One of my students was playing on the internet a couple of months ago and came across a photo of me taken during our first tour of Twelfth Night ten years ago. “It looks just like you,” he said, “only much younger.” He had a point.
It does scare me slightly that when we were doing this first production
several of our present cast not only hadn’t reached anything close to
puberty, but didn’t know what it meant and probably couldn’t spell
it.
Ten years ago, but the first production of Twelfth Night is still really clear
in my mind. It’s often very difficult coming back to a play for a second
or third time, you want the new actors to perform it in the same way as the
previous ones, or you can’t imagine how a certain scene could be done
any differently to last time. But this new production has proved to be remarkably
easy due, in the main, to the group of actors who we have working with us.
The process of trying to envisage what a play is going to look like starts
months before rehearsals begin when Stew and I first sit down to discuss poster
design. This year Stew really led the way. We had already decided that we
were going to use traditional costumes, but Stew worked on an idea for the
poster that was very contemporary, using this year’s fashionable colours
(he’s an architect – he knows these kind of things) and a bold
design.
This undoubtedly influenced the production as a whole – we began thinking
of films like Knight’s Tale and Plunkett and McClean which use modern
music in an historical setting. We began looking at how to make the play feel
fast and fresh to a new audience, while not losing any of the beauty of the
language or the depth of the characters.
Off the Ground always tries to do something a bit different each summer, and
we have tried to present a range of productions in a range of styles.
When we are doing Shakespeare in particular we try to remember that for some
of our audience it will be the first time they have seen the play (possibly
the first time they have seen a Shakespeare play) and for others the twentieth
time.
We try and make them entertaining for both groups of people. In some ways,
this will be the most traditional production we have done in a while but hopefully,
as the poster design suggests, there will be some touches of modernity!
Finally, on a sad note, Sue Welshman, the Cheshire drama advisor, passed away
late last year. She was a great friend to the company and to many individuals
within OTG. She was passionate about theatre and particularly about the positive
effects it can have on young people. Her enthusiasm and talent will always
influence my work and the work of many others – I still frequently ask
myself, “Would Sue like this?” or, “How would Sue approach
this?” She will be sorely missed but never forgotten.
