods.



This one was about fifty fifty physical and scripted, but a lot of the scripted work we made in the creative stage we then cut, reshaped or mixed in with other text in the 'putting the show together stage'. So firstly we just made a lot of material in response to prompts (textual, idealogical, abstract), then we gathered all of that material and chose what bits we liked. Then we re-staged that material all over again, devising new scenes from them. And that's the show.



Does the show fit with your usual productions?

This being a new company there's no 'usual' yet, which is very exciting. We all have made shows 'like this' but we've all also never made a show exactly like this because we've not worked together before.



What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope they are moved, either to laughter or to tears. Maybe both. It's a frank piece about what it means to be alive despite whatever challenges that state poses and I think it's an examination of how we come to terms with who we are and learn to live. 

It sounds soppy but no one gives out a guide book on how to survive being alive. They teach you maths and geography but very little about what can happen to a person and how to deal with our demons. When you've gone to the edge of things, be it health or loss or identity, you have a different perspective. It's unique and it's also very relatable to. It's a show about being a person. So I hope people relate!



Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir, director of We Got Now by Annexe Repertory Theatre (A.R.T)

Assembly Roxy 4^th, 5^th and 6^th of February at 7.30