About Beyond Measure The idea for Beyond Measure was conceived more years ago than I care to remember when studying “Measure for Measure” for A-level. Since that time I have been fascinated by what might have happened to the character of Isabella after the play finished, as Shakespeare didn’t really resolve her thread of the story in an explicit way. Over the years as a professional actress I have spoken to many other practitioners who have been equally interested in the problems the play poses and eventually I made the decision back in 2005 to bring together a team of artists and explore it properly to discover whether or not we could create a piece of theatre in our attempt to answer those questions.
In early 2008 Back & Forth was created and Bridget Foreman, the writer, came on board. The rest is history as they say. Rina Mahoney is delighted that York Theatre Royal chose to form a partnership with Back & Forth to enable this production to happen and is happy that Arts Council England have supported it from its conception to fruition. Back & Forth aim to provide stimulus for debate through producing engaging and challenging theatre using classic text as source material.
Rina Mahoney (Actor) Rina’s theatre work includes: The Flint Street Nativity, Liverpool Playhouse; Twelfth Night, Actors from the London Stage U.S. Tour; A Passage to India, Shared Experience, U.K and U.S. Tour; Dona Rosita, Orange Tree; Peter Pan,
Snippets of Reviews
At the heart of Real Circumstance’s identity as a company is a commitment to developing emergent artists, paying people properly for their work – still a rarity amongst young theatre companies – and an ethos of developing how to make work, as we do it. Each project involves an intensive investigation of how to rehearse, how to build characters and how to make stories. The discoveries we make are cumulative so each piece builds upon the previous one in terms of specific technique and craft. LOUGH/RAIN was processually about how to work with two actors over a long period of time, and with characters that have known each other all their lives. Our next project, Our Share Of Tomorrow, will move us on even further, working with a larger cast and initially with a series of story structures as opposed to a script.
“...deeply unsettling but oddly compelling, and you can never avert your eyes lest you miss the tiniest detail. In essence, this is a moving, gut-wrenching piece of contemporary theatre.” Velimir Ilic - Metro
“A strong script, beautifully realised” Hannah Williams - Fringe Review “A sense of foreboding, mistrust and guilt vaguely suggested by the script is heightened by director Dan Sherer’s atmospheric world which he has woven around the characters using predominantly the resources of silence and pre-recorded sound.” Duska Radosavljevic - The Stage
Production Team Declan Feenan (Writer) Declan was born in Newry, Co. Down. His plays include LIMBO, Real Circumstance 2007/8 and Minsk. He has recently been on attachment at the National Theatre.
Clara Brennan (Writer) Clara is a writer, deviser and performer. She is currently working on a PhD on Writing for Performance and is a member of Arcola Theatre’s Writing Group. Her work has been performed at Warwick Arts Centre, Young Vic Theatre and NSDF.
Michael Nabarro (Lighting Designer)
Birmingham Repertory Theatre; Behsharam, Soho Theatre/Birmingham Repertory Theatre; The Tempest and Vurt, Contact Theatre; Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Nights Dream, Cheltenham Everyman; Private Lives and Woman in Mind, Bolton Octagon Theatre; East is East, Oldham Coliseum; Cinderella, Nottingham Playhouse. Rina has recorded numerous leading roles for Radio Drama at BBC Radio 4. Her TV credits include: Hollyoaks, Coronation Street, Emmerdale, Hearts and Bones, Doctors, Casualty, Blue Murder and Eleventh Hour, a drama series with Patrick Stewart.
then developed from the concepts of change, sexual awakening and confined frustration. This led to a number of avenues including recording close up textures of cathedral stone work that look organic and eroded. I also wanted to create an impression of shifting surfaces and a sense of being trapped without walls, possibly self induced. The costumes are intrinsic to the space and also reflect the fustration,joy and ideas of the character. There is also an element of three running throughout the set and costume to reflect the three men who attempt to influence Isabella. With the storyboard I began to introduce elements of fantasy, desire, decay and the cycle of the seasons. Matt Edwards.
A Designer Speaks Inspiration for the set and costume began with collaborative discussions with the director, Juliet Forster. Initial ideas were
Programme
Michael is a graduate of the RADA Lighting Design course. Recent designs include: The Lady from the Sea and An Enemy of the People, Arcola; LIMBO, Real Circumstance and 1984, York Theatre Royal.
Steve Mayo (Sound Designer)
LOUGH/ RAIN
Steve is Head of Sound at the Barbican. His numerous designs include: Romeo & Juliet, BAC; Snowbound, Trafalgar Studios and Barbican Theatre.
Thomas Wilson (Sound Designer)
BEYOND MEASURE
Ruth has been a professional dancer and choreographer for over 20 years. She runs her own company, Axial Dance, based in Manchester and works extensively in theatre.
Arts Council England, along with North West Playwrights, supported the funding of the research and development period which finally took place early in 2007 and after a highly creative couple of weeks we came to the decision that a piece of theatre could be created that would hopefully resolve some of the questions raised in Measure for Measure and provoke thought and debate about the role of women and religion in today’s society.
www.realcircumstance.com
About Real Circumstance Tom trained in Audio Engineering at the SAE Institute in Glasgow. He currently works for City of Edinburgh Council, teaching Sound Engineering and Production to secondary school students.
Bridget studied at Oxford University and is a graduate of Arista’s ADEPT screenwriting course. Recent work includes Salaam Bethlehem, Augustus Carp Esq. (adaptation), Dick Turpin, Remember Remember and Science Friction, Riding Lights Theatre and Pinocchio (dramaturg) for York Theatre Royal.
James Cotterill (Designer)
Theatre credits include roles at the Manchester Royal Exchange, Cambridge Arts Theatre, King’s Head Theatre, Finborough Theatre and the opening season of the HighTide Festival (Inside/ Out, dir. Dan Sherer). He recently returned from Sweden where played Mark in After The End by Dennis Kelly at Folkteatern for Gothenburg English Speaking Theatre. .
Jot Davies (Michael) Kate trained at Lamda. Theatre includes: The Beach and Yorgjin Oxo, Theatre 503; Blacking Iago, National Tour; Dancing at Lughnasa and Hayfever, (understudy) Haymarket; Leonce and Lena, You Were After Poetry and Assembly as part of the inaugural Hightide Festival.
Kate Donmall (Caoimhe)
Cast Penny is a freelance Lighting Designer and Technician. Recent designs include: Days of Hope directed by Iqbal Kahn and The Borrowers directed by Malachi Bogdanov
Penny Gaize (Lighting Designer) Craig is a professional composer and musician. In 1997 he co-founded Cousteau which made 300,000 sales worldwide. Recent productions at York Theatre Royal include 1984 and The Railway Children.
Ruth Tyson-Jones (Choreographer)
James trained in technical theatre at RADA. Recent designs include: So Close to Home, Arcola; Spies, Oxford Playhouse; Romeo & Juliet, BAC; and Mojo Mickybo, Manchester Royal Exchange Studio.
Our festival highlight was being doubly nominated for the Stage Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively – going up against the powerhouse new-writing theatre, the Traverse. To have that sort of professional recognition in an environment where there are literally thousands of actors practising their craft is a testament to the hard work that we have all put in to making LOUGH/RAIN, and we are delighted to bring it to our second home at York Theatre Royal. You are also sharing the space and the “dressing room” – imagine a hot damp cave – with twenty other shows, and with only a fifteen-minute turnover between each one to mount your set and focus your lights, time and efficiency are paramount. But it does breed a community atmosphere. Sometimes Orlando Bloom’s sister is chanting outside your show, during the quiet bits. Brilliant. The festival is a unique and strange experience because it is a celebration of the arts but it is also a trade fair where every day becomes a press night with journalists and theatre representatives making up a good deal of each audience.
The Edinburgh Experience Matt trained at Motley and lectured at Laban. His work includes Purgatory, National Studios and Lindberg Lounge at the Royal Festival Hall.
Matt Edwards (Designer) Juliet is Associate Director at York Theatre Royal. Previously Juliet has worked extensively throughout the UK including work at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Custard Factory Theatre Company and Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.
Juliet Forster (Director) Bridget Foreman (Playwright)
Craig Vear (Composer)
Programme
Following on from Shakespeare
Measure for Measure’s themes in its exploration of the struggle between the head and the heart, between the desire for confinement and the desire for freedom, between condemnation and the search for understanding.
A director’s perspective Many years ago I was involved in the making of a very strange, highly derivative piece of theatre adapted from Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. The production focussed on the novice, Isabella, her brother Claudio, waiting on death row, and Angelo, the corrupt governor who will spare his life if Isabella will sleep with him. In this version the “heroic” Duke never appeared, nobody was saved, and instead Isabella’s refusal to give up her virginity resulted in the hard, cold reality of her brother’s death - a far darker piece than Shakespeare’s original.
I hope you enjoy the production, and if it has awakened your curiosity in the lives of nuns, many of whom were early trailblazers for female emancipation, then you might also like to research Saint Marina and Saint Euphrosyne, who we came across in our preparation for this piece (and who are fascinating) or there is of course our own Bar Convent Museum right here in York. Juliet Forster Thanks • A big thank you to the nuns who have assisted and advised on this piece. • Andrew Norris and Adam Williams for the poster image. • Davood Ghadami and Adam Williams for participating in the projections. • Adam Williams for the website design. • Thanks to Arthur Smith for filming.
Dan Sherer I hope you all enjoy the play, and thank you for coming. I would just like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Declan and Clara, both of whom are really rather extraordinary, and have come together to make this play. This is, obviously, for you. As in all of Real Circumstance’s work, the actors create fully realised imaginary lives for their characters, through extensive improvisation. What you actually see on the stage is effectively a structured improvisation occurring, in a sense, for the first time in front of you – it’s just the next bit of their lives playing out. The piece taps into ideas about myth and dreams – again both non-narrative forms – and we have worked to create a dream-like quality, so that when you watch the play you have an emotional response to it but you might not be certain why. Equally I don’t think it really matters. In that respect it’s a bit like a painting. I was interested in making something that is essentially non-narrative – a piece of work where “story” is not prioritised as the most important thing. I wanted to do something where the intellectual critical intelligence is given a break, and instead the empathetic emotional intelligence is heightened. So this isn’t a play about what happens really – it’s simply about the detailed and honest portrayal of the lives of these two characters, Caoimhe and Michael. LOUGH/RAIN is about loss and love. It is about how much love costs, and what you have to sacrifice when you really love somebody.
Director’s Notes Dan trained at RADA and the National Theatre Studio, where he was a Staff Director. His directing credits include: LIMBO, Real Circumstance; Inside/Out, Hightide Festival; Just Green Fields, Real Circumstance and Almost Nothing, RADA.
Dan Sherer (Director)
It was not universally well received – in fact, I’ll never forget how one dissatisfied customer wrote to the papers protesting at what we had done, and questioning why we should think that we could possibly “improve on Shakespeare”, as this was a bit like “trying to improve on the Bible.” It seems to me a shame that the inspiration that theatre practitioners continually find in Shakespeare’s plays, and then channel into new work, should be regarded as anything other than the response of vivid imaginations to the characters, themes and dilemmas that Shakespeare wrote about with such incredible genius (especially when he himself drew many of his storylines from other sources, adapting and extending them to his own ends). In this new production, (again, imagining rather than improving) we are looking purely at the character of Isabella, but rather than using Shakespeare’s own words, we are drawing on his style in a newly written play, all in verse. This allows us to take the story of this unique and fascinating character a little further, and imagine what might just have happened next, staying with many of
You might ask, why Isabella? What relevance could a 17th Century nun possibly have for a contemporary audience? Especially for 21st Century women, when surely our freedom – personal, sexual, professional and economic – seems so far removed from women of that time? And of course we have equality now, don’t we? And yet as Isabella is trapped and tormented by patriarchal expectations, as she battles with the injustice of inequalities, as she attempts to follow her vocation at the expense of relationship and motherhood, as she ties herself in knots in response to the desires and demands of others whilst barely conscious of her own, I recognise many familiar faces. In the words of our play “there must be other ways...”