Now in its third year, new writing showcase #Festival47 kicks off next week at the King’s Head Theatre. Among 19 shows featured in the programme is Bridle from Clamour Theatre, a contemporary satire on female sexuality and the attempts to control it, written by Stephanie Martin.
“Bridle is about challenging and rewriting narratives and perspectives on female sexuality and behaviour,” explains Stephanie, who also performs in the show. “It’s about desire, heartbreak, shame, fathers, violence, pornography, millennial culture. It’s about how female sexuality and behaviour are subtly policed and judged.”
Bridle marks Stephanie’s debut as a writer: “I wrote it last May, inspired by the disparity between the people I know in real life and the tropes of behaviour that are defined as ‘good’ or ‘proper’,” she says. “We shared the show for the first time, as a full length piece, at the brilliant Camden People’s Theatre hotbed Festival of Sex in April. Our first sharing saw me performing the piece with other actors, Elissa Churchill and Charlotte Clitherow, and so #Festival47 will be the first time I’ve ever performed it solo – I’ll be heartbroken/lonely and bored without the other two.
“As Bridle is the first thing I’ve ever written, I’m also extremely grateful to EJ and Pip at Pluck Productions, Georgie and Will at Flux Theatre and the Emerge Night, as well as Nastazja Somers and her HerStory baby, for first programming excerpts of Bridle as part of their respective new writing nights in November and December 2016. These three companies are a great example of London’s new writing scene, giving opportunities, support and confidence to new writers and makers.”
Bridle may be about women, but that doesn’t mean it’s only a show for women. “Absolutely not, it’s a show for all,” says Stephanie. “I personally believe we all exist as a gorgeous mismatch of the male and the female, so come as you are and enjoy. Some of the ‘male’ audiences of the past performances seemed a little disconnected or in some way to blame for some of Bridle, which I didn’t predict or imagine at all.
“I want us to all remove shame from our lives, to feel comforted that lots of us go through the same things, to feel okay about being weird and vulnerable. And to laugh at me and laugh at all of us.”
Clamour Theatre describe themselves as “raw, excited and all about today”. Stephanie explains, “We’ve formed to explore new perspectives, new characters, new stories in raw, explosive and enjoyable ways. We love humour, we love energy and we like looking at new stories and/or re-examining the status quo.”
Stephanie will be performing the show at the King’s Head on 11th, 12th and 16th July at 9.30pm. “It’s an honour to be programmed as part of the festival and defined as part of the ‘future of the theatre’, especially by a theatre with a reputation like the King’s Head,” she says. “The rest of the festival line-up looks fab too and we’re looking forward to seeing the other companies. I’ve seen such a huge variety of fab, quality work at King’s Head over the last 4 or 5 years so looking forward to being on that stage, too.”
Book now for Bridle at the King’s Head Theatre, 10th-16th July.
Paper Creatures is a new London-based theatre company founded by Jon Tozzi and Nathan Coenen. The company’s debut production, Flood, which opens at Tristan Bates Theatre on 31st July, is a comedy drama written by Tom Hartwell (known for recent hits You Tweet My Face Space and Contactless), which shines a light on the millennial generation while examining themes of grief, nostalgia and what it means to leave home – and come back again.
“The play centres around the day’s events in this village at two of the characters’ mother’s funeral, and friends coming back,” says Jon. “We have one character, Adam, who’s never left the hometown and everyone else has, so it looks at the effect that’s had on him and them. We were just fascinated with this idea of why everyone wants to move away from home, where does this come from? But it’s a comedy drama – we wouldn’t get Tom Hartnell on board if it wasn’t going to have its light moments!
“Tom was in the year below me at drama school and I remember having a drink with him and I told him about the potential of this company and how we wanted to look at certain themes. And then he went on tour for a month to a place called Tenbury Wells, where every year it gets flooded and the government has deemed it too small a place to do anything about it. And he was really interested in how that affects the people living there, and especially the millennial demographic – so he wrote Flood.”
While Jon is “a London boy, born and bred”, Nathan knows all too well what it’s like to move away from home. “I’m from Perth, Western Australia – as south as you can get, almost! So there are definitely themes in the play that are very strong for me, and in the rare times I’m able to get home there are scenes that happen in this play, which Tom wrote of his own accord, that have exactly happened to me. I wanted to leave in order to achieve the things I wanted to do with my life – I knew I wouldn’t be able to do that in Perth – but it’s fascinating to me to think about identity and where you relate to. Would I call myself a Londoner now? I’ve only lived here five years. It’s an interesting question.”
The decision to focus on the millennial generation was made early on: “We’re very intrigued by this term,” explains Jon. “There’s almost this association now with the millennial generation that we’re addicted to phones, and disconnected from people because we’re so invested in the technologies that are around us. There’s a reason for that – because our lives are on phones and laptops and emailing – but at the end of the day we’re human beings and we still feel, and I think the way we’re portrayed sometimes in the media is that we don’t have those feelings. We wanted to dig deeper and prove that we still grieve, we still laugh, love, we still have secrets.
“But we didn’t want a gimmick with the company either. From the get go we believed that the story should be enough and you should take something away from it – regardless of what the play’s about, there’ll be a moment there. It’s all about the story for us; that’s our USP, I think. I reference theatre to history as well, and the reason we have history is to learn from it. Theatre’s the exact same thing – so we can with new writing tell these stories now so in the future people can look back and see what we were like.”
“I think we’re lucky to have access to so much amazing classical theatre, but I also think classical plays get put on all the time, and it’s incredibly important to continue to create a platform for new writers to come forward,” adds Nathan. “There are never enough new voices and we just wanted to not do anything special or different, but just provide another platform for new writers to have a voice and share their stories.”
Jon and Nathan met on a five-month tour of Much Ado About Nothing with The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and bonded over a mutual love of the NBC show Friday Night Lights. “We absolutely adored the show because of the simple storytelling of these country people’s lives in Texas, where their whole lives revolved around their Friday night football game,” says Nathan. “To them it was the be all and end all. And we’d watch it and see a really honest portrayal of people caring about something so much. Then we’d chat about theatre, and when the tour finished we went and saw a lot of theatre together – Chekov, Yerma, Groundhog Day. We started going to some of the fringe theatres and we really got excited there.
“We’re really inspired by other new writing companies like Falling Pennies and Flux, and we wanted to create a place in which creatives and artists from all different aspects of the theatre community – lighting designers, actors, directors, writers, sound designers – could come together and invent. And particularly focusing that on the millennial generation; everyone we’re working with is a young, emerging artist, that’s really exciting for us.”
Jon adds, “And everyone helps each other out. We met up with so many people that we really admire – because we’re still learning every day, it’s not something you can get a degree in, you just have to crack on with it. We kept having these meetings and they were so helpful and honest with us so we could take what we wanted and put our spin on it. So we’re not just mimicking, we’re utilising what we’ve learnt.”
Photo credit: Benjamin Cooper
Even so, starting a theatre company is not without its challenges: “We’re trying our best to make it feel really professional,” says Jon. “It’s that feeling of making our team feel safe so they can just show up and enjoy themselves. And we’re learning about other elements of being in the theatre world like marketing, doing interviews – these are all new to us. I think it’s a really admirable thing when actors do decide to set their own companies up because you’re taking a massive risk.”
“I’ve been fascinated by the learning process of having to trust our own instincts about things,” agrees Nathan. “Things that I didn’t think I’d ever have to worry about as an actor, like designing posters, and then standing by your decisions. If you’re an actor in a play you have a director to guide you, but as the producers and the artistic directors we’re the ones calling the shots. It’s very rewarding but also you just have to click and hope – ‘I don’t know if this is right but let’s go for it’! And it’s been really gratifying to have to learn to trust our instincts on that.”
One of the biggest hurdles proved to be deciding on the company’s name, and it took about a month to finally settle on Paper Creatures. “We used to sit and just crack names out; we wanted to make it personal to us,” Jon explains. “The idea behind the name is: the paper is the script, and the creatures are the characters that come from that, the storytelling, and theatre is where we show you that. So the more you think about it, the more it makes sense – instead of thinking about an origami tiger or a swan, it makes so much more sense if you think about story, characters and theatre – just in a more poetic way. So that’s how it came about, but not without a lot of trial and error!”
Finding the right cast and creatives to work on Flood was another new experience, but Jon and Nathan are thrilled with the team they’ve assembled. “Our lighting, sound designer and set designers we’d never met before, so we found them essentially by just talking to people. Georgie Staight is the director – I did a scratch night with her last year, and she was great, then she directed Dubailand at the Finborough and we saw that she really gets a lot out of her actors, so we approached her and she thankfully said yes because she liked the play.”
The cast of five, which includes Nathan, Jon and Tom, is completed by Emily Céline Thomson, who was at drama school with Nathan, and Molly McGeachin, who was introduced by another friend. “That’s a nice element as well, meeting new people – we’ve never met some of them before but already have a great relationship,” says Jon. “It’s quite nice now to let the creatives get on with things and trust that they’ll do a great job, which they will, and we can concentrate on learning our lines!
“We want this to go really well. We want to learn a lot from it and make sure we’re doing it right, so we’re taking our time with it and not rushing into things, we’re making careful decisions – which venue we go for, what time slot, what kind of show we want to put on, what ideas we want for the poster… We’re making sure it’s done in the right amount of time, because the last thing you want when you’re putting on your first show is for it to be stressful and horrible. We want it to be a great experience for everyone involved.”
Nathan adds: “We want it to be fun, not one of those really stressful fringe productions where everybody’s tearing their hair out. We want them to want to do another play with us and be a part of it – that’s the kind of atmosphere we want to create. And we adore people getting in touch with us – actors, all different creatives; we want to create a community, so get in touch with us!”
Finally, why should we come and see Flood? “It’s a world premiere!” says Jon. “I think that’s exciting. So it’s a new piece of writing full of heart and humour, set in a flooded Somerset village, from a new emerging writer and company – what else could you want?”
“I think that theatre is something that’s a bit of a mirror. We go to the theatre to see ourselves or see something new, and I think that Flood will have moments we can relate to, and you’ll learn new things about people you might know,” concludes Nathan. “There will 100% be at least one moment where everybody will sit back and smile and say ‘I totally get that’. And that’s why we go to the theatre.”
Book now for Flood at Tristan Bates Theatre from 31st July-5th August.
Stephanie Silver is a London-based actor and producer at Actor Awareness, a campaign fighting for equality and diversity within the arts set up by Tom Stocks in 2015. The campaign’s come a long way since then, and the team are now preparing for their second New Writing Festival, a showcase of original work taking place from July 17th-22nd at London’s Barons Court Theatre.
“Actor Awareness is about trying to create a level playing field,” explains Stephanie. “‘All the world’s, a stage and all the men and women players’, right? Well, it doesn’t seem like it in the acting world. We have a long way to come on many levels, but fundamentally Actor Awareness is a campaign to make a fairer industry, so on stage and screen there is a diversity in roles as well as the actual stories being told to audiences.
“As we’re a small campaign with minimal financial resources, we do what we can. We started out with scratch nights – as an actor it’s more important to be the driver behind your career and to create opportunities, a massive ethos here at Actor Awareness, so the scratch nights were a natural step. Our first few scratch nights we got like four submissions and even sometimes had to write the odd play to fill in the spaces! Now we get nearly 100 submissions; we get more and more every call out.
“We’re now sponsored by Spotlight for the scratch nights and we are the only scratch in London that pays – we’re pretty proud of that. The event also adds a credit to any actor’s CV, which helps their Spotlight submission, and it’s also in the heart of the West End, a casting melting pot so an ideal place for agents or CDs to come. We’ve had quite a few people signed from the events, we had producers come down to check out plays and many people have gone on to write more of their show and take it elsewhere. It’s also just a great night to meet like-minded people and have a pint.
“We started film nights at Spotlight, where we choose short films and do a screening. This is a new venture and one we hope to continue. Tom also works extensively behind the scenes doing loads of admin stuff and talking with Equity, Spotlight, Labour MPs and other industry professionals. Now Actor Awareness are the patron of a new drama school, North 8 – a school designed to help people who can’t afford the ‘typical’ three-year £40,000 BAs! So we’re taking steps in the right direction.”
Stephanie got involved with Actor Awareness in 2015 after responding to a request for someone to do a blog. “And then because I’m a busy body I started helping out more as the campaign grew,” she adds. “Tom and I are good friends now, we get on – he’s hilarious and we trust each other. When the campaign grew Tom asked me to take on the scratch nights; new writing is something I have a real passion for so I jumped at the chance and I’ve been doing them for a for a while now!
“I love reading everyone’s submissions. It’s something I really look forward to and it’s helped me grow as a writer myself, constantly reading plays makes you sharpen your own tools, so it’s a win win. I always remember plays too, so sometimes I might message someone if I remember a play and want them to re-submit, or I think it has potential so I’ll email them to ask if they have more. Other times if I have the time I’ll provide some feedback, which they can take or leave, no offence taken. I’m also producing the New Writing Festival in July; I can’t wait. I like to organise, so just call me Tom’s organiser!!”
Stephanie’s passion for the campaign and its goals is clear to see. “I truly believe in it, because it gave me a real sense of purpose and drive to really make something happen, for myself and helping others,” she says. “The message of equality is one that should be shared in every walk of life, not just theatre. I think art is inherently important for growth on a human and social level, therefore no matter what your class or finances you should have access to it. We get a lot of people come to us disheartened and sometimes bitter with the industry, and it’s nice to give people an energy and focus and watch them do something they love and remember, ah yeah, I actually love doing this, finding that spark and passion to go out there and be noticed. We’re giving people confidence in themselves or the knowledge of where to go, who to speak to, what grants to look at or theatre to talk to, and enabling people to make some sort of pathway or step towards their next goal.”
Among many favourite moments, the scratch nights stand out as particular highlights: “To be honest every scratch night just gets better and better, the talent just seems to blow us away every time! There’s a few shows that have really grabbed both me and Tom. There was Injuries of Class by Paul McMahon which was stellar, and I got to show a short play of mine called Our Father, it got a standing ovation which really made my entire life!
“I also enjoyed our workshop in Manchester, that felt really good moving outside of London and reaching people out of the London hub. I’d love to do workshops like that all over the country. We got teams together and people who didn’t even think they could write had short plays by the end of the workshop. That felt very good.”
Next month’s New Writing Festival follows a successful first event last August at Theatre N16 in Balham. “We invited six of our most popular shows that had come through our scratch nights and asked them to write one hour of material to showcase,” Stephanie explains. “They all rose to the challenge and it was a success. One of the plays – The Staffroom by Michelle Payne – is going to Edinburgh this year and is also having a run at Queens Hornchurch Theatre. The new writing weeks are a chance for us to invite back really promising plays to get audience feedback. This year I want to make it bigger and better, so I’ve invented the ‘Press Pass’, a magical pass for any industry professionals, artistic directors, producers and reviewers to have access to all shows all week, to try and get more feedback for our artists.”
And it sounds like there’s plenty for us to look forward to. “Ah we have so much! I’m so excited for everyone. We have a real mix of comedy and drama and real contemporary issues and some proper working class themes. I selected them on their writing merit first and foremost. I chose pieces that I’d seen and knew went down well on the scratch nights – we normally have a pint at the pub after scratch nights and you get a good buzz about what plays really went down a storm. I also, like any night or event I do, try and create a varied programme.
“Worsooz is a play that was shortlisted for the Papatango award in 2016, very excited about this one. C’est La Vie won an international open submission in Australia and was produced out there after being one of Actor Awareness’ first ever scratch pieces way back in 2015, so pretty excited about that too. 2022 is a hard hitting contemporary piece about a Muslim ban, this is set to be fab. Submission is a spoken word piece that had Tom welling up at the last scratch, about being gay and Muslim. We have several fab comedies: Come Die with Me, which British Theatre rated 5 stars, and Speciman.
“I’m really excited about Walk of Shame, which is a very brave play about consent. It showcased at our women’s scratch night; I was asked to direct it and I just fell in love with the story and the character. After working on it as a director I got my writing hat twitching and went away and wrote some material which I presented to the original writer of the piece. We then decided to write the play together and I’m stoked to show people what we have hashed together in such a short space of time! We also have The Staffroom returning to perform their Ed fringe preview at the end of the week!”
Looking further ahead, there’s plenty more to come from Actor Awareness: “Firstly we have open submissions for our next scratch night, which is on a political theme – submissions can be sent to stephaniefrancescap@hotmail.com. We also have the Actor Awareness documentary coming out soon! It has many actors – people such as Maxine Peake and Julie Hesmondhalgh – talking about the class ceiling in the acting industry. It’s a real eye opener and something Actor Awareness has been working on for a while.”
Finally, what can the rest of us do to support Actor Awareness in their campaign? “The shows are a great place to mingle and Spotlight members go FREE so it’s a pretty sweet deal,” says Stephanie. “But you can also connect with us via social media. We do a lot of this as it’s a free tool and reaches widely – we’re on Facebook and Twitter (@actorawareness) which is where we post all castings and any upcoming events. We keep it this basic so anyone can join in, hear about us, and no one pays anything either – actors have enough to pay for! We sometimes join up with companies like CCP and do competitions. We’re pretty chilled, you can write to us anytime and we can chat. Tom and I are pretty open, so just holla.”
Find out more about the Actor Awareness New Writing Festival (17th-22nd July) or follow the campaign on Facebook or Twitter for news and updates.
With politics on everyone’s mind in the run-up to the general election, Broken Silence Theatre’s new play Tremors, about a disgraced MP, could hardly be more timely. Written by the company’s Artistic Director, and award-winning playwright, Tim Cook, the play receives its world premiere at London’s King’s Head Theatre later this month.
“Tremors is set in a modern day dystopian Britain where arson and rioting are rife,” explains Tim. “The plot revolves around a rising star of the Labour Party, a young MP called Tom Crowe, who is involved in a scandal in a hotel room. In an attempt to rebuild his image he travels back to his seaside hometown of Eastbourne to make amends. But he finds himself caught between saving either the community, which is very close to breaking point, or his career.”
Although the timing of the production – just a couple of weeks after the election – may appear deliberate, in fact the play’s been in development for some time. “I actually wrote the first draft of this play over six years ago,” says Tim. “Then I came to rewrite it for a rehearsed reading at the Old Red Lion Theatre last November. It’s strange, but I didn’t have to rewrite the play for 2017 as much as I thought I would. Although a lot has happened in the world of politics in the last six years, I feel like nothing has changed at the same time. Having said that, everything that’s happened has definitely influenced the direction of this production.
“First and foremost I want the audience to enjoy the show, but I also hope each audience member goes away and thinks about their own relationship to politics. Tremors isn’t a play that sides with any particular political party – that’s not the point. It’s a character-driven interrogation of modern politics, from the point of view of a young idealistic MP. It’s asking the question whether we should demand more from those in positions of power.”
Tim’s inspiration for Tremors came from researching news stories, particularly those about politicians and protest groups. “It’s not based on any specific politician, but I wanted to absorb lots of stories and lots of information and then go off and create a character that embodies everything good and bad about modern politics. On the one hand he’s a saviour, on the other hand he’s a villain. It depends on which side of the fence you sit. In the world of the play he’s seen as one of the only MPs left in the country with a conscience. You see him wrestling with a moral dilemma in the play – that probably comes from my own desire to see a politician who really cares. I also wanted to represent Eastbourne on stage, having grown up there myself. Location plays a huge part in the tone of the play. The seaside. The pier. All that stuff. There’s something unique and strangely isolating about growing up in a British seaside town.”
Tim’s excited to be returning to the King’s Head, which holds special memories for him: “It feels great. The King’s Head have always been very supportive of Broken Silence and my work as a playwright. My play Crushed, about the 2010 London student protests, transferred to the King’s Head after winning the Best New Play Award at Brighton Fringe in 2015. Tremors, in many ways, feels like an indirect sequel to Crushed, so it’s brilliant to come back two years later and premiere the show at the same theatre. The King’s Head are really bold with their programming too – it’s great to play alongside so many other fantastic shows this summer.”
Most of the Tremors cast worked together on Broken Silence’s Necessity, which transferred to the Bread & Roses Theatre from Brighton earlier this year. “We’re lucky to have an exceptional company for this production, including Broken Silence Associate Artist Cerys Knighton and East 15 graduate Vicky Winning,” says Tim. “William Vasey joined the cast for our reading at the Old Red Lion, and plays the lead role of Tom Crowe. He absolutely has the presence of an early career MP – a sort of Blair/Cameron hybrid – and I think his performance in the play is remarkable.
“Paul Macauley, writer and director of Necessity, also returns to direct Tremors. I love working with Paul – we’ve worked together for four years now – he’s a great director of actors. I really value our team, because I think building long-term relationships in the industry is very important.”
Tim founded Broken Silence Theatre in 2013, after graduating from RADA. “We’re based in Brighton and exclusively produce new writing,” he explains. “We care about promoting unheard voices and creating work that is urgent and vital. We also place a specific focus on the quality of the writing and performances; that’s what our aesthetic is based on. We’ve managed to produce work on a very regular basis – Tremors will be our twelfth full production in four years – and each production has grown in terms of scale and quality. We want to continue that over the next few years and work with as many new writers as possible.
“And we’ve got lots coming up this year. In August we’ve got another new show – yet to be announced – coming to the Jack Studio Theatre in Brockley, which I’m really excited about. We’re also planning a brand new London showcase for regional writers, helping playwrights from outside London bring their work to the capital. On top of that we’ve also been workshopping two other plays, which we hope to premiere over the next twelve or so months. So it’s going to be a really exciting year for us!”
Tremors is at the King’s Head Theatre on 25th-26th June and 2nd-3rd July.
Next month, Battersea’s Theatre503 plays host to Homecomings, a festival of new plays by prisoners and ex-prisoners about getting out and going home. Produced in partnership with the Synergy Theatre Project, the festival runs from 21st February to 18th March and will feature two of the winners of Synergy’s third national prison scriptwriting competition – Glory Whispers by Sonya Hale and The Monkey by John Stanley.
John, a lifelong Londoner, describes The Monkey as “a dark, comic contemporary drama of criminality, addiction and money owed”. The four characters he’s created, he explains, offer “a brief glimpse of the many diverse and varied people I met during my life’s erratic and unusual journey”.
Until he joined the Synergy project, John never imagined a future as a playwright: “The short answer is no, although I’ve always dabbled in poetry. Recently I completed a book about my life, but the truth is that until I completed the Synergy playwriting course I never had an interest in theatre.”
The Synergy Project, founded in 2000, seeks to build a bridge from prison to social reintegration, prevent young people from entering the criminal justice system, and inspire change by capturing the imagination of participants and public. After learning about the project from a friend who worked at the Young Vic, John joined the Synergy playwriting course and went on to write The Monkey. He’s thrilled to have his first ever play selected as a winner, out of a record 134 entries.
“I was over the moon when I found out, truly elated. Synergy has had such an enormously positive impact on my life that it’s impossible to quantify in a few sentences.” His advice to others thinking about getting involved in Synergy is simple: “Don’t hesitate and don’t delay, take the opportunity and go for it immediately.”
John’s now looking forward to seeing his work come to life on stage: “It’s exciting and nerve-wracking to see it come to life. I wrote The Monkey in 2012 and when I finally got to hear it in its entirety at the rehearsed reading recently, it was somewhat unreal but it was really gratifying. I am a touch nervous as to whether people will like it or not, though my feeling is you either do or you don’t and that’s how it is. Some people will find it hilarious and some won’t, but I hope they at least find it funny. If they do that would be wonderful.
“I’m sure I portray a world that most people are unaware of, so I hope they go away educated in some degree to an underbelly that exists in their midst – but most of all I hope they find it funny and have a good laugh.”
Theatre Things 