RADAR 2012

This Wednesday I’m on a panel with Chris Goode, Jenny Sealey, and Madani Younis to launch (a) the Bush Theatre’s new literary policy and (b) the Radar 2012 season of new work. We’ve all been asked to present one dangerous idea that could change the theatrical landscape. I’m not sure my idea is terribly dangerous nor that it would change the theatrical landscape very much, but I’ll be saying something. I may post it up here if I get the chance. Madani’s new policy should be interesting and Jenny is invariably adorable and provocative. Chris Goode is a magician of ideas, with a voice I could listen to for ever. So yeah, come along, why don’t you?

Alan Ayckbourn

This coming Thursday I’m doing a post-show talk at Chichester Festival Theatre about Alan Ayckbourn entitled ‘Britain’s Secret Radical’. The talk will talk a bit about his consistent history of dramaturgical invention and innovation, his explorations of space and time, and the way he uses those devices increasingly to explore the values of a culture dominated by money. The talk is accompanying his revival of Absurd Person Singular (pictured) which, in the character of Sidney Hopcroft, started to sense the emergence of the Thatcherite entrepreneur.

The talk is in the Minerva auditorium at 6.00 on Thursday 4 September.

Interview

The student review website What’s Peen Seen?, run by Adam Penny (pictured), a recent Royal Holloway graduate, has a short interview with me. His website, populated mainly by drama students reviewing theatre is worth following. He seems to have built it up from a private blog to a rather professional review website. I bump into 'his' reviewers whenever I'm at a press night...

Here’s a link to the the interview:

http://whatspeenseen.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/centre-stage-on-whats-peen-seen-dan.html

Radio Interview

LA Theatre Works is a radio production company who specialise in starry productions of classic plays, syndicated out to various radio networks across North America. This Saturday, they’re broadcasting John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and at the end of March they interviewed me about the play. An edited version of this interview will be broadcast ahead of the recording of the play.

It all goes out this weekend and can be streamed at http://www.bigcontact.com/latw from Saturday.

Tim Crouch Interview

On 19 March 2011, I took part in a symposium organised by postgraduate students from Royal Holloway’s Department of Drama and Theatre. I gave a short paper and also interviewed the writer, performer and theatremaker Tim Crouch. The theme of the symposium was ‘Representing the Human’ and we talked a bit about images of human beings in his work.

A transcript, edited by the wonderful Louise LePage, who co-organised the conference, has now been published in the Department’s postgraduate e-journal, Platform. You can read it here:

LePage, Louise, and Dan Rebellato. ‘Tim Crouch and Dan Rebellato in Conversation.’ Platform: Postgraduate eJournal of Theatre & Performing Arts 6.2 (2012): 13-27.

Independent

In the Independent of Sunday, Kate Youde has written an article about the return of political theatre. She interviewed me last week and there’s a quote from me in there, suggesting that we’ve seen the return of political farce because politics is a bit more farcical. I am quite surprised that she used anything from me since I got the impression that she was rather irritated by my comments. I tried to develop the line that the politics of theatre are not just about content but crucially about form. She didn’t seem to buy it and I thought she treated this as academic obfuscation; certainly, no trace of this makes its way into the article. But it’s an interesting piece, which certainly does observe a bulge in political content.

Back to Manchester

My short play Manchester is going to get a second outing as part of the Soho Poly Theatre Festival, a celebration of 40 years of the Soho Poly (now the Soho Theatre). Three recent Miniaturists plays have been chosen to contribute to the festivities: Burger Burger Death Burger by Stacey Gregg, The Well-Made Life by Steve King, and Manchester. All plays will be directed by Sophie Motley. Manchester is performed by Tim Pritchett and Zoe Hunn. I was pleased, reading the play back, that it seems, if anything, more pertinent than it did before. I’m very flattered to have been asked

The performances will of all three plays will be at 1.00 and 7.00 on 20th June 2012, at the Soho Poly 16 Riding House Street. It’s free but ticketed. You have to email sohopolyfestival@gmail.com for reservations.

Ridley!

I’m chairing another post-show discussion with the wonderful Philip Ridley after the revived Tender Napalm at the Southwark Playhouse on 14 June 2012. The show is half re-cast but it’s still an extraordinary experience, as I said at the time. Hope to see you there.

Chekhov Music

For the Wellington production of Chekhov in Hell, director Eleanor Bishop commissioned some original music from local musician and composer Gareth Hobbs. There are four pieces, the euphoric dance track ‘Chekhov in Hell theme’, the trancey ‘We’re Lost, We’re Lost, We’re Nowhere Now’, the distantly grinding ‘I Left My Head and Heart on the Dancefloor’, and the twinkling ‘Northern Lights’. A link to them is here.

Interesting that he’s zoned in on two scenes that are named after songs. We’re Lost... takes its title from lyrics of The Secret Machines ‘Nowhere Again’ while ‘I Left My Head...’ is from Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’. (In the Drum Theatre production, the soundtracks for these two scenes were ‘Smash TV’ by Chase & Status and the infinitely sleazy ‘Let Me Think About It’ by Ida Corr vs. Fedde Le Grand.)

Chekhov Reviews NZ

Chekhov in Hell has opened in New Zealand and the reviews and comments are starting to appear. I’ll keep this page updated with links to them.

And, rather excitingly, on Friday 1 June, Billy Connolly came to see the show. No word on what he thought.

Hilarious Ball of Awesome

Publicity is hotting up for Chekhov in Hell in Wellington. There’s a cute interview with two of the actors, Victoria Abbott and Simon Leary, here. And Simon’s got a separate interview here in which he says some nice things about the play (oh okay, ‘It’s a crazy whirlwind that’s funny as hell with brilliant dialogue yet still asks poignant questions’) and also promises that Jason Whyte (pictured) who plays Chekhov is ‘an hilarious ball of awesome’, which is very much what I look for in an actor. Jason Whyte himself gets a chance to talk about his experience working on the play in an article for Capital Times.

And there’s a lovely preview article in The Dominion Post by Tom Cardy, based on interviews with me and Eleanor Bishop, and some impressively extensive research into me oeuvre.

Kant's Cave

This Wednesday, 2 May, at 7.30, I’m giving a talk at ‘Kant’s Cave’ which is the regular meeting/social event for Philosophy for All, a very welcome event that tries to open out philosophy beyond academia and engage a wider public.

The topic of my talk will be ‘What Do We See When We See A Play?’ I’ll be presenting some of the ideas in my article published in Performance Research in 2009 and presenting some further thoughts for discussion.

It’s in the upstairs function room in the Exmouth Arms in Starcross Street, London, NW1 2HR.

The Guvnor

On Saturday 5 May, I’m interviewing the award-winning playwright Richard Bean about his glorious adaptation of Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters as One Man, Two Guvnors at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket. We’re going to be talking specifically about his adaptation, the update, how Goldoni works now, and the secrets of comedy. Tickets are available from the Theatre Royal website. The thing starts shortly after 5.45 and you’ll be done by 6.35. Hope to see you there.

Unparliamentary Language

I’ve jus seen that BBC Radio 4 Extra have just been repeating Erskine May, my 2000 play about the building, destruction, and rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament in the nineteenth century. Fun to see that programmed on a day of high political drama in parliament. The play was on three times yesterday (I wonder if I get paid for that?) which means it’s available on the BBC iPlayer for a week. Grab it while it’s hot.

Chekhov in Wellington

Some publicity images have just been released for the New Zealand production of Chekhov in Hell. There’s a nice pair of images of the cast in 1904 dress and (left) in more contemporary guise.

The cast are: Jason Whyte, Heather O’Carroll, Nick Dunbar, Victoria Abbott, Simon Leary. The show opens on 12 May and it is directed by Eleanor Bishop.

Tickets available here!

Mister Enda Walsh

Tomorrow night I’m chairing a platform with Enda Walsh, the author and director of Misterman, currently playing at the Lyttelton. It’s a wonderful play with a blistering performance by Cillian Murphy. I’ve met Enda a couple of times, particularly when his play Chatroom was at the Cottesloe; he’s a fast-talking, witty, hugely enthusiastic speaker about theatre and writing. I’m looking forward to discussing his wonderful play on the Lyttelton stage. Actually, in front of the Lyttelton stage because he - quite rightly - wants to hold back the reveal of the amazing set. Tickets available at the National Theatre website, talk begins at 6.00.

Big and Small

I’m chairing a post-show discussion tomorrow night with Cate Blanchett and the rest of the cast of Botho Strauss’s Big and Small at the Barbican Theatre. It’s a tremendous production and a great cast (with stand-out performances by Blanchett, Robert Menzies, Anita Hegh, Belinda McClory, and others). Show ends around 10.00, discussion free to ticketholders. And do go see the show. It’s an astonishing and beautiful play.

Censorship

A very very very short article by me is included in this new collection.

Svich, Caridad, ed. Out of Silence: Censorship in Theatre & Performance. Roskilde: Eyecorner, 2012.

My piece, which I wrote, I think, almost six years ago, is very short (it all fits on p. 34). There are some more substantial pieces by Steve Bottoms, Tim Crouch, James Frieze, Carl Lavery and others. Caridad’s put a good collection together. It’s available in all the usual places.

Quentin Letts Aftershocks

My piece on Quentin Letts’s campaign to get the Lyric’s funding withdrawn went a bit viral in early December. The link got retweeted on Twitter something approaching 1300 times and was shared a few hundred times on Facebook. I was in touch with a couple of newspapers during the day and was due to debate the role of the critic with Quentin Letts on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4, but he pulled out.

It was an interesting - and occasionally unsettling -experience, having a piece go viral. I really had not intended to make that kind of splash before writing it. I thought the piece would sneak into the public domain via the blog, be read by a handful of people, and then disappear. But the extent of the rage was remarkable. To me, even more remarkable was that I saw not one single comment anywhere in defence of Quentin Letts. Seriously, not a single one. When something goes viral on Twitter, after a few hundred mentions you always start getting aggressive responses, insults, sneering, but this time nothing but shock and anger at Letts’s campaign.

I don’t suppose it will do much to change his position. As I say in the article, he’s a troll, not a critic, and his position is to stir up liberal outrage and send traffic to the Mail. At least I don’t think I did that, since I don’t link to the Mail anywhere in the article. But he’s just doing his job.

There were a few articles written that touch on the miniature storm.

This piece by Alan White in the New Statesman.
Another by Julie Robinson for lastminutetheatretickets.com’s blog.
And Matt Trueman’s Noises Off column for the Guardian theatre blog covers it well.

Radio Commissions

I’ve just heard today that, after more than nine months of debates and back-and-forth, Radio 4 are commissioning my trilogy of Afternoon Plays, (very) provisionally entitled Negative Signs of Progress.

The idea of the play is to track the response to a kidnapping in the Middle East, from the perspective of the first world, the second world and the third world. I don’t really mean the second world as in the Communist block, instead I’m thinking of the nascent institutions of global governance, the EU, the UN. The first and second plays are probably two-handers, the second a three-hander. Each play unfolds in real time and is connected narratively to the others, though each should stand pretty much on its own.

We have a complicated scheduling process ahead. The plays are intended to be broadcast on consecutive days so that the connections between them can be heard by regular - non time-shifting - radio-listeners. It’s being made, I think, by Radio Wales. They probably want to record in Autumn 2012 which gives me relatively little time to write three plays (132 minutes of radio). This will be fun.