‘The IKEA Kitchen Sink Dramas: New writing and naturalistic staging?”: IATL Project
Report
This project was about interrogating a trend that seemed to me to be common when staging
new writing in the last 10 years or so: staging that strived to be as close to realism as
possible in line with the language of the plays. This trend seemed at times to be harking
back to the Stanislavkian naturalism of plays written in the late 19th/early 20th century. As
there have been more and more attempts recently to blow apart these plays (Chekhov,
Ibsen etc.) as well as the heightened naturalism of American 20th century classics such as
those by Tennessee Williams, my thought was “Can this be done for their more recent
naturalistic counterparts?”.
When talking about this project with peers at Warwick, there seemed to be a lot of interest.
However, as I believe previous IATL projects have encountered, it was difficult to get people
to commit as there were many other shows auditioning at the same time. Although the kind
of ‘auditions’ I was running were perhaps less conventional than these other Warwick shows
and those that I had been involved in previously. Although I asked each sign-up to read
some lines of texts from different 21st century plays, the bulk of the time was spent
discussing the project and working out what their thoughts were around taking different
approaches to contemporary naturalistic scriptwriting. This gave me a chance to work out
who might be on-board with the ideas and thus challenge the final group’s thinking.
In my opinion, the most significant thing about this project was the participants themselves.
Some had never been involved in any theatrical projects at Warwick, some had been
involved since their first term. These differing experience levels kept us all on our toes. It
was rare to work with a group that spanned disciplines and ages in this way (the group was
comprised of first years and final years) and this meant we used to the time to develop a
shared language and thus our unique way of working. The team for this project other than
myself was Rebekah Hesmondhalgh (1st year Theatre Studies), Ed Franklin (3rd year English
and Theatre), Ishani Parekh (4th year Politics, Philosophy and Economics), Louise Scholes
(1st year English and Theatre), Dinesh Napal (4th year Law and Sociology) and Stanzi
Carpenter (1st year French and German).
The project spanned almost the entire term. The initial plan was for it to culminate with some
kind of performance in the 7th week of term. However, as I had made a particular effort to
reach out to different groups within the university, our first meeting after auditions was not
until week 3. The group felt we would not have enough time to complete the project in 4
weeks and so it was extended to the end of the term. For the first two weeks of the project,
each member of the group took at least one text to read in their own time and then present
to the group. Some of these were candidates for the text that the project would focus on and
these included Edgar and Annabel by Sam Holcroft, That Face by Polly Stenham and The
Heretic by Richard Bean. Other members of the group read texts that would influence the
thinking behind the project in terms of its theatrical potential. These scripts included Lungs
by Duncan Macmillan and The Author by Tim Crouch. When coming together to discuss
these texts we thought about what the plays were trying to communicate, how we might
achieve this in performance, how previous productions had been staged and also what was
self-consciously theatrical about these texts. The group then chose Edgar and Annabel to
take forward for workshopping, rehearsing and ultimately performing.
Edgar and Annabel is perhaps a misleading title once you understand the play. The
characters of Edgar and Annabel are exactly that: two characters played by Nick and
Marianne who are working as part of an undercover group supporting the alternative
candidate in an upcoming election in a world that is a cross between our present and an
Orwellian 1984-like state. It was exciting to work on a script which presented relevant
references but also to be re-interpreting a text that, to my knowledge, has not been
performed frequently since its first production in 2011.
It very quickly became evident that the eclectic nature of the group meant that we all had
different references points: from theatre to film to comics. I wanted to embrace this,
particularly in the early stages of the project. We came to ask the question: what is unique
about theatre? One of the conclusions we came to is that all art forms influence each other
and that it seemed that with the naturalistic texts we were exploring, there was a sense that
their original productions were aiming for hyper-real, filmic qualities. This led to many
discussions about what ‘real’ means when we talk about theatre: does it mean real props,
real emotions, using real memories? An article was brought to the group which strongly
impacted our subsequent ideas about the play, in which Tim Crouch talks about bringing
‘real’ to the stage (children, animals, kissing) and how this influences the audience
(http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/jun/18/theatre-reality-adler-and-gibb-tim-crouchplaywright). It was with this article in mind that we entered rehearsals.
The text of Edgar and Annabel seems to draw attention to meta-theatricality: from the first
scene, two of the characters in the play are playing other characters, scripts in their hands.
Emphasising the notion of theatre seemed to be something ignored in previous stagings of
the play, as far as we could tell from information and images online. As we were focussing
on both re-interpreting these texts as students on a student budget and also on what the
notion of ‘real’ means on a stage, we decided to make decisions which would actively draw
the audience’s attention to what we were doing. For example, sounds needed in the scene
were created visibly offstage by other actors, such as the sound of a carving knife being
made by an electric toothbrush.
Although many IATL funds are used towards devised performances, the opportunity that we
got to play with the text in our case felt really exciting, innovative and liberating in a way that
I have never felt before when working towards a performance at university. As I outlined in
my initial application, the problem with creating performances at the university through the
drama societies is that the creative team is expected to be clearly divided with assigned
roles. There is a plan for the entire set and costume before the show has even been cast.
This limits the creative control of the cast and reinforces top down structures where this
creative team makes all the decisions separately, individually. During the rehearsal process,
I made sure that myself and the actors together made the decisions about what their playing
space would look like and where we wanted tech to be used and why.
My aim was to keep collaboration at the forefront of this project at every stage. Although
obviously I had instigated the project and would take on authority where necessary during
the process, I had never directed before. I think that this meant I did not come with bad
habits or expectations about how creating a performance from a script would be achieved.
Although I was guiding the project I tried to encourage the whole company to have a say in
how we created the performance. I would actively ask for their suggestions and urge them to
post influences, ideas and videos on our Facebook group. Of course, the play was also
voted on by the company which felt unusual in a Warwick uni context. However, the
collaboration went further than just the selected company in the rehearsal room. We held an
open rehearsal in week 7 in which we took audience feedback. Then even in the final
performances, the set was created using masking tape and the audience taped out these
lines with the actors before taking their seats. Because the company was a diverse group
from different years and disciplines, this meant that the audience to the performances was
also varied. Many commented that it was unlike other Warwick performances that they had
seen and that they were “still thinking about the show the next day”.
In the spirit of collaboration, I asked the company members if they would like to contribute
anything to the final report. One member said that she wanted to emphasize how positive
the experience had been particularly because we managed to achieve so much in a short
space of time. This rung true for me. Because there were many final years involved in the
project, I tried to ensure that there weren’t too many sessions each week. As a result, I
ensured that the sessions were well-planned so that we would make the most of our time. In
the first session, I came with lots of notes about how I thought one of the scenes should
come across. However, I realised after the rehearsal that this was extremely restrictive to the
actors. I learnt what was more helpful and exciting for the company was for both myself and
the actors to arrive at rehearsals with a series of questions and provocations which we
challenged each other with and then tried to tackle together as a group.
One group member commented that it was “really fascinating how we managed to subvert
so many theatre tropes like traditional gender casting”. Casting one of our female actors in a
male role again encouraged the audience to question what is ‘real’ on stage and how far you
can push an audience’s imagination simply by giving them theatrical ‘facts’, in this case “This
woman is a man in the world of the play”.
Another comment from a group member explained that they found the style of performance
and different approach to texts difficult at first “but by the end of the process I began to feel
like all plays of this nature should be staged in this way!”. She went on to explain that she felt
that “all members of the cast [felt] able to contribute to the piece entirely”. This meant a lot to
me, not only in terms of achieving the aims for an IATL project, but also personally to
achieve my own aim of making people feel empowered in creating a performance in a
university context.