Radical Mischief | Issue 5 | July 2016

RADICAL MISCHIEF New work at the Royal Shakespeare Company

www.rsc.org.uk

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WELCOME TO THE FIFTH EDITION

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ABOUT THE OTHER PLACE

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DAN HUTTON INTERVIEWS FRASER GRACE AND SOMALIA SEATON

EXPLORING

THE CREATION

OF NEW WRITING

AT THE RSC AND BEYOND

Find out what's on at the RSC and buy tickets at www.rsc.org.uk

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MAKING MISCHIEF FESTIVAL GUIDE

July 2016 | Issue 05

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DESIGNING THE FESTIVAL

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MAKING MISCHIEF WRITER PROFILES

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COMING UP AND NEW WORK NEARBY

RADICAL MISCHIEF | ISSUE 05 | JULY 2016

Now we are ready to fill our brand new Studio Theatre with searing new writing in the Making Mischief Festival, which I hope will not only make a bridge with The Other Place’s radical past, but also launch us with energy and daring into the heart of the world as it looks to us in 2016.

ERICA WHYMAN RSC DEPUTY ARTISTIC DIRECTOR & EDITOR

WELCOME

TO THE FIFTH EDITION OF

RADICAL MISCHIEF

Welcome to a thrilling edition of Radical Mischief, as we approach the first festival to take place in the new The Other Place. Over the last couple of years we have planned, plotted, experimented, raised money, designed and built a new facility to bring The Other Place back to life for a new generation, and you can read more about this amazing new (and old) building over the page. Now we are ready to fill our brand new studio theatre with searing new writing in the Making Mischief Festival which I hope will not only make a bridge with The Other Place’s radical past, but also launch us with energy and daring into the heart of the world as it looks to us in 2016.

I am very proud we are producing Somalia Seaton and Fraser Grace’s exhilarating new plays, full of sharp questions and uncomfortable truths; delighted we are collaborating with the unique voices of Clean Break – performed by this season’s astonishing Gertrude, Tanya Moodie - and excited to be reviving Alice Birch’s fiery call to action Revolt. She said. Revolt again. This edition concentrates on the Festival but new work continues to be a central plank of our Swan and Royal Shakespeare Theatre programme and as we speak we are casting and designing Anders Lustgarten’s magnificent new play The Seven Acts of Mercy – which also eloquently responds to our provocation to find a voice for those things we find hardest to say. I hope you enjoy reading about new work at the RSC and I look forward to welcoming you to Stratford as we celebrate 400 years of our radical and mischievous house playwright.

“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart Or else my heart concealing it will break” William Shakespeare, Act 4 Scene 3 The Taming of the Shrew.

JULY 2016

SEE PAGES 6–7 FOR MORE ON THE MAKING MISCHIEF FESTIVAL 02

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ABOUT THE

OTHER PLACE Photo by Sara-Beaumont

Photo by Sara-Beaumont

We are excited to welcome you all to our new building, The Other Place, which is now open for business.

You can also take a tour of the space. If you have ever wondered what happens behind the closed doors of the rehearsal room, The Other Place will offer you an insight.

A guided theatre tour leads you through the rehearsal process from first artistic conversations to opening night, and shows you some of the spaces utilised. You will see the

Studio Theatre, glimpse into the rehearsal spaces and learn the directors and actors’ processes to get the words off the page of the printed text and onto our stages for public performance.

This is a thrilling addition to our campus in Stratford-upon-Avon, with many memories of the past and exciting opportunities for the future. We hope you will join us there soon.

Photo by Stewart Hemley

It’s also a space for anybody to enjoy. When you enter the foyer, you will see Susie’s Cafe Bar, an informal and

relaxed cafe during the day and a vibrant bar in the evening. Open Monday to Saturday from 10am, there is comfortable furniture where you can unwind with a Fairtrade beverage and a slice of freshly baked cake.

Alternatively, the booths, with free Wi-Fi, are the ideal space for lunch or for some creative thinking.

Photo by David Tett

The Other Place is a space for everyone. Primarily a rehearsal and development space, we have three rehearsal rooms and a flexible studio theatre and we’ll be rehearsing all of our Royal Shakespeare Theatre and Swan Theatre shows here.

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RADICAL MISCHIEF | ISSUE 05 | JULY 2016

She talked to teachers, friends, young people, and went through posts on Twitter which would "piss me off."

UN "I do tend to write plays about things which I don't understand or that disturb me" 04

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DAN HUTTON INTERVIEWS FRASER GRACE AND SOMALIA SEATON “Unsayable” is a slippery word. It’s not “unthinkable,” nor “undoable”. Instead, it lies somewhere in between; the thought is allowed, but the act forbidden. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the provocation “What is unsayable in the 21st century?” has thrown up a variety of different responses for the writers involved in this summer’s Making Mischief Festival at the newly-opened The Other Place.

“how honest I felt I was allowed to be in my interpretation of the unsayable”, leading to a play which “looks at the silencing of a generation that is now incapable of remaining silent”.

This impossibility of silence is something which helped form Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier. Before setting out to write the play, Seaton “talked a lot and listened more”, discussing ideas of Britain’s “uncomfortable relationship with racial and cultural harmony”. She talked to teachers, friends, young people, old people, and went through posts on Twitter which would

Talking to both playwrights, there’s a real urgency to the questions they want to ask of the world and their audiences, which the festival environment of the Making Mischief Festival will no doubt exacerbate. In Seaton’s play, a teacher and a student find themselves at crossroads in their lives, forcing them to make “bold and brave decisions in order to survive an increasingly volatile and desperate world”.

Grace, meanwhile, whose play is “about a bloke called Joe who’s caught up in a terrorist attack”, is interested in the way we respond to huge, complicated world events, with everyone – from

SAYABLE In two of these plays, Always Orange and Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier, which will be cross-cast and play in repertory during their run, playwrights Fraser Grace and Somalia Seaton take on the threat of terrorism and the idea of a post-racial society respectively.

“I do tend to write plays about things which I don’t understand or that disturb me”, says Grace, whose play was drafted before the Paris attacks last year, but suddenly took on a new meaning in the wake of them.

The provocation, for him, allowed him to “face up to the things in the world that we find terrifying. I think that’s one of the things that theatre can do”. For Seaton, the challenge of the provocation was

“piss me off”. After this process of gathering opinions, questions and voices was complete, the play was written without planning, “like a stream of consciousness”, with structuring and redrafting coming later.

playwrights to the media – feeling shocked and “stuck for words to describe what’s happened”.

Finally, I ask the playwrights how it feels to be having their plays staged at The Other Place, a theatre renowned for its history of Interestingly, Grace’s process breaking boundaries and asking followed a slightly inverted version important questions. “What’s of Seaton's, with the play being not to be inspired by?” Seaton written first and research coming says, “It’s always comforting and once the first draft had been empowering to a writer to know penned. This, he says, comes from that spaces like this exist in order a desire to find out “what the play for you to develop ideas”. Grace needs to know”, in order to clarify is similarly excited about the it with research afterwards. Like prospect of being a part of the Seaton, however, the drafting ground-breaking tradition of the process was then about finding theatre. “You go round there and a clarity which, he suggests, think, ‘Great, let’s crack on.’ It’s allows “plays to become more going to be a lot of fun”. themselves. The play develops a sense of what it is about”.

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EXPERIENCE THE CUTTING EDGE OF NEW WRITING IN OUR BRAND NEW STUDIO THEATRE, 27 JULY – 27 AUGUST.

FALL OF THE KINGDOM, RISE OF THE FOOT SOLDIER SOMALIA SEATON DIRECTOR NADIA LATIF

27 July–27 August

‘What is unsayable in the 21st century?’

Over the course of these four plays our writers respond to this challenge with daring explorations of language, race, gender and life in Britain today. Join us in our intimate new theatre space at The Other Place and confront your own assumptions about what is taboo in the times we live in.

Take advantage of our Festival multibuy ticket offers and continue the conversation in Susie’s Cafe Bar, at our programme of talks and debates and online using #RSCMischief

JOANNE

PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE THU 28 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Orange 04 7.45 Revolt 9.15 Orange

FRI 29 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom 05 7.45 Orange 9.15 Revolt

01 No Perf

08 09 7.45 Revolt ■ 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Kingdom ■ 9.15 Revolt

10 7.45 Revolt ■ 9.15 Orange ■

12 7.45 Joanne 9.15 Revolt

15 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Orange

16 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom

22 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Orange

23 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom

25 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Orange

26 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom

MON

TUE

17 1.45 Kingdom 3.15 Orange 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom 24 1.45 Kingdom 3.15 Orange 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom WED

11 1.45 Joanne F 3.15 Kingdom 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Joanne 18 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Orange

THU

FRI

AU G U S T

L

19 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom

SAT 30 7.45 Orange P 9.15 Kingdom P 06 1.45 Revolt ● 3.15 Orange ● 7.45 Kingdom ● 9.15 Revolt ● 13 L 1.45 Revolt 3.15 Orange 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom 20 1.45 Kingdom 3.15 Orange 7.45 Orange 9.15 Kingdom 27 1.45 Kingdom 3.15 Orange 7.45 Orange L 9.15 Kingdom L SAT

DEBORAH BRUCE, THERESA IKOKO, LAURA LOMAS, CHINO ODIMBA AND URSULA RANI SARMA DIRECTOR ROÍSÍN MCBRINN

11–12 August

AUGUST

02 7.45 Revolt F 9.15 Orange

WED 27 7.45 Kingdom F 9.15 Orange F 03 7.45 Kingdom 9.15 Revolt

J U LY

TUE

JU LY

MON

CLEAN BREAK PRESENTS

TICKET PRICES AND DISCOUNTS* 1 PLAY ONLY = £15

2 PLAYS = £25 (SAVING OF £5)

3 PLAYS = £35 (SAVING OF £10)

4 PLAYS = £45 (SAVING OF £15)

Bookings must be made and paid for in the same transaction but you can mix and match your dates from any performance in the schedule. Not available to book online. *BP £5 tickets for 16-25 year olds and discounts for disabled people are available.

Visit www.rsc.org.uk for details.

KEY F = First Performance P = Press Night L = Last Performance ■ = Audio Described Performance ● = Captioned Performance = P re-or Post-Show on stage event

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ABBREVIATIONS Kingdom = Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier Orange = Always Orange Revolt = Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again

When The Other Place first opened in 1974, tickets were only 70p Making Mischief Festival at 70p*. The first 100 will only be availa come along in person to the Box Office at The Other Place from 12 tickets will be available each day throughout the Festival to be bou only be bought in person at The Other Place Box Office and the o See www.rsc.org.uk/rscmischief for more information.

REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN. ALICE BIRCH DIRECTOR ERICA WHYMAN

2–13 August

TALKS AND DEBATES TICKETS £5 ALWAYS ORANGE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOM: WRITER AND DIRECTOR TALK FRIDAY 29 JULY, 5.30PM Studio Theatre @ The Other Place Writers Fraser Grace and Somalia Seaton discuss their plays with Directors Nadia Latif and Donnacadh O’Briain.

REVOLT. SHE SAID. REVOLT AGAIN.: WRITER AND DIRECTOR TALK THURSDAY 4 AUGUST, 5.30PM Studio Theatre @ The Other Place Director Erica Whyman and Writer Alice Birch discuss Revolt. She said. Revolt again.

ALWAYS ORANGE FRASER GRACE DIRECTOR DONNACADH O’BRIAIN

27 July–27 August

p; to celebrate the re-opening we’re offering 400 tickets for the able at The Other Place Open House day on Saturday 2 July 2 noon to be in with a chance of getting yours. The remaining ught in person from the Box Office from 10am daily. Tickets can offer is limited to 2 tickets per person. . *terms and conditions apply. Subject to availability.

MAKING A SCENE PLAYWRIGHTS TODAY: ALICE BIRCH SATURDAY 13 AUGUST, 11.30AM Studio Theatre @ The Other Place David Edgar talks to Alice Birch about her favourite scenes from Shakespeare and where she finds inspiration in his work.

A CONVERSATION: REBELLION AND THE ESTABLISHMENT SATURDAY 13 AUGUST, 6PM The Michel Saint-Denis Rehearsal Room @ The Other Place A conversation about the themes of fear and power, connecting the Making Mischief Festival to the Shakespeare plays currently playing at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

A CONVERSATION: SPEAKING THE TRUTH SATURDAY 20 AUGUST, 11AM Studio Theatre @ The Other Place Who is given the platform to speak the truth?

THE PIONEERS: A SHARING OF WORK FRIDAY 26 AUGUST, 3PM The Gatsby Charitable Foundation Room @ The Other Place A chance to look inside the engine room of the RSC and watch a work in progress sharing of Research and Development project The Pioneers.

See how the creative team tackle putting on the story of three pioneering women who crossed the Himalayas in a Land Rover in their husbands' long johns in 1958.

IMAGE CREDITS KINGDOM: Image by RSC Visual Communications. Original Stock Photos: © scotclicks/Alamy & Shutterstock REVOLT: Lipwoman, Stedelijk Museum, John Herd/flikr JOANNE: Photo by Katherine Leedale ORANGE: Image by RSC Visual Communications. Original Stock Photos: © Mode Images/Alamy & Shutterstock

BP £5 tickets for 16-25 year olds Supported by BP

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RADICAL MISCHIEF | ISSUE 05 | JULY 2016

Madeleine Girling graduated from The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in 2012 and has been working in theatre design since then. Her relationship with the RSC began in 2013 and we’re excited to have her back to work on Making Mischief as the Designer for Always Orange, Fall of the Kingdom, Rise of the Foot Soldier and Revolt. She said. Revolt again.

When did your relationship with the RSC start?

In 2013, I came to live in Stratford-upon-Avon and work for the RSC in their one-year Resident Design Assistant position.

Towards the end of that year, in July 2014, I designed two plays for the Midsummer Mischief Festival in The Other Place - The Ant and the Cicada by Timberlake Wertenbaker, and Revolt. She said. Revolt again.

by Alice Birch. This will be the first time I've returned to the RSC since then.

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WWW.RSC.ORG.UK

What are you most looking forward to about working on the Festival?

I'm thrilled to be working on the opening of the new The Other Place space. After seeing the initial stages of its re-development two years ago and being involved in the exploration of how a studio space at the RSC might behave, it's a thrill to be able to come back and be involved in its first season as a completed building.

There are also a lot of people that I'm really looking forward to seeing and working with again.

What are the challenges of designing a festival compared to designing a single show?

The challenge, from a design point of view, is in providing a single environment and texture for all three plays to exist within, whilst also making sure it is a malleable and adaptable enough space to accommodate the very distinct needs and visual identities of each production. It's also about designing to the time constraints and working out how we can most efficiently make those shifts in the short space of time we have between shows.

Can you tell us some more about your process for designing this festival?

The design process has been a very open and collaborative one so far, and one which I think will continue to grow and develop throughout rehearsals.

I suppose all three of these productions could have been set in a series of very specific naturalistic environments and yet with each of them, the discussions have lead us to something much more abstract and flexible/ open to what will happen in the rehearsal room. There is something so emotive in the text of all three plays that anything too literal in the physical design could have felt desensitising or distracting. I think we have found a really interesting and individual language for each of the plays and I'm really looking forward to the next couple of weeks of working with the cast and creative team to refine these ideas.

What theatre designers do you admire or are most interested in?

There are so many amazing designers around at the moment; I'd find it very hard to name just a few that I admire. From the handful of designers I have worked with, I'm always inspired by how different they all are from each other and how individual the way they approach the work can be. It's great to feel like there is no specific template to a job like this, and responding to your own unique instincts (and those of the creatives you are working with) is the most interesting thing you can do.

Designer's mood boards

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WRITER

RADICAL MISCHIEF | ISSUE 05 | JULY 2016

"WHAT IS UNSAYABLE IN THE 21ST CENTURY?" Meet the writers who have risen to this challenge with their work being featured in our upcoming Making Mischief Festival.

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ALICE BIRCH

FRASER GRACE

SOMALIA SEATON

Alice’s plays include; Ophelia's Zimmer with Katie Mitchell (Schaubühne/Royal Court Theatre); We Want You To Watch with RashDash (National Theatre, published by Oberon Books); Revolt. She said. Revolt again.

(Royal Shakespeare Company, published by Oberon Books); Little Light (Orange Tree Theatre, published by Oberon Books); Little On The Inside (Almeida/ Clean Break); Salt (Comedie de Valence); Flying The Nest (BBC Radio 4); and Many Moons (Theatre 503, published by Oberon Books). Revolt. She said.

Revolt again. had its American premiere at the Soho Rep in New York in April 2016.

Fraser Grace's first play for the RSC was Breakfast with Mugabe, which won the John Whiting Best Play Award in 2006 directed

by Antony Sher. The production transferred to the Soho Theatre and then to the Duchess Theatre, West End. The play has subsequently been produced at the Ustinov Studio, Bath, and in the USA, where it was nominated for Best Play in the Off-Broadway Stage Awards 2014.

Somalia is a British writer and actress of Jamaican and Nigerian parentage, born and raised in South-East London.

She trained at East 15 Acting school on the BA (Hons) contemporary theatre course.

She is also Artistic Director of No Ball Games Allowed, creating work with young people at its core. Her debut play Crowning Glory (Theatre Royal Stratford East) was shortlisted for the 2014 Alfred Fagon Award. Currently she is on the Talawa Theatre Company writers programme under commission to both Talawa Theatre Company and The Bush Theatre. She is also on attachment and under commission to Clean Break, The Yard and The Royal Shakespeare Company.

Alice is the writer of the feature film Lady Macbeth (BBC Films/ BFI/Creative England) due for release in 2016. She was the co-winner of the 2015 George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright. She also won the 2014 Arts Foundation Award for Playwriting and was shortlisted for the 2013 Bruntwood Prize, and also for the Susan Smith Blackburn Award in both 2015 and 2012.

Alice is currently under commission to Clean Break, the National Theatre, Paines Plough and the Royal Court Theatre.

Other plays include Perpetua (Verity Bargate Award); Gifts of War, Who Killed Mr Drum? (with Sylvester Stein); Frobisher’s Gold, The Lifesavers (nominated for TMA Award, Best New Play); King David, Man of Blood, and Kalashnikov: in the Woods by the Lake.

Fraser has directed the University of Birmingham's Masters' course in playwriting since 2011, and is co-author, with Clare Bayley, of Playwriting: A Writers' & Artists' Companion, published

by Bloomsbury in 2016.

All Fraser's plays, including Always Orange, are published

by Oberon Books.

WWW.RSC.ORG.UK

PROFILES

CHINO ODIMBA

DEBORAH BRUCE

LAURA LOMAS

Credits include: A Blues for Nia (Eclipse Theatre/BBC); His Name is Ishmael (Bristol Old Vic, 2013); The Birdwoman of Lewisham (Arcola, 2015); Amongst The Reeds (Clean Break/The Yard, 2016). Chino is a winner of the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme 2016 (formerly the Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme) and is on attachment with Talawa Theatre Company.

Credits include: Godchild (Hampstead Theatre, 2013); Same (NT Connections, 2013); The Distance (Orange Tree Theatre, 2014 & 2015; Sheffield Crucible, 2015); Joanne (Clean Break at Soho Theatre, 2015).

Laura is currently Channel 4 Resident Playwright at Clean Break. Recent work includes Bird (Root Theatre/ tour); Blister (Paines Plough) and Glue (E4). She is currently under commission to Clean Break, National Youth Theatre, Royal Court Theatre and Nottingham Playhouse.

THERESA IKOKO

URSULA RANI SARMA

Credits include: Visiting Hours (Belgrade Theatre, 2014); Normal (Talawa Firsts, 2014; Hightide Festival, 2015).

Co-winner of the 2016 George Devine Award.

Recent work includes Yerma (WYP/RNT); Birdsong (Abbey Theatre); The Dark Things (Traverse Theatre); RAW (RTE); Red Rock (TV3). Current commissions include new work for The Abbey, Traverse Theatre, BBC, Channel 4 and an adaptation of A Thousand Splendid Suns for ACT in San Francisco.

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S WA N T H E AT R E

S T R AT F O R D - U P O N - AV O N FROM 24 NOVEMBER

THE SEVEN ACTS

OF MERCY Photo by Sarah Ann Loreth/Arcangel

ANDERS

LUSTGARTEN

TICKETS FROM £16 WWW.RSC.ORG.UK/MERCY 01789 403493

NEW WORK IN THE REGION

We are always on the lookout for new work taking place throughout the region. Here are just a few of the shows that you can catch on stage near you.

IN THE NEXT ISSUE OF

RADICAL MISCHIEF… WRITING HOME NEW WRITING SOUTH BT STUDIO, OXFORD PLAYHOUSE 20 – 23 JULY 2016

A celebration of compelling poetry and performance from award-winning spoken word artists and brand new voices, exploring the notion of ‘home’ in the 21st century.

Love letters to home, musings on what ‘home’ really means and discoveries we make about ourselves when we are away, provide a backdrop to some beautiful and exciting new work.

GIRLS BY THERESA IKOKO

BIRMINGHAM REPERTORY THEATRE 20 – 24 SEPTEMBER 2016

Tisana, Ruhab and Haleema are three normal teenage girls who have been best friends forever. But when they are kidnapped from their hometown in Nigeria, each must find their own way to survive.

Funny and fiercely passionate, Girls explores the stories behind the headlines. www.birmingham-rep.co.uk

IDLE MOTION:

SHOOTING WITH LIGHT MAC BIRMINGHAM WED 21 SEPTEMBER 2016

Set in 1933, Shooting With Light tells the remarkable story of Gerda Taro – one of the first female photojournalists to cover the front line of war – brought to life with innovative staging, physicality and multimedia renowned theatre company Idle Motion.

We speak to writer Anders Lustgarten about his forthcoming play The Seven Acts of Mercy Find out more about new writing in the RSC 2017/18 season

www.macbirmingham.co.uk

www.oxfordplayhouse.com EDITORIAL TEAM: SAM JONES, LOUISE SINCLAIR, ERICA WHYMAN AND THE RSC LITERARY AND MARKETING DEPARTMENTS. CONTRIBUTORS: MADELEINE GIRLING, DAN HUTTON, ERICA WHYMAN. The work of the RSC Literary Department is generously supported by THE DRUE HEINZ TRUST.

We would love your feedback on our newspaper, please drop up an email with your thoughts at radical.mischief@rsc.org.uk