#anyway it’s the soho playhouse

[jimgandolfini]

[shakespearesglobeblog]

Soul Searching: Katie Hims. 

We ask five of the playwrights undertaking a feminine Faustian interpretation for the Globe’s Dark Night of the Soul a series of questions about the project and their approaches.

Katie Hims is a writer and has written for both theatre and radio. She has spent time on attachment to the National Theatre Studio and has recently written Variations for National Theatre Connections 2019. She is currently working on The Stranger on the Bridge for Postcard Productions at The Tobacco Factory, Bristol. Her previous stage work includes Billy the Girl for Clean Break at Soho Theatre. Her radio work has won several awards.

Three Minutes after Midnight  by Katie Hims  A writer and her niece are waiting. While in the room next door a nurse attends to the writer’s sister. The sister is dying and the writer finds she cannot resist scribbling down a scene about her sister’s death.  A scene which reveals the secret of her sister’s life. And then the writer’s niece finds the scene in a notebook and accuses the writer of selling her soul. 

What made you say yes to Dark Night of the Soul? I was completely delighted to be asked to write for Shakespeare’s Globe. I’m afraid I would have said yes to anything that Michelle Terry asked me to write! But the fact that there’s a gang of us and that to a certain degree we’re developing the material together made it very appealing. Also, I think the brief is actually very open, so we should all be able to find our own quite different stories that we’re keen to tell.

What interests you about the Faustus myth or Marlowe’s Faustus? And what are you hoping to explore with your piece? I’m still getting my head around what the Faustian bargain might mean for a female character. Faustus is about ambition and what he will sacrifice to achieve. Traditionally men have been expected and encouraged to be ambitious and women haven’t. I’ve always felt embarrassed by the idea of my own ambition like I want to disown it. I’ve often felt like I should be pursuing something more worthwhile and less selfish. I don’t know how many male writers are plagued by this feeling. I’m sure they are out there – and of course, I might be entirely wrong – but I imagine they are greatly outnumbered by women.

And yet I really do want to write. It’s the only ambition I have. So where does that leave me when it comes to writing about the Faustian bargain? I don’t know yet... Voltaire said: “One must be possessed of the Devil to succeed in any of the arts.” There are plenty of clichés around success coming only with sacrifice and what could be a greater sacrifice than your soul?

But what is a soul anyway? It means different things to different people. We talk of writers selling their souls and it usually means writing something terrible for a lot of money. But what’s so wrong with that? Maybe nothing. Maybe it depends on the nature of what was written. But I can imagine a story in which a woman sacrifices her soul for a lot less than absolute power and all the world’s riches. Which is potentially a story about equal pay...

How do you start to write something? It depends what I’m writing and who I’m writing for. I’m happiest when starting with a character or an incident or some other small detail, and then following the trail of where that detail leads. One of my favourite ways to begin is to overhear something someone says in the street or on the bus. When starting with a broad theme I struggle more to find my story. The canvas is so big and you don’t want the theme to be writ large across the work. Whereas if you begin small you discover your theme and you don’t need to go hunting for a story to fit.

What made you want to be a writer? I loved writing stories as a child but it never occurred to me that a writer was something I could actually be. Then in the final year of my drama degree, we did a playwriting course and I immediately lost interest in every other element of degree because I just wanted to be writing plays all day.

How important is storytelling? I think it’s incredibly important. I think we’re telling each other stories all the time. They’re part of our everyday lives. There is a need to tell them and a need to hear them. I’ve got the writer’s guilt about not doing something more useful with my life, but my husband says to me imagine the world without any books and plays would you want to live in that world? And of course, I wouldn’t.

Would you say that there are any themes you are particularly interested in across your work? Lost children who somehow make it home again seem to recur again and again even when I’m actively trying not to repeat myself. I’m a fan of a happy ending if I can get away with it.

Do you like to be involved in the rehearsal process? My absolute favourite rewrites are the ones that get done in the rehearsal room. Hearing the actors say the lines tells you everything about what’s wrong and what needs to change and what ought to be said instead. It’s urgent work and removes all the doubt and umming and aahing. But I think you can drive the actors mad if you keep changing material too far into the rehearsal process. I think I need to stay away after a certain point because I would just keep rewriting.

What’s it like seeing your work being performed? That depends! There’s something very nerve-wracking about it. At its worst, it can be cringe-worthy; like listening to your own voice on tape. But when you are sitting among an audience who are watching a play you’ve written and they are really really laughing or crying – that’s pretty amazing, it’s probably the best bit of the whole strange business.

What’s it like to be working on a production in chorus with other writers? We’ve spent one workshop day together and I absolutely loved it. There’s a contradiction that writing is very often an isolated process and yet storytelling demands an audience. Stories grow and get better in the telling. So during the workshop we kind of functioned as an audience for one another.

Dark Night of the Soul: The Feminine Response to the Faustian Myth opens in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 5 January 2019. 

On four evenings we will perform a selection of the pieces together as Anthology Performances. Check the website to see when Katie's response, Three Minutes after Midnight will be performed.

This interview first appeared in Globe Magazine, available to buy in the Globe Shop. Become a Member of Shakespeare's Globe to receive the magazine three times a year.

[anne-louise-fortune]

A Creative life - year two, months two and three

... what, you’re surprised I’m late?

It’s been epic people - epic. Let’s start with a brief follow up from January’s post: 

Carmen and I didn’t get the opportunity we interviewed for at a local theatre. We are really pleased with how the interview went, even the nerve-wracking presentation with a very strict time limit. We will keep on applying for things!

I am still waiting to hear back from the Young Vic about their director’s network. On the advice of the woman who co-runs it, I have sent them a nudging reminder - I may have to hunt down a phone number to make a less gentle reminder soon...

So, what have I been up to?

There was some lawyering in Hull. On week 6 I cracked, and ate in the pub round the corner from the hotel. I did find a delightful Polish supermarket just down the road, which sold lots of lovely teas and odd foreign chocolate. If it’s got fruit in it, it’s at least partly healthy, right?

Then there was three days more lawyering in the heart of Oxfordshire. I stayed in a Youth Hostel in a very pretty village, and met some very interesting people. I also used it as an opportunity for fun things, and took myself out to Oxford one night for a mooch around. As I have been binge watching ‘Lewis’ lately, it was really fun to spot various filming locations.

There was then... some other stuff (more below)... and now I’m back doing some more lawyering in Bristol. I’m staying at my mate’s house in Trowbridge, which is helping me retain my sanity somewhat. Also, he has unending wifi. And wine. 

The lawyering now has a definitive purpose - some of the wages will go towards a show I hope to stage in September (more below).

TV - I had an interview for CBBC, for a possible three month contract on one of their shows (Show X). It was one of the roles I originally interviewed for late last year, but didn’t get. They called me back in to see them in early February, and gave me the job almost immediately.

Another part of the BBC continued to send me e-mails asking if I could do odd days for them, which meant I had to send replies saying ‘I’m currently sitting in the next building to you, working on {show X}, sorry’.

Ah, {Show X}. Show X is a good show, suffering from poor production management. On my third day working on it, a crew member almost died. I’m not joking - she’s had to have specialist knee surgery and will be off work for at least three months. From there it swung from tragedy to not-very-funny-comedy, and a series of mishaps and mistakes that just made the whole process miserable for most people involved. A week and a half in, I got an automated letter from HR, telling me that my contract was due to expire on March 17th - unless I knew any better... I went upstairs, told a slight porky to my contact in Talent, sat out the following two weeks, and then ran for the hills...

Which is fine, as, as you may have gathered, my focus has shifted to Theatre.

And what a two months it’s been! That three days I was in Oxfordshire I used as an opportunity to see Art at the Old Vic. I’ve never been there before, and was in the cheapest seat they do - a box on the edge of the highest gallery. Amazing view, if slightly uncomfortable. The play was really good - the script and the performances both amazing. 

I’ve been over to Derby three Saturdays running to take part in the RTYDS Introduction to Directing Short Course. It was great! Loads of useful tips, loads of things I’d sort of thought about but not known how to develop, some stuff I’d never considered before - and all with a great bunch of people. The facilitators were really knowledgeable as well - and had some really good insight to give with respect to their own career paths to date. The cohort were also really lovely - several of us are keeping in touch via various forms of social media. 

Studio Salford had the first of it’s twice yearly Development Weeks. Aforementioned {Show X} messed up my timetable so I only got to one night of it, but again, good pieces of work at the start of their lives, and good to catch up with some local actors who I haven’t seen for too long. 

A local theatre has opened a rehearsal space in conjunction with two other theatre companies. The facilities used to be a dance studio, but they have massively improved it - especially the toilet situation, which used to be positively medieval! I am hoping to be able to use them for rehearsals later this year. I went to the open evening, drank their prosecco and caught up with a theatre-maker I first met early last year. 

My friend Si, who was in my Hamlet last year, was in Wyrd Sisters at a theatre very near to me. He was very good - he had about 4 roles. 

I went to London, and met up with various other tumblr users who constitute a part of the European section of the Miss Fisher’s Phandom. We spent a fun three and a bit days loafing around the city and seeing shows. On Friday, four of us went to see ‘Threesome’ at the Union Theatre in Southwark. It was pretty much a British sex-romp comedy show but very well done. It started out as a one act show, and has been developed - you could sort of tell - the first act was much stronger than what came after the interval, but I am very optimistic that the second half can be made just as strong given time for development. 

The night after the whole group of us saw David Tennant in Don Juan in Soho, an update of the Moliere morality tale. It was... a bit bonkers... especially the end. But I enjoyed it, Tennant was excellent, as was his co-star, Adrian Scarborough, who excelled in his role as ‘DJ’s’ straight man. 

I was in Leeds for three days, Technical Directing on a scratch piece of theatre about ‘Unsung British Women’. In four days the actors created an amazing 30 minutes of theatre from absolutely nothing. I was parachuted in towards the end to do the lights and sound, and it went really well. We did two Sharings for the local theatre community, and about 50 people turned up altogether - this is very good for an unknown show in a railway arch in inner city Leeds on a Friday afternoon. Hopefully, if someone gives the producer some cash, or she can persuade the Arts Council to fund her, it will be developed. 

I went to the scratch night at the West Yorkshire Playhouse - five acts of 15 minutes each, all of them works in development. Some were better than others, and I know I will see the full show of one of them when it gets to the Greater Manchester Fringe in July.

As mentioned, I am planning on staging a show in September. The rights holders have been approached, and have sent me a holding response. It is both exciting and terrifying, in roughly equal measure. I’m not saying anything more until they come back to me with a definitive answer. More soon? Let me just say that this will hopefully be the first in a new strand of theatre work I’m developing with a distinct theme. Also more on that... later...

Thanks as ever for all your support, on here, on Instagram and on Facebook. It really means a lot when you like my posts or pictures. I absolutely suck at messaging people, but really appreciate your patience - those people who wait three days for a reply from me will know what I mean! The current lawyering role has no wifi, an internet policy that prevents me even accessing gmail, and a monbile phone policy that means I’m not even supposed to have the thing turned on. It’s not helpful to keeping in touch! Anyway, if this month goes well, I’ll try and update at the end of April. See you soon!

[thequeereview]

Theatre Review: Happy Birthday Doug (Soho Playhouse, New York) ★★★★

Theatre Review: Happy Birthday Doug (Soho Playhouse, New York) ★★★★

Being friends with comedian, writer, director and actor Drew Droege must make party planning so simple. Instead of inviting that douchey bro gay; that grating gay couple with kids; the failed actor who’s fallen off the wagon (who invites himself anyway); your successful ex-boyfriend who wants you to know he’s just come from the writers room of a top secret Netflix show he’s working on; the older…

[wineanddinosaur]

Before Dating Apps, Retro-Futuristic Telephone Bars Nurtured Introvert-Friendly Flirtation

The sign on the bar’s front door sounds almost quaint for this era: “By entering these premises, you hereby waive the following rights: To privacy. To publicity. To bring a claim against C.E.V.”

C.E.V. stood for Controlled Entropy Ventures, the experimental technology company behind Remote Lounge, a concept bar that opened in NYC’s East Village less than a month after 9/11/2001. Inside the lounge were 60 miniature cameras (or was it more?) that filmed patrons and allowed them to surveil each other in hopes of generating love connections — or impromptu hookups.

Considered mind-blowing and transgressive at the time, Remote Lounge seems antiquated if not downright childish today, when literally everyone at every bar has their head head, staring at their phone. Still, looking back at the bar offers a fascinating insight into social culture in the final days before iPhones and dating apps. While hardly remembered today, Remote Lounge rather presciently foreshadowed the vaguely performative, look-at-me digital narcissism that has pervaded, if not somewhat ruined, modern nightlife in NYC and worldwide.

The Telepresence Bar

“The genesis of the idea came from working with Josh Harris,” explains Leo Fernekes, one of the three partners of C.E.V. “He basically funded these crazy experimental ideas and I used them as a paid lab learning experience.”

Labeled New York’s first Internet millionaire, Harris was the founder of live streaming network Pseudo Programs — and a bit of a conceptual artist. With $85 million in his bank account after cashing out an early dot-com IPO, he hired C.E.V. to produce “Quiet: We Live in Public” in December 1999. It was a “Truman Show”-esque experiment in which 100 volunteers lived in a four-story human terrarium in SoHo, filled with free food and drink, not to mention machine guns, while webcams followed their every move.

“People want to turn the camera on themselves,” Harris told Wired at the time. “There is a pent-up desire for personal celebrity.”

The toilets lacked walls, the only shower was in a see-through geodesic dome, and the basement had a system that allowed residents to control cameras to watch their housemates having sex. A giant sign constantly warned the residents: “WE LIVE IN PUBLIC.” Their experiment later became the subject of a 2009 documentary of the same name.

“One thing that convinced me to open Remote Lounge is that Josh threw a party with all those cameras,” Fernekes says. “There were cameras in the bathroom and during the party, people would go in and perform for them. Doing sexy, naughty things, knowing they were being broadcast and monitored outside. Then they’d come out of the bathroom and people would cheer.

“‘Wow, that’s something I’ve never seen before!’” Fernekes remembers thinking. “It seemed natural to extend it into a business concept.”

A bar appeared to be the most practical move, especially since another one of C.E.V.’s partners, Bob Stratton, a software developer, knew the industry a bit from his stint as a bartender at 2A, a dive on 2nd Street and Avenue A.

“Our concept of voyeurism is very much along the lines of a normal bar,” Stratton told the L.A. Times. “People are constantly checking each other out anyway.”

The startup took over a storefront on the skid row Bowery where Bowery Electrical Supply Company, an electrical wiring outfit, had resided since 1947. They cleaned up the space’s rotted floors and outfitted it with cameras and monitors. The equipment was hardly state of the art, even by nearly 20-year-old standards.

“This has to be as inexpensive as possible,” thought Fernekes, claiming if he had developed a fancier bit of technology he wouldn’t have wasted it on a bar. They used the cheapest possible consumer-grade televisions and mounted them in interesting places around the space. There were 12 cameras over the bar, six more scattered in random places, and 24 cameras placed at custom-designed “Cocktail Consoles.” They were all rigged together like a cable TV set-up — each console had joysticks that could move any camera 360 degrees, able to see every inch of the bar — as well as a monitor that customers could tune to any camera’s black-and-white broadcast.

C.E.V. called Remote a “telepresence” bar, but critics thought the NASA-gray consoles and traffic-cone-orange seating was more “retro-futurist.” Based on this 2002 picture of Remote Lounge, it resembles a 1960s vision of the future; “The Jetsons,” if you consider that a positive, or “2001: A Space Odyssey” if you don’t.

Fernekes estimates it cost them about $1 million to set up the bar, but about 75 percent of that was just exorbitant Manhattan real estate costs.

“My partners and I were high on the total hubris of the dot-com era,” Fernekes says. “We were delusional in the thought that everything we touched could be turned into gold. I look back at it now and it’s a little sad. Sad, but humorous.”

Remote Lounge opened in NYC in 2001 with retro-futurist interiors. Credit: JPDA.net

A Digital Playhouse for Local Hipsters

Yet Remote Lounge was almost immediately a hit with the “in” crowd, and it quickly (and briefly) became a part of the East Village party circuit. From its October 9, 2001 opening onward, there were lines to get in every night for the first six months. Microsoft and Apple even fought over which would be the first to hold a party there (Microsoft won).

“The whole city was still in mourning, in shock and disbelief [over 9/11] and Remote kind of popped up as this cute, happy story,” Fernekes says. “The media also went bananas for it.”

Within the first month The New York Times called it, “perhaps the most media-intensive public setting in the city.” CIOL thought it was “a digital playhouse for local hipsters.” Reading these articles in 2019 is incredibly amusing, given the very public nature of social media, dating apps, and nearly every other facet of modern society.

“The concept is incredibly simple: hand over your privacy at the front door and enter a world where anyone anywhere can follow your every move,” proclaimed a 2001 BBC News article, crediting its development and acceptance to “a mix of instant messaging and reality TV, both becoming extremely popular in the last few years.”

Early Yelp reviews are even more hilarious: “It’s like on-line/chat room dating but you’re in a real room and everyone’s eerily watching you! (sic)” “I guess you can call it ‘instant’ video-dating?” “why would you call someone on the phone when they’re in the same room with you??”

Adding to the surreality, Fernekes would often lie about how many cameras were actually in the bar (that BBC article claims a remarkable 120) and made up names for the drinks they served (he told writers their most popular cocktail was the Vertical Hold, an archaic term for adjusting a tube television set).

In actuality, Remote Lounge was like any other bar, serving Brooklyn Lagers and vodka sodas in the early-aughts era of New York nightlife — except for all those creepy cameras.

“Culturally the world was evolving to having a greater comfort for these ideas,” Fernekes says.

The visionary Harris had previously predicted to Business Week that the world was already headed toward a place where “people want their fame on a day-to-day basis, rather than in their lifetime.” And Remote Lounge fit the bill, even screen-grabbing the most outrageous moments of the night — which often involved nudity — and uploading them to the lounge’s website instantaneously. This encouraged introverts to monitor what was happening at the bar and, if they saw something they liked, hopefully lure them out for the evening. (Curious to see what they were seeing? You can! For unknown reasons, someone is still fitting the website’s hosting bill.)

Still, if Remote Lounge was the world’s first “telepresence” bar, Fernekes knew there was a bit of a precedent in the form of “telephone bars.”

A Neat Party Trick

Telecommunications have a long history in nightlife. The telephone was invented in 1876, and by the early 1900s, diners at higher-end restaurants could request to have phones brought to their tables for important calls.

In 1920s Berlin, some nightclubs had installed tischtelefonen on every table, so Weimar-era partiers could dial up random guests at any other table, which were marked by lighted numbers. At Femina and the Resi, two Berlin dance clubs that each held thousands, customers could even send pneumatic tubes filled with cigarettes, Champagne bottles, and notes to other tables. (Though nothing too provocative, as “messages sent by tube [were] checked by female ‘censors’ in the switchboard room,” according to The Chicago Tribune.) This gimmick was memorialized in “Caberet’s” “Telephone Song” and still occurs at Ballhaus Berlin.

A few decades later, in 1968, a pricey joint called Ma Bell’s opened in New York’s Times Square. Each table at Ma Bell’s had its own “old-timey” landline with free calling privileges (even long distance!). It was open until the mid-1980s and was featured as a setting in a Season 6 episode of “Mad Men.” While bar-hopping, Joan (Christina Hendricks) and a visiting gal pal hit the new spot, noting that, “Apparently, there are quite a few men here who go for a certain type.”

Yes, whether Berlin in the 1920s, Times Square in the ’60s, or the Bowery at the turn of the 21st century, these bars were, of course, mainly designed for amorous purposes. USA Today believed that, with Remote Lounge, C.E.V. had created “a setting that could revolutionize flirting in New York.” The L.A. Times wasn’t quite as certain, mocking the bar as a place “where Stanley Kubrick and Michel Foucault would go scouting for dates.”

But 20-something New Yorkers immediately loved the concept, a harbinger of their technological dating futures to come. “Around midnight, a long-haired man dressed in requisite all-black, sidles up to writer Kate for a rare moment of face-to-face human interaction,” observed journalist Lauren Sandler in 2002. “His parting words are the ultimate postmodern pickup line … ‘Find me on screen later.’”

“It’s a legalized version of stalking,” a female NYU student told CIOL on opening night, observing how the monitors only showed grainy, black-and-white images. “It makes people look a lot better than they do in person, masking their flaws and making them look more attractive.”

That was intentional. Fernekes had realized that the impersonality of it all was why the concept worked so well. When the place was packed, you could be ogling a person on the monitor with no sense that they were just five feet away from you, unaware where you were as well. If both parties actually liked what they saw on their monitors, you could message a “hello” using the system’s crude text-messaging capabilities or ask to speak to them on the console’s land lines.

“That gave you the freedom to say outrageous things, as if the person wasn’t really there,” says Fernekes. “This chaos diffused into a sense of detached, impersonal anonymity.”

Rejection didn’t hurt as much either, claims Fernekes, because, unlike a face-to-face interaction in the real world, you didn’t have to actually see them reject you. They could just ignore your console-to-console texts. It became a total free-for-all, with customers trying to pick up as many people as they could at one time. Get rejected, and you could simply flip the TV channel, quickly moving onto the next person on screen, then the next. If in-person pick-up culture used to favor the bold, Remote Lounge favored the shy and timid.

“Remote Lounge provides yet another opportunity to erect a barrier between ourselves and the people we hope to meet. It is almost as though we yearn for the days of an appointed chaperone to play interference,” Stacy Kravetz wrote in her 2005 book “The Dating Race,” ultimately denigrating the cameras and monitors as nothing more than a “neat party trick, a way to entertain myself while I sit at a table.”

Our Technologically Perverted World

“Twelve years later, it’s funny to think how this novelty bar in NYC would so closely mirror our modern experience,” says Brian C. Roberts, a popular online personality. “Sometimes I’m shocked at how my experiences at the Remote Lounge would be recreated time and time again by following a hashtag on Twitter, to a photo on Instagram, to a small conversation online, and finally with meeting someone face to face … all over the course of 10 or 20 minutes on my iPhone at a local bar.”

Unfortunately, though, whether Remote Lounge was shockingly prescient, or just a neat party trick — or probably both — it ultimately wasn’t enough of a gimmick to create a thriving business. Nor was all that media coverage.

“The truth is, [Remote] reached a huge international audience,” explains Fernekes, “but those people couldn’t come to our bar, so it was lost at that point.”

C.E.V. had once hoped to franchise its idea, with pop-up Remote Lounges all over America and Europe. It hoped to then connect them all through the same system so drinkers in, say, Dallas could flirt with bar patrons in Amsterdam — “the time-shifting of content,” Fernekes called it. “The problem is, the only way we were making money is by selling drinks and there’s a limit to what you can charge people for a cocktail. It just didn’t make much economic sense.”

Eventually, Fernekes realized the bar also suffered from what you would call a “critical mass” problem. A packed house on Saturday was great. But what if you came in on a Monday evening and there were only two other customers in the bar?

“It was very uncomfortable, like going into a hall of mirrors,” Fernekes says. “If the bar had less than three or four people, it was a very unpleasant experience.”

People quickly realized that as well. First, Mondays started being dead, then Tuesday, then the whole week, and little by little Remote Lounge was only getting viable crowds on the weekends. Soon the cameras and monitors quit working; drunk and disorderly patrons even broke a few. Eventually you had a mostly empty, windowless, retro-futurist bar with dozens of monitors broadcasting bright-white static.

“It was a novelty at first, but gave way quickly to just being creepy,” Eater wrote in a 2007 postmortem. “The crowd got seedier over time.”

The real world was changing, too, and finally catching up to Remote Lounge’s vision. In 2007, Americans sent more texts than phone calls. Dating websites were becoming more prominent and mainstream. Then, in June 2007, the iPhone hit the market. This was perhaps the final nail in the coffin for Remote, and the one topic Fernekes seemed unwilling to discuss still today. Remote Lounge closed a few months later in November 2007.

“Nowadays you’re just numb to all of it. It’s too much of a technologically perverted world,” Fernekes says. “I think Remote definitely alluded to the perversely artificial and competitive nature of Instagram. The technologically augmented social interactions that are completely fabricated and just designed to tap into the human instincts. It’s a bit perverse and unhealthy. Our genetic, instinctual evolution has not caught up with the technology.”

And the technology is still racing forward. Smartphones have gotten better and more widespread in the last decade. Meanwhile, texting grew more prominent, and a plethora of dating apps arrived. In 2009, Grindr launched, and in 2012 Tinder. Now all the pieces are in place — everyone has a tiny Remote Lounge in their pocket or purse at all times. You just need to add drinks.

“I see kids on their phone today [at the bar],” says Fernekes, now 56 and living in Bangkok. “And I think, wow, that looks kind of sad. It’s just not a reality that seems very interesting to me.”

The article Before Dating Apps, Retro-Futuristic Telephone Bars Nurtured Introvert-Friendly Flirtation appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/back-to-the-future-flirting/

[newyorktheater]

Fleabag Phoebe Waller- Bridge

Fleabag the TV series

Killing Eve

“I’m not obsessed with sex; I just can’t stop thinking about it,” says Phoebe Waller-Bridge in “Fleabag” — both the “Fleabag” that’s a funny and sad BBC TV series, currently available on Amazon Prime…and her funny and sad solo show, which she’s currently performing live on stage at Soho Playhouse. I was all ready to tell you about the stage show, which, like the TV series, is about a young woman in London (portrayed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is bawdy, brazen, cynical, and sad. The “Fleabag” at the tiny (178-seat) Soho Playhouse is more or less a revival of Waller-Bridge’s one-woman show at the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which made a splash and turned her into a star. From there, she developed “Fleabag” for television in 2016 (the second season is now underway in England), and has since created two new series – one, “Killing Eve,” which is available on Hulu, and “Run,” which is forthcoming on HBO. I was struck by how the characters and stories in the play of “Fleabag,” told in an hour-long monologue by a performer sitting on a chair on the stage, were mostly the exact same characters and stories that were made into scenes in the six episodes of the TV show’s first season. There’s her boyfriend Harry; they keep on comically breaking up. In the periods when they’re separated, there are Fleabag’s numerous sexual conquests. There’s her superior-acting sister and her distant father. There’s the bank officer. There’s an old man named Joe (who’s not in the TV series as far as I remember) There’s Hillary the guinea pig. There’s Boo. They are of course presented differently on stage and screen. Although in the stage version there are a few voiceovers speaking the lines of a couple of the characters (the bank officer, notably), Waller-Bridge is mostly just telling a story.  She sometimes speaks as the characters, but even then, she rarely varies her delivery, which is best summed up as rapid and with a British accent, which might offer a challenge to some untraveled Americans. I was thinking about what the stage and screen versions say about the difference between television and theater in general, and what one does better or worse than the other. For example, there is much more about Hillary, the guinea pig, in the stage play than on the TV series. I guess it’s easier to talk about a guinea pig than have one perform on screen. In both the play and the series, Fleabag (that’s the name Waller-Bridge gives her character) gave a guinea pig to Boo, her best friend and business partner, for her birthday two years earlier. Boo named it Hillary and turned the café they owned together – that’s the business they were in – into one with a guinea pig theme. We learn within the first ten minutes of the monologue that Boo “accidentally killed herself” – Boo had only been planning to hurt herself by stepping into a bike lane, as a way to get back at her boyfriend, who had been unfaithful. The information is more dramatically parceled out on TV: In a few early scenes, Boo is portrayed by actress Jenny Rainsford before we realize that she’s in effect a ghost; Fleabag is imagining conversations with her dead friend. (There are also some flashbacks with Boo when she was still alive.) But both stage and TV show hold the most dramatic revelation until near the end. So, with Boo dead, Fleabag is stuck with the guinea pig and the guinea pig-themed café, which, without Boo, is sure to go belly up unless Fleabag can get a bank loan. There’s a funny bit in the TV series about the café that’s not in the monologue – a man setting up an elaborate remote office (plugged laptop, cell phone, etc.) at one of the tables without buying anything. But then there are things about the guinea pig in the monologue that are not in the TV series, and they are both comic and tragic – and, yes it’s just a guinea pig, but it’s so, so touching. Anyway, in order to check on my memory of the TV series, I started watching it….and wound up viewing the whole first season. Luckily, the second season isn’t available on Amazon until May, but, for reasons I can neither explain nor justify, this lead me to watch the entire first season of Killing Eve, which made less and less sense. Why would Eve (Sandra Oh) stop the car and walk towards Villanelle (Jodie Comer) who is an assassin and was pointing a gun at her? But I binge-watched the whole season anyway. So, though I had been thinking of producing an erudite piece extrapolating the difference between television and theater in general, I stopped thinking about it. Binge-watching can do that to you.

Fleabag Soho Playhouse Written and performed by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Directed by Vicky Jones Holly Pigott (scenic design), Elliot Griggs (lighting design) andIsobel Waller-Bridge (sound design). Running time: About one hour with no intermission Tickets: $49 to $200 Fleabag is on stage through April 14, 2019. All of the performances, according to the website, are sold out.

Fleabag on Stage Review: Oversexed and Grieving, plus the Perils of Binge-Watching “I’m not obsessed with sex; I just can’t stop thinking about it,” says Phoebe Waller-Bridge in “Fleabag” -- both the “Fleabag” that’s a funny and sad BBC TV series, currently available on Amazon Prime…and her funny and sad solo show, which she’s currently performing live on stage at Soho Playhouse. 822 more words

[londontheatre]

Papatango today announce the creative team and cast for the world première of Stewart Pringle’s début play Trestle. JMK Award-winner Cathal Cleary directs the two-hander starring Connie Walker as Denise and Gary Lilburn as Harry. Off West End Award-winner Frankie Bradshaw designs, with lighting from Johanna Town and sound by Richard Hammarton, the team behind Papatango’s 2016 production Orca.

The winner of the ninth annual Papatango New Writing Prize, Trestle was chosen anonymously from over 1000 entries and opens at Southwark Playhouse on 3 November, with previews from 1 November. It runs until 25 November.

“We’re not here forever. You’ve got to take a chance from time to time. Sometimes you’ve got to see something you like and grab hold. Don’t let it go.”

Harry feels like life is beginning to tick down, his autumn years spent quietly caring for the community he loves. Denise thinks life begins in retirement and she’s dancing like she’s still at high school. When their paths cross at the village hall, their understanding of the time they have left changes irrevocably. What do community, growing old, and falling in love really mean? And who gets to decide anyway?

In its world premiere, Trestle tenderly but truthfully explores love and ageing, asking how we choose to live in the face of soaring life expectancies.

Stewart Pringle’s recent work for stage includes The Ghost Hunter and You Look Tasty!. He is currently the Associate Dramaturg of the Bush Theatre, and prior to that was Artistic Director of the Old Red Lion Theatre in Islington, for which he received the 2016 OffWestEnd Award for Best Artistic Director. In 2011 he co-founded the London Horror Festival, now in its 7th year. Working as a theatre critic for several years, his writing has been published in The Stage, Time Out, New Scientist and Exeunt Magazine.

Gary Lilburn plays Harry. His theatre includes The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Golden Ass (Shakespeare’s Globe), Deluge, Buried Alive and Tuesday’s Child (Hampstead Theatre), The Cripple of Inishmaan (MGC at the Noel Coward Theatre & Broadway), The Kingdom and Angels and Saints (Soho Theatre), The Hairy Ape and The Hostage (Southwark Playhouse), Calendar Girls (Chichester Festival Theatre & Noel Coward Theatre), The Man Who Had All The Luck (Donmar Warehouse), The Quare Fellow (Tricycle Theatre & Oxford Stage Company), To Kill a Mockingbird and Hen House (Arcola Theatre), The Weir (Royal Court Theatre) and The Measles (Gate Theatre). For television his credits include Paula, Catastrophe, Mrs Brown’s Boys, Dead or Alive, Pete Versus Life, I Shouldn’t Be Alive, Whistleblower, Single Handed, Perfect Day the Funeral, Pulling, Sea of Souls, Grease Monkeys II, 55 Degrees North, The Good Thief, Dalziel and Pascoe, McCready & Daughter, My Family, Fair City, A Safe House, Perfect Scoundrels and Single in London; and for film, Philomena, Eden, Garage, and Veronica Guerin.

Connie Walker plays Denise. Her theatre includes The March on Russia (Orange Tree Theatre), Death of a Salesman (Northampton & UK tour), FOLK (Birmingham Rep & tour), Seeing the Lights, Kes and Top Girls (New Vic Theatre), To Kill a Mockingbird (Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, UK tour and Barbican), You Like It and Hay fever (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Separate Tables (Chichester Festival Theatre), Spring Awakening (Novello Theatre), Plunder (Watermill Theatre & Greenwich Theatre), Inside Out (Arcola Theatre & UK tour), Happy Birthday Brecht (National Theatre) and Much Ado About Nothing (Manchester Royal Exchange). For television her credits include Vera, Scott & Bailey, Silent Witness, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, New Tricks, Blackpool, M.I.T. and The Vice; and for film, The Darkest Light.

Cathal Cleary directs. Cleary is Artistic Director of MOMMO Theatre and was the first Trainee Artistic Director at the Donmar Warehouse from 2014 – 2016, having won the 2011 JMK Award. Theatre credits as a as director include The Half Of It (Dublin Fringe, First Fortnight Award), Furniture (Druid Debuts), Disco Pigs (Young Vic, JMK Award, and UK & Irish tour), Women Of Troy (Mountview), The Last Yankee (Print Room), Appointment in Limbo (Dublin Fringe), and The Factory Girls and The Cripple of Inishmaan (Town Hall Galway). Credits as associate director include The Vote (Donmar/More4); and as assistant director, The Winslow Boy (Old Vic), Privates on Parade (MGC at the Noel Coward Theatre), Timon of Athens and Detroit (National Theatre), Twisted Tales (Lyric Hammersmith) and The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Young Vic).

The Papatango New Writing Prize is the UK’s only annual award guaranteeing an emerging playwright a full production, publication, 10% of the gross box office and an unprecedented £6000 commission for a second play. Previous writers produced under the Prize include Dawn King, Dominic Mitchell, Tom Morton-Smith, Fiona Doyle, Luke Owen, Louise Monaghan, James Rushbrooke, and last year’s winner Matt Grinter. It is free to enter and assessed anonymously, and all entrants receive personal feedback on their scripts, an unmatched commitment to supporting aspiring playwrights.

Papatango is a charity who discover and champion new playwrights by running free open application schemes and opportunities. As well as the annual New Writing Prize, Papatango offers a yearly Resident Playwright scheme, taking an emerging playwright through commissioning and development of a new play.

Papatango also run GoWrite, an extensive programme of free playwriting workshops for children and adults nationwide that has so far delivered face-to-face training for over 1000 budding writers this year alone, and provided over £5000 in bursaries to enable in-need writers nationwide to access opportunities.

Trestle Listings Southwark Playhouse 77-85 Newington Causeway, London SE1 6BD

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[londontheatre]

Rehearsals began this week for the new West End cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child who will start their performances at the Palace Theatre in London’s West End on 24 May 2017 following the final performance from the current cast on 21 May 2017. Jamie Glover will play Harry Potter with Emma Lowndes as his wife Ginny Potter and Theo Ancient as their son Albus Potter. Thomas Aldridge will play Ron Weasley with Rakie Ayola as Hermione Granger and Helen Aluko as their daughter Rose Granger-Weasley. Playing Draco Malfoy will be James Howard with Samuel Blenkin as his son Scorpius Malfoy.

They are joined by new cast members David Annen, Ruthxjiah Bellenea, Danny Dalton, Leah Haile, Rupert Henderson, Elizabeth Hill, April Hughes, James McGregor, Sarah Miele, Jordan Paris, James Phoon, Henry Rundle, Ged Simmons, Mark Theodore, Gideon Turner and Ed White. Original cast members Nicola Alexis, Rosemary Annabella, Phoebe Austen, Annabel Baldwin, Jabez Cheeseman, Morag Cross, Esme Grace, Lowri James, Martin Johnston, Alfred Jones, Barry McCarthy, Sandy McDade, Tom Mackley, Harrison Noble, Ben Roberts, Nuno Silva, Hope Sizer and Joshua Wyatt complete the 42-strong company playing a variety of characters, including seven children who will alternate two roles.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the eighth story in the Harry Potter series and the first official Harry Potter story to be presented on stage. The critically acclaimed production received its world premiere in June 2016 at the Palace Theatre and is now the recipient of thirteen theatre awards including the Evening Standard Best Play Award. Earlier this month it was announced that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was nominated for a record-breaking eleven Olivier awards, making it the most nominated new play in Olivier history.

Back Row (left to right) James Howard (Draco Malfoy), Emma Lowndes (Ginny Potter), Jamie Glover (Harry Potter) Front Row (left to right) Thomas Aldridge (Ron Weasley), Rakie Ayola (Hermione Granger), Helen Aluko (Rose Granger-Weasley), Theo Ancient (Albus Potter), Samuel Blenkin (Scorpius Malfoy) photo by Manuel Harlan

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is currently booking to 29 April 2018. The next advance ticket release will take place on 25 April 2017. Tickets are priced from £15 per part and for every performance there are over 300 tickets at £20 or less per part. Further ticket releases will be announced throughout the year, details of which will published via the official Harry Potter and the Cursed Child website, social media channels and the official newsletter.

It was always difficult being Harry Potter and it isn’t much easier now that he is an overworked employee of the Ministry of Magic, a husband and father of three school-age children. While Harry grapples with a past that refuses to stay where it belongs, his youngest son Albus must struggle with the weight of a family legacy he never wanted. As past and present fuse ominously, both father and son learn the uncomfortable truth: sometimes, darkness comes from unexpected places.

Jamie Glover (Harry Potter) was last on stage in What’s in a Name? for Birmingham Repertory Theatre. His other theatre credits include The Rehearsal, An Ideal Husband and If Only all for Chichester Festival Theatre, Donkeys’ Years at the Rose Theatre Kingston, Noises Off at the Old Vic and Novello Theatre in the West End, The Chalk Garden for the Donmar Warehouse, The Shawl and The Man Who Had All the Luck both for Sheffield Crucible, The Novice for the Almeida Theatre and The Invention of Love for the Theatre Royal Haymarket. For the Royal Shakespeare Company his credits include All’s Well That Ends Well, The Roman Actor and Edward III. On film his credits include These Foolish Things, Sacred Life and Age of Treason. He is best known on television for playing Andrew Treneman in Waterloo Road and James Lacey in Agatha Raisin, and has also been seen in Endeavour and Doctor Who: An Adventure in Space and Time.

Row 5 Back Row (left to right) Joshua Wyatt, Ruthxjiah Bellenea, Jordan Paris, Elizabeth Hill, Mark Theodore, James Phoon, Henry Rundle, Leah Haile, Tom Mackley Row 4 (left to right) Rupert Henderson, James McGregor, Nuno Silva, Gideon Turner, Ged Simmons, Danny Dalton, Ed White, Martin Johnston Row 3 (left to right) Lowri James, Morag Cross, Nicola Alexis, Rosemary Annabella, Sarah Miele Row 2 (left to right) David Annen, Annabel Baldwin, James Howard, Rakie Ayola, Jamie Glover, Thomas Aldridge, Emma Lowndes, Barry McCarthy, Sandy McDade Row 1 Front Row (left to right) April Hughes, Samuel Blenkin, Jabez Cheeseman, Phoebe Austen, Alfred Jones, Esme Grace, Harrison Noble, Hope Sizer, Ben Roberts, Theo Ancient, Helen Aluko. Photo by Manuel Harlan

Emma Lowndes’ (Ginny Potter) many television credits include Bella Gregson in Cranford, Mary Rivers in Jane Eyre and Margie Drewe in Downton Abbey. She can soon be seen as Carla Davis in Channel 4’s The Trial. Her theatre credits include The Herbal Bed at the Royal and Derngate Theatre Northampton, Children of the Sun and Thérèse Raquin for the National Theatre, The Accrington Pals, Port, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice and The Seagull for the Royal Exchange Theatre and Whose Life is it Anyway? at the Comedy Theatre. On film her credits include Mother’s Milk and All or Nothing.

Theo Ancient (Albus Potter) trained at RADA and will make his professional stage debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Thomas Aldridge (Ron Weasley) is currently appearing in Les Misérables at the Queen’s Theatre. His previous theatre credits include The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe for Birmingham Rep, Made in Dagenham at the Adelphi Theatre, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew for the Open Air Theatre Regent’s Park, The Secret Garden and Peter Pan – A Musical Adventure for West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Rep, His Dark Materials on UK tour, Only the Brave for Soho Theatre, and High Society at the Shaftesbury Theatre. His television credits include Undercover, Titanic, Call the Midwife, Silent Witness, Hope and Glory and The Support Group. His film credits include Flea and Blasted.

Rakie Ayola (Hermione Granger) was last on stage in The Rest of Your Life at the Bush Theatre. Her previous theatre credits include King Lear at the Royal Exchange Theatre where she played Goneril, Crave/4.48 Psychosis for Sheffield Crucible, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time at the Apollo Theatre, Dido Queen of Carthage for the Globe Theatre, The Winter’s Tale for the Royal Shakespeare Company and Welcome to Thebes for the National Theatre. Her television credits include No Offence, Vera, Under Milk Wood, Black Mirror, Doctor Who, Silent Witness and Holby City. Her film credits include Been So Long, Dredd, Now is Good and Sahara.

Helen Aluko (Rose Granger-Weasley) is an original member of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child company. Her previous theatre credits include Doctor Faustus for the Royal Exchange Theatre, Once Language, Many Voices for TNT, The Price for Walking Forward, The Wind in the Willows for Sixteen Feet Productions and Beauty and the Beast at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Her television credits include The Driver.

James Howard (Draco Malfoy) is an original member of the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child company. His previous theatre credits include Brave New World for Northampton Theatre Royal, Romeo and Juliet, As You Like It, Mojo, King Lear and Morte D’Arthur for the Royal Shakespeare Company, Twelfth Night and Ivanov for Donmar Warehouse and The Duchess of Malfi for the National Theatre. His television credits include Black Mirror, Dark Matters, Skins, Spooks, Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Dream Team. On film his credits include Survivor, The Theory of Everything, The Oxford Murders and Penelope.

Samuel Blenkin (Scorpius Malfoy) trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and also makes his professional stage debut in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Based on an original new story by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a new play by Jack Thorne, directed by John Tiffany with movement by Steven Hoggett, set by Christine Jones, costumes by Katrina Lindsay, music & arrangements by Imogen Heap, lighting by Neil Austin, sound by Gareth Fry, illusions & magic by Jamie Harrison, music supervision & arrangements by Martin Lowe and casting by Julia Horan CDG.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is one play presented in two parts. Both parts are intended to be seen in order on the same day (matinee and evening) or on two consecutive evenings. On Thursdays, there is an evening performance of Part One and on Fridays an evening performance of Part Two. On those days tickets to each part can be bought together or separately. Tickets for Wednesday matinee and Wednesday evening performances can also be bought together or separately.

The regular performance schedule is as follows – Monday – no performance, Tuesday – no performance, Wednesday – 2pm Part One & 7.30pm Part Two, Thursday – 7.30pm Part One, Friday – 7.30pm Part Two, Saturday – 2pm Part One & 7.30pm Part Two, Sunday – 1pm Part One & 6.30pm Part Two.

Every Friday, The Friday Forty takes place at 1pm when 40 tickets are released for every performance the following week for some of the very best seats in the theatre. Subsequent ticket releases take place each Friday for performances the following week. Priced at £40 (£20 per part) tickets will secure a seat for both Part One and Part Two on consecutive performances. Customers will be selected at random for the opportunity to buy tickets online and will be able to purchase a maximum of two tickets for both Part One and Part Two in one transaction. To ensure that as many people as possible have the chance to access these tickets, they will only be available to buy online http://ift.tt/2aaAyqp

Returned and other late-release tickets may also become available at short notice. These are not guaranteed, but any tickets that do become available will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis, online or in person at the Palace Theatre box office at full price.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is produced by Sonia Friedman Productions, Colin Callender and Harry Potter Theatrical Productions.

Box Office – 0343 208 0500 http://ift.tt/1Pzesaj http://ift.tt/25xE0k9 @HPPlayLDN http://ift.tt/25vRNEE http://ift.tt/25xE5of www.pottermore.com

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