The Vertical Hour - The Royal Court Theatre

The Vertical Hour
Background Pack
Contents
About the production
2
Synopsis of the play
3
David Hare’s Plays
4
Rehearsal diary
5
About the play:
Key terms
Marx and the emotion of shame
Iraq’s tortured children
Journalists killed in Iraq
Women reporting war
8
9
10
11
12
Interviews:
David Hare
Jeremy Herrin
Indira Varma
13
14
15
A writer’s view
16
Classroom activities:
Writing activities
Design challenge
Acting exercises
17
18
19
Useful links
20
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
2
About the production
Dennis Dutton
Oliver Lucas
Terri Scholes
Philip Lucas
Nadia Blye
JOSEPH KLOSKA
ANTON LESSER
WUNMI MOSAKU
TOM RILEY
INDIRA VARMA
Director
Designer
Lighting Designer
Music and Sounf
Assistant Director
Casting Director
Production Manager
Stage Manager
Deputy Stage Manager
Assistant Stage Manager
Stage Management Work Placement
Costume Supervisor
Dialect Coach
Set Built by
Set Painted by
Tree by
JEREMY HERRIN
MIKE BRITTON
HOWARD HARRISON
NICK POWELL
LYNDSEY TURNER
AMY BALL
PAUL HANDLEY
TARIQ SAYYID RIFAAT
MADDY GRANT
RUTH MURFITT
EMILY GILL
IONA KENRICK
PENNY DYER
RUPERT BLAKELEY
JAMES ROWSE AT DAP STUDIO
SIMON KENNY AT SOUVENIR SCENIC STUDIOS
First performance at Royal Court Theatre on 17 January 2008
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
),
3
e
Synopsis of the play
Nadia Blye, Professor of Political Studies at Yale University and former war
correspondent, is giving a tutorial to Dennis Dutton, one of her students. She questions
Dennis about an essay he has written in which he argues that there is no such thing as
capitalism. Under prolonged questioning, Dennis reveals the fact that he holds Nadia’s
political views in contempt. He argues that other countries should study what America
does and attempt to copy the nation’s ‘triumph’ if they are to have any chance of
progress or success. As Nadia grills him further, Dennis confesses his love for her. When
Nadia rejects Dennis, he begins to psychoanalyse her, claiming that she is attracted to
him subconsciously. Nadia asks Dennis to leave her office.
A week or so later, Nadia’s English boyfriend, Philip, and his father, Oliver, are sitting on
the lawn of Oliver’s house in Shropshire. Oliver, a country doctor, has never met Nadia,
and is excited that she and Philip have decided to come to England to meet him. Nadia
and Oliver meet over breakfast and he immediately starts to question her about her
stance on Iraq. He finds out that she supported the invasion, and personally advised
President Bush to intervene in the country for humanitarian reasons. Although Philip
asks his father to be more welcoming to his girlfriend, Oliver continues to interrogate
Nadia about her political stance. Philip decides to take Nadia for a drive to a nearby
town.
The couple return to Oliver’s house where they eat dinner on the lawn. After dinner,
Oliver asks Nadia about her experiences as a war correspondent. She tells the others
about her time in Sarajevo. Philip tells his father about his successful physiotherapy
practice in America—Oliver pretends to be horrified by physiotherapy, arguing that it’s
not ‘proper medicine’. Left alone on the lawn, Philip expresses his frustration at his
father’s behaviour to Nadia, warning her not to fall for his charms.
Early the following morning, Nadia leaves Philip in bed and walks out to the garden
where she finds Oliver alone, reading a book. They begin a conversation in which Nadia
reveals the fact that she’s ’in flight’ from her past as a war correspondent and a turbulent
and disastrous relationship with a Polish journalist. Oliver confesses that he used to be a
wealthy London consultant, but he moved to a remote Shropshire hillside after he
had a road accident in which he killed a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Philip eventually wakes up and encounters his father and girlfriend on the
lawn. He accused Oliver of trying to seduce Nadia, but Oliver denies any sexual
motivation for their conversation. Philip and Nadia decide to leave Oliver’s house and
drive towards Wales.
Months later, we meet Nadia again, giving a tutorial to Terri, a bright Political Science
student. Terri tells Nadia that she’s recently split up with her boyfriend. Nadia tells Terri
that she too broke up with a boyfriend after a ’disastrous’ trip to Shropshire. The play
ends with Nadia telling Terri that she’s decided to go back to Iraq to be a war
correspondent, turning her back on her life in academia and returning to the front line of
international politics.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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David Hare’s Plays
1970
SLAG
Hampstead Theatre
1971
THE RULES OF THE GAME (Pirandello)
Adapted for the National
1972
THE GREAT EXHIBITION
Hampstead Theatre
1973
BRASSNECK (with Howard Brenton)
Nottingham Playhouse
1974
KNUCKLE
Comedy Theatre and New York
1975
FANSHEN
ICA and tour
TEETH ’N’ SMILES
Royal Court
1978
PLENTY
National Theatre (Lyttelton) and Broadway
1983
A MAP OF THE WORLD
Adelaide Festival, National (Lyttelton) and New York
1985
PRAVDA (with Howard Brenton)
National (Olivier)
1986
THE BAY AT NICE
National (Cottesloe)
1987
THE KNIFE (opera, libretto only)
New York
1988
THE SECRET RAPTURE
National (Lyttelton) and Broadway
1990
RACING DEMON
National (Cottesloe/Olivier)
1991
MURMURING JUDGES
National (Olivier)
1992
THE RULES OF THE GAME (Pirandello)
Adapted for Almeida
1993
THE ABSENCE OF WAR
National (Olivier)
1994
THE LIFE OF GALILEO (Brecht)
Adapted for Almeida
1995
SKYLIGHT
National (Cottesloe)
MOTHER COURAGE (Brecht)
Adapted for National (Olivier)
IVANOV
Adapted for Almeida, tour to Moscow
AMY’S VIEW
National (Lyttelton), Aldwych and Broadway
THE JUDAS KISS
Almeida and Broadway
VIA DOLOROSA
Royal Court Theatre and Broadway
THE BLUE ROOM
Donmar Warehouse and Broadway
2000
MY ZINC BED
Royal Court Theatre
2001
PLATONOV (Chekhov)
Adapted for Almeida
2002
THE BREATH OF LIFE
Theatre Royal, Haymarket
2003
THE PERMANENT WAY
Out of Joint
2004
STUFF HAPPENS
National (Olivier) and New York
2005
THE HOUSE OF BERNARDA ALBA (Lorca)
Adapted for National
2006
ENEMIES (Gorky)
Adapted for Almeida
THE LIFE OF GALILEO (Brecht)
Adapted for National
THE VERTICAL HOUR
Broadway
1997
1998
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Rehearsal diary
Week 1
The week begins with the company trying to get to grips with the background and context to
the play. We decorate the rehearsal room with pictures and photographs that give us a sense
of where the characters might live and what they might have experienced. Over the first few
days, we invite a couple of visitors into the rehearsal room to talk to the company. One of
the characters in the play is a physiotherapist by profession – we meet a physiotherapist who
tells us about his work, the way he relates to his patients and the place of physiotherapy in
contemporary medicine. The war correspondent Maggie O’Kane gives us an insight into life
in a conflict zone. Indira, the actress playing Nadia Blye, asks Maggie a series of questions
about women and war, about the emotional impact of reporting from a battlefield and about
what it feels like to return to life in the UK after a war is over. As well as reading around the
events in the play (including the Siege of Sarajevo, the war in Iraq and the break up of the
former Yugoslavia), two of the actors attend a lecture on International Relations at the
London School of Economics. This gives us a sense of what Nadia might do for a living. The
actress playing Terri gets a lot out of the lecture – her character is a Political Science student
who would be attending lectures like this day after day.
The company meet with the designer, stage managers and composer for a read through of
the play. It’s great to hear David’s works spoken aloud – and it’s wonderful to find that the
play is so funny, complex and humane. We’re joined in the rehearsal room by Ben Ockrent, a
young playwright who’s been assigned to the production as an observer. He’s got a ‘free
pass’ for rehearsals meaning that he can come and go as he pleases, and it is hoped that the
experience of being part of a company will benefit his own writing in the long term.
David Hare, the author of the play, will be with us in the first week of rehearsals. He asks us
to treat him as a resource and assures us that ‘no question is too dumb to ask’. The actors
are visibly reassured – the characters in the play refer to several political events from the last
fifty years, some of which are pretty complicated. But because David is generous enough to
share his knowledge and experience with us, we start to unpack some of these issues and
conflicts.
We start to work though the play, reading out a section at a time, and asking questions
about the characters and their back stories. David, having worked on the play in its New
York production, is fantastically knowledgeable about what the characters are trying to do to
each other at each moment of the play. This is a discussion-based rehearsal technique. By
developing an understanding of the emotional and psychological interplay between the
characters, we are able to get closer to a point at which we can make choices about how to
play the scenes.
Week 2
Having read through the text, stopping for input from David and questions from the actors,
we now turn our attention to inhabiting these characters. Jeremy, the play’s director, asks
the company to imagine that the floor of the rehearsal room represents a map of the world.
He asks the actors to stand on the area of the map in which their characters were born,
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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taking them through every year of their lives and asking them to move to the part of the
world in which they were living at the time. It’s interesting to note the extent to which Nadia
has travelled, as well as the still and stationary nature of Oliver’s life in Shropshire. The fact
that the play is largely set in Shropshire is in tension with the fact that four out of the play’s
five characters live in the United States.
The fact that Nadia is the only character who genuinely engages with the world through
reporting from conflict areas and battle fields gives us an idea of why she finds it so hard to
settle down at Yale and why she is still haunted by the events she witnessed in Bosnia and Iraq.
Jeremy then asks the actors to imagine that their characters have woken up alone in the
middle of the night. He asks them to decide why their character is having trouble sleeping,
what’s on their mind, what they need to do tomorrow and whose face haunts them when they
sleep. Then Jeremy asks the actors to improvise a very short scene together (either a physical
exchange or two lines of dialogue) which reveals something about their relationship. The
actors share these scenes with the rest of the rehearsal room – they give us a valuable insight
into the back histories of the characters. The director encourages the actors to ‘stick with the
banal’ rather than ‘chasing the dramatic’ – he believes that we will learn more about the
characters through observing small transactions from their daily lives as opposed to trying to
imagine them at moments of high drama.
By the end of these exercises, the actors have a much richer understanding of their characters:
exercises like these build our confidence in inhabiting the roles David has created and act as a
bridge into more detailed scene work. Using ‘facts’ from the text, we write time lines for each
of the characters, noting what we know to be true and what we still have to find out about
these individuals. Our research and the testimonies of the experts who have visited our
rehearsal room help us to fill in the blanks in the characters’ time lines.
Week 3
It’s week three of rehearsals and we’ve been up against the festive season. Taking a break for
New Year and Christmas has meant that our progress on the play has felt a little interrupted:
each time we seem to get a handle on a scene, we have to take a break for a few days. But
work starts again in earnest in the New Year. We’re now getting each scene up on its feet,
practicing every section and trying to get to the bottom of what the characters are doing to
each other. David’s writing is complex and multifaceted: unlike some writers, he asks actors to
explore and enjoy the many contradictions in the characters’ relationships with each other and
with themselves. For this reason, it’s not always helpful to ‘action’ the text (i.e. to decide on a
verb for the actors to play on each line). Instead, we find that establishing the right physical
relationship between the characters (i.e. who is standing? who is sitting? how close are the
characters to each other? who seems to dominate the space?) helps to unlock the tone and
meaning of each transaction. Mike, the designer of the production, has given us a revolve
which is capable of rotating between scenes in order to move furniture onto the playing area,
and to give a sense that time has moved on in the garden where the play is set.
The set is fairly abstract and lyrical – more like a giant light box than a literal attempt to
represent an English country garden. This means that the actors need to keep convincing
imaginary pictures of the house and the surrounding landscape in mind while they’re playing
their scenes. David’s scenes are long and complex – but as the actors begin to inhabit their
characters more fully, the scenes seem to divide themselves into a series of simple
transactions which have become easier to play.
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Maddy, our Deputy Stage Manager, keeps a record of the decisions we make in the
rehearsal room, drawing diagrams of where the actors move on stage so that we can
choose the most exciting and productive version of each scene. Maddy also helps the
actors by keeping a record of where they diverge from the script – David’s characters
speak with a certain amount of flair and precision. It’s important that the actors don’t
paraphrase their speeches or add little ‘ums’ and ‘ers’ between words, as this seems
to destroy the rhythm of the dialogue. Day by day, Maddy’s list of errors and
corrections grows smaller, as the actors become more confident with their lines.
Week 4
It’s the last week of rehearsals. We begin to run the scenes to give the actors a sense
of the stamina which the actors need to get through the play. David’s writing requires
a great deal of vocal energy - not only does he write long lines, but the speed of the
ideas is such that the actors need to be kept on their toes. We’ve started using vocal
warm ups to help prepare the actors for the demands of the text. We continue to
discover things about the characters and the scenes through these runs and note
sessions.
The technical rehearsals go fairly smoothly - the scenes are generally quite static in
nature and the majority of technical time is spent working with the revolve and getting
the lighting right. The actors’ work on the play has been detailed and rich which
means that the transactions between them still hold even when we move from the
relative security of the rehearsal room to the full width and depth of the Royal Court
stage. It’s been a happy rehearsal process, and the company have worked hard in order to mine the text for all its dramatic possibilities. All the actors need now is an
audience to play to.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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Key terms
Freud
Sometimes called ‘The Father of Psychoanalysis’. Developed a theory of the
subconscious and argued that humans are capable of repressing their
emotions.
Humanitarian
Someone who is devoted to the promotion of human welfare.
Insurgent
Somebody who acts in opposition to a civil authority or government.
Intervention
The decision to get involved in a particular political situation or conflict.
Madrasah
Madrasah literally means "a place where learning or teaching is done". A
typical Islamic school usually offers two courses of study: a hifz course; that
is memorisation of the Koran and an ‘alim’ course leading the candidate to
become an accepted scholar in the community.
Nihilism
A 19th century Russian cultural movement which rejected existing
authorities and values. Nihilist political philosophy saw existing religions,
political institutions, and morality as opposed to freedom. The Nihilists did
not advocate belief in nothing, they believed in liberating human beings from
existing creeds and practices via an appeal to objective values.
Physical Therapy
The provision of services to develop, maintain and restore maximum
movement and functional ability throughout the lifespan. It includes the
provision of services in circumstances where movement and function are
threatened by the process of aging or that of injury or disease.
Vertical Hour
Also known as the Golden Hour. In emergency medicine, the golden hour
is the first sixty minutes after the occurrence of trauma or accident. It is
widely believed that the victim's chances of survival are greatest if he
receives definitive care in the operating room within the first hour.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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Marx and the emotion of shame
In 1843, Karl Marx wrote the following letter to his friend, while on
board a canal boat. The idea he expresses here is referenced by Oliver
in The Vertical Hour.
I am now travelling in Holland. As far as I can judge from the Dutch and French
newspapers, Germany is sunk deep in the mire and will sink still deeper. I assure you,
even if one has no feeling of national pride at all, nevertheless one has a feeling of
national shame, even in Holland. The most insignificant Dutchman is still a citizen
compared with the greatest German. And the verdict of the foreigners on the
Prussian Government! A horrifying unanimity prevails; no one is any longer deceived
about the Prussian system and its simple nature. After all, therefore, the new school
has been of some use. The mantle of liberalism has been discarded and the most
disgusting despotism in all its nakedness is disclosed to the eyes of the whole world.
That, too, is a revelation, although one of the opposite kind. It is a truth which, at
least, teaches us to recognise the emptiness of our patriotism and the abnormity of
our state system, and makes us hide our faces in shame. You look at me with a smile
and ask: What is gained by that? No revolution is ‘made out of shame. I reply: shame
is already revolution of a kind; shame is actually the victory of the French Revolution
over the German patriotism that defeated it in 1813. Shame is a kind of anger which
is turned inward. And if a whole nation really experienced a sense of shame, it would
be like a lion, crouching ready to spring. I admit that in Germany even shame is not
yet felt; on the contrary, these miserable people are still patriots.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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Iraq’s tortured children
By John Sweeney, BBC Correspondent, June 2002
The star witness against the government of Iraq hobbled into the room, her legs braced
with clumsy metal callipers. "Anna" had been tortured two years ago. She is now four
years old. Her father, Ali, is a thick-set Iraqi who used to work for Saddam's psychopathic
son, Uday. Some time after the bungled assassination of Uday, Ali fell under suspicion. He
fled north, to the Kurdish safe haven policed by Western fighter planes, but leaving his
wife and daughter behind in Baghdad. So the secret police came for his wife. Where is he?
They tortured her. And when she didn't break, they tortured his daughter. "When did you
last see your father? Has he phoned? Has he been in contact?" They half-crushed the
toddler's feet.
Ali talked about the paranoid frenzy that rules Baghdad - the tortures, the killings, the
corruption, the crazy gangster violence of Saddam and his two sons. And the faking of the
mass baby funerals. You may have seen them on TV. Small white coffins parading through
the streets of Baghdad on the roofs of taxis, an angry crowd of mourners, condemning
Western sanctions for killing the children of Iraq. Usefully, the ages of the dead babies "three days old", "four days old" - are written in English on the coffins. I wonder who did
that. Ali gave us the inside track on the racket. There aren't enough dead babies around.
So the regime stores them for a mass funeral.
Ali continued, he told me that he had to go to Najaf - a town 160km (100 miles) from
Baghdad - in order to bring children's bodies from various freezers there, and that the
smell was unbearable. They used to collect children's bodies and put them in freezers for
two, three or even six or seven months - God knows - until the smell got unbearable.
Then, they arrange the mass funerals. The logic being, the more dead babies, the better
for Saddam. That way, he can weaken public support in the West for sanctions. That
means that parents who have lost a baby can't bury it until the regime says so. So how
could it be that people would put up with this sickening exploitation of grief?
In northern Iraq - the only part of the country where people can speak freely - we met six
other witnesses who had direct experience of child torture, including another of Saddam's
enforcers - now in a Kurdish prison - who told us that an interrogator could do anything:
"We could make a kebab out of the child if we wanted to." And then he chuckled. In that
environment, with that background noise of fear, it is not impossible to imagine that the
government of Iraq could have conned the world, inventing numbers of dead babies that
the gullible - and that includes the United Nations - accept as reliable. While we were in
the north of Iraq, the chairman of the Great Britain Iraq Society, Labour MP George
Galloway, was in Baghdad. He popped up on Iraqi TV and bared his soul. "When I hear the
word Iraq," he said, "I hear someone calling my name."
I don't. When I hear the word Iraq, I hear a tortured child, screaming.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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Journalists killed in Iraq
Statistical analysis of journalists killed in Iraq since hostilities began in March
2003, as compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists. CPJ considers a
journalist to be killed on duty if the person died as a result of a hostile action such as reprisal for his or her work, or crossfire while carrying out a
dangerous assignment. CPJ does not include journalists killed in accidents, such
as car or plane crashes, unless the crash was caused by aggressive human
action.
By Year
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
31
32
23
24
14
By Nationality
Iraqi
European
Other Arab countries
United States
All other countries
102
13
3
2
5
By Gender
Men
Women
114
10
By Circumstance
Murder
Other acts of war
84
40
Journalists killed in other conflicts:
Algeria (1993-96)
Colombia (1986—present)
Balkans (1991-95)
Philippines (1983-87)
Turkey (1984-99)
Tajikistan (1992-96)
Sierra Leone (1997-2000)
Afghanistan (2001-04)
Somalia (1993-95)
Kosovo (1999-2001)
First Iraq war (1991)
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54
36
36
22
16
15
9
9
7
4
12
Women reporting war
In 2005, the Frontline Club - an association of professional war
correspondents - hosted a discussion about the issues facing women
reporting from combat zones. Here is an extract from their
discussion.
You can put the problems facing female war correspondents into two
categories: one is biology, the other is society. On biology, the most glaring
one is rape — the risk of it, and the fear of it. The problem with rape is not
just the personal and physical violation, there’s also the issue of AIDS; so it’s a
doubly dangerous problem. I understand from one of the health care, caring
profession people here it happens to men too but we don’t hear about it and I
think, like trauma, we have to put this stuff on the agenda. Another problem
which a lot of women face is that we are physically smaller than men generally
and flak jackets are generally made for men, who might weigh 175lbs and
might be over 5’11”. I’m a 98lb weakling. I measure 5’3”. Rodney, when he was
my bureau chief ten years ago in Africa, actually had a special flak jacket made
for me and that was passed on to other small people in the bureau. A lot of
women have had herniated discs in their necks, they cannot run with the flak
jackets that have been given to them. It doesn’t take that much to just have
one flak jacket in the office that’s designed for women but, aside from Rodney, I don’t know of any other case where it’s been done.
Another issue, I’m going to raise it, it’s the ‘M word’, menstruation. People
don’t talk about it. I can’t tell you how many colleagues take hormonal pills so
they don’t menstruate when they’re on a job. This is dangerous, it can cause
cancer later. It’s not healthy but they do it because they’re too ashamed or
embarrassed to ask their male bureau chiefs to send in another box of tampax
when they’re on an extended assignment in a place like Baghdad. It should be
up to the male bureau chief perhaps to say ‘do you need any female supplies?’
A friend of mine was taken hostage in Somalia; the State Department had
enough sense to send in about five thousand boxes of tampax in case she was
there for about seven years. Surely male bureau chiefs should have the same
sort of thing when they’re sending in more tapes and DVDs or whatever
they’re sending in to supplement your equipment, just think about your female
colleagues.
Then there’s the societal stuff. I can’t tell you how many women, including
myself have taken ridiculous risks because we had to prove ourselves to be
‘tougher than the guys’. Well, if there wasn’t a news room culture where we
had to prove ourselves to be tougher than the guys, we wouldn’t take these
stupid risks; and I think enough women have been in Iraq, enough women have
been in Chechnya and anywhere else that we shouldn’t have to have that kind
of pressure. And where do we get that pressure? Because some of the people
who hire us or the other men in our news room don’t quite treat us as equals
and I think there just needs to be a re-think on the management level. A lot of
women are doing really dumb, stupid things because they don’t want to appear
to be scared.
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Interview: David Hare
What’s it like being back in the rehearsal room with The Vertical
Hour after its success on Broadway?
It’s a play with a half American subject because it has an American leading
lady and so for that reason it was done first in New York. I don’t know of
any other British play that was premiered in New York and then restaged in
London so it’s extremely peculiar.
What is a ‘vertical hour’?
In the play it is that moment at which you are able to recognise the truth
about yourself. There’s a phrase that the military use to mean that moment
in war that you can intervene to really help someone medically, and they
nickname it ‘the vertical hour’: in the play we call it ‘the moment at which
you can be of some use’. In the second act, two of the characters are on a
lawn together at 5 o’clock in the morning. They spend three quarters of an
hour together that morning on that lawn. It’s a very long sustained scene.
One of the pleasures of it was the technical challenge of writing a scene for
just two people that was sustained for a long time.
Have you worked with Jeremy Herrin before?
I’d been to see a play Jeremy directed at the Royal Court [That Face by Polly
Stenham] and I thought it was well directed. So when Dominic Cooke who
runs the Royal Court asked me who I’d like to direct the play, I said that
rather than have it directed by one of my contemporaries, I thought it would
be wonderful to skip a generation and for once to have one of my plays
directed by somebody younger. It’s been refreshing.
Does the material still surprise you?
I think that most writers would agree that you have no memory of it being
done before - you forget on the first day. When you first write something
you can’t see it very clearly, you don’t know what you’ve written. The first
production of all plays is difficult and the second production seems incredibly
easy: you wonder what it was first time round that gave you so much
trouble. My own thinking about the play is incredibly clear to me, but
because of that clarity, if a line seems wrong or a movement seems wrong or
an emotion seems forced, it screams out to me.
What do you hope audiences are going to get from the play?
The subject of the play is how we relate our private lives to what is
happening in the world around us. There have been two astonishingly seismic
events in the western world in very rapid succession, namely the twin
towers followed by the invasion of Iraq. Historical events in the West and
the Middle East don’t come bigger than that. The play is about how what
happens in the world at large impacts on every day life, and how people
accommodate the way the world is changing in their own views, attitudes
and more profoundly in their own emotional lives. There’s no more
important subject than this.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
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Interview: Jeremy Herrin
What attracted you to the play?
It’s very well written, it’s not sensationalist. It’s about the important stuff,
about the way we live. It’s important that your work has a bit of content
because directors aren’t paid enough to (a) not have fun and (b) not do
something that you think is meaningful and contributes to a better life.
There’s something really wonderful about being asked to do a play by
such a celebrated and talented playwright.
What sort of journey do the characters go on in the play?
All of them (apart from Dennis) get closer to themselves throughout the
course of the play. The action of the play exposes to the characters levels
of artifice and psychological shortcuts that they’ve made to keep them
away from the truth of themselves, and from an understanding of who
they are, what they do and how they fit into the world. It’s not just an
inner journey, it’s a journey in relation to global events. We’re living in
interesting times and the characters are firmly rooted in the world we
live in. The majesty of the play is the way it allies the international events
that affect us all to the minutiae of subtle human interaction. It’s also a
play about sex, love and psychological habits. It’s about families and about
psychological patterns that are established through insecurity, guilt and
fear. There’s redemption for all the characters in the way that the play
mines the detail of the human condition.
How have you chosen to rehearse the play?
I don’t really come in with a structured play of how I’m going to rehearse
a play because you miss a trick unless you deal with what you’ve got in
the room. This has been a really lovely example of how to construct a
reactive rehearsal process, in that I’ve tried to intuit and understand what
the actors need. They all need different things and I’ve tried to devise a
way of us getting closer to a way of releasing the truth of the play. It’s
quite formally written, so getting to know the rhythms has been
important. Getting to know the text and doing it precisely has had as
much effect as exploring the psychology of the characters. Although it’s
contemporary, it feels like a classical piece in its formality.
How have you worked with the designer to arrive at a set for
the play?
We guessed that the play didn’t necessarily need a naturalistic solution to
where we are as the characters talk about where we are so much that
we get that. So it’s more like a theatrical space that supports a real
performance rather than anything that’s too representational. Hopefully
it’s an imaginative response to the play. It’s all down to Mike Britton’s
talent: I say ‘these are the things I’m worried about in the play’ and Mike
is very skilled and talented and he’s come up with something very
beautiful.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
15
Interview: Indira Varma
What attracted you to the play?
I saw the play in America when it was on Broadway, and there was a lot of buzz
surrounding it. But I didn’t know that it was going to be done in Britain and I
certainly didn’t think that I would be in the running. Then I was asked if I’d like to
play Nadia, and I read it and just thought ‘this is a masterpiece’. It’s so dense: I
think it’s one of those plays that you can revisit again and again. He’s so clever.
It’s really exciting to play a woman who’s highly intelligent but also hilarious: it’s
not often that there are roles like this for women. Also, I love the Royal Court it’s one of the best theatres in Britain.
What sort of journey does your character go on in the play?
The play is bookended by tutorials, and in between Nadia goes off to England
with her boyfriend to meet his dad. The middle of the play takes place over a day
and a night. She starts off as a very confident woman who knows what she wants
from life, where she’s going and what her politics are. Then something happens
which unnerves her and makes her think again. Something trips her up and makes
her revaluate her existence.
What sort of work have you been doing in the rehearsal room that has
been useful for you?
Rehearsal is a luxury that you don’t generally have in TV or film. It’s a fantastic
exploration of what works and what doesn’t. It gives you a chance to try out the
language in your own mouth, and to see what the other actors are giving you in
the room and how that makes you respond. It gives you an opportunity to
practice the speed of the exchanges and to test what’s funny and what’s not. You
discover everything by being bold and trying things out. We’ve been lucky to
have David Hare in the rehearsal room: he’s explained to us what exactly the
politics of the play and the characters are. That’s really helped as some of it’s
quite complicated. My character articulates her views in complicated arguments
that a normal person wouldn’t necessarily know how to formulate.
What sort of research has helped you understand your character?
I read Kate Adie’s autobiography. She’s an intelligent, funny woman who talks
about the fact that being a war correspondent is an extremely intense
experience, which people find ways of switching off from in different ways, be
they having casual sex or turning to drink. She’s still a woman as well. I always
had the impression that to be a female war reporter you might have to be a bit
butch but in actual fact although their intelligence is equal to a man’s they’re still
women and they still want to wear earrings or have a nice haircut. We met
Christiane Amanpour and Maggie O’Kane both of whom are rather glamorous.
Meeting them, you realise how clever they are. One thing I really wanted to
know was how do they cope with the things they see, the pain. How do they
cope with going home and watching the rest of the world buying things in the
sales and talking about their boyfriends? And Christiane told us that you might be
storing up twenty years of pain inside you. So the pain is there.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
16
A writer’s view
Ben Ockrent, a playwright whose work has been performed in London and
Edinburgh, observed the rehearsals for The Vertical Hour. Here he describes his
response to the play.
We live in a cultural climate consumed by the apparent threat of terrorism and yet, as Nadia
says in the play, ‘the truth is there was far more terrorism in the 1980s when nobody
thought about it than there is today when nobody thinks about anything else.’ In The Vertical
Hour terrorism and its relationship to the Iraq war are important much more for what our
responses to them say about us than for any broader, more implicitly political reasons.
Whilst watching rehearsals it’s seemed to me that the play is much more interested in issues
of identity and relationship: how we live our lives and who we are as human beings living in
relation to one another, than external political events in themselves. It’s the pursuit of this
sort of self-knowledge that Nadia, Philip, Oliver, Dennis and Terri are driven by and that
thematically dominates Hare’s play. Essentially, if the consequences of invading Iraq are
worthy of debate, so, too, are the consequences of Oliver’s infidelities, for example, and the
invasions that such choices represent into the lives of these characters.
Half way through the play Philip says to Nadia, in an aggressive outburst about Oliver:
‘People aren’t their views, you know. They aren’t their opinions. They aren’t just what they
say. They aren’t the stuff that comes out of their mouths.’ If we’re not to be defined in those
terms then how? Earlier in the play Nadia counters the self-loathing of what she describes as
‘self-hating liberals’ by insisting that liberals ‘stand for something too.’ If we’re not to be
defined by our views, our opinions, or by the things we say, then perhaps by what we believe. If so, then what is it that we believe in? How do we project identity through belief in
secular society?
As the play unfolds it becomes clear that these sort of questions will be far from easy to
answer. Hare’s characters are so sensitive, so insecure, so reactionary that an incredible
amount of textual analysis was required at every point throughout the rehearsal process. The
company continually found themselves facing complex questions about the play. Scenes could
be played so many different ways it became a real challenge for the company to reach any
definite conclusions about the characters and their world. But for a play about the pursuit of
identity and relationship perhaps that was only right.
Nadia describes the vertical hour as a ‘moment’ after a disaster or a shooting in the field of
combat where ‘you can actually be of some use’. It’s a turning point where you have an
opportunity to effect change. An atmosphere of finality pervades Hare’s play. These are
characters on the brink of something. They’re all facing decisions or changes or are passing
through doors. Around half way through the play Oliver tells Nadia that Philip wants to
forget him. He believes that’s why they’ve both come to see him: ‘it’s a visit of farewell. I’m
enjoying your company, Nadia. But I suspect, whatever happens, I shan’t be seeing a lot of
you.’ The visit is the vertical hour of both Oliver and Philip’s and Philip and Nadia’s
relationships, during which they have the opportunity to save them or not. Facing up to that
challenge will force them to consider who they really are and who they need each other to
be.
It’s not exactly a field of combat but a rehearsal could be described as a vertical hour in itself,
during which the company has the opportunity to really make a difference to the outcome of
the production. I’ve really enjoyed watching this company do great justice to that hour.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
17
Writing activities
Students and Teachers
The Vertical Hour begins and ends with a scene set in Nadia Blye’s office in Yale University.
These scenes seem to have no bearing on the rest of the action, and yet structurally they
allow the audience to ‘check in’ with Nadia before and after she goes to Shropshire.
Challenge students to write a short play with a similar three scene A-B-A structure. The first
and last scenes should take place between a student and a teacher, the second scene should
involve an event which significantly ‘changes’ the play’s central character. Encourage the
students to ensure that the central character behaves differently in the first and last scenes.
Meet the Parents
The central action of the play involves Nadia Blye arriving in the UK in order to meet her
boyfriend’s father. Ask students to make a list of all the things that could go wrong on
meeting a partner’s parents. Encourage students to pick one of these scenarios and to write a
scene around it.
A Few of My Favourite Things
During rehearsals, David Hare gave the actor playing Oliver a list of the films, books, people,
food and wine that his character likes. This helped the actor to get a sense of who Oliver is
and the ways in which he is different from the other characters. Challenge students to imagine
a character (who could be based on someone they know) and to make a list of 30 things that
this character likes. The list could include:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Films
Books
Music
Food
Celebrities
Holiday destinations
Pastimes
Experiences
Once they have completed their list, developing a rich sense of who this character is, ask
them to write a monologue in their character’s voice.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
18
Design challenge
An English Country Garden
The majority of the play’s action takes place on a lawn adjacent to a
country cottage in Shropshire. Three of the play’s key scenes take place
in this location at:
10 am
10 pm
5 am
Ask students to consider how they might design a set for this scene
that allows for the passing of time and the use of lighting to suggest
different times of day and night.
•
•
•
•
Challenge students to decide what they would put on the floor
of the theatre to suggest a lawn (try banning grass!)
What other objects will they place on the floor of the stage in
order to suggest a garden?
Ask students to place at least one tree on stage - they could
abstract this tree, or render it simply using branches or a trunk
Encourage students to research the precise colours of a summer
sky at 10 am, 10 pm and 5 am. Ask them to choose a colour
(whether abstracted or literal) to represent the key lighting state
for each scene
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
19
Acting exercises
Map of the world
Ask students to imagine that the floor of the room represents a map of
the world. Show students which part of the room relates to London, the
UK, Europe, America and the other continents. Ask students to stand on
the part of the world map which relates to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Where your father was born
Where your mother was born
Where you were born
Where you lived at the age of 5
Where you lived at the age of 15
Where you’d like to be at the age of 20
Where you’d like to be at the age of 40
Where you’d like to be at the age of 60
A restless night
Ask students to lie on the floor and imagine that they are a character who
is having trouble sleeping. Ask them to imagine answers to the following
questions, relying on the first thing that comes to mind rather than
chasing a particular answer:
•
•
•
•
Whose face does the character see in their mind?
What do they have to do tomorrow?
What line do they have trouble getting out of their head?
What can they hear outside the window?
Now ask the students to pair up and improvise a scene based on the
character they have devised.
Scene
Character A has had a restless night. Character A goes to Starbucks to
buy a takeaway coffee. The character brings with them a loyalty card
which rewards them for buying ten cups of coffee with a free cup.
Character B works in Starbucks. The loyalty scheme has been
discontinued and the card is no longer valid. Improvise a scene in which
Character A attempts to claim their free cup of coffee and Character B
tries to explain that the loyalty card is no longer valid.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007
20
Useful links
British Council
www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth253
Read about the life and work of David Hare. Find out about his early
plays and the development of his work, as well as his life in the
theatre and his film work.
Yale University
www.yale.edu/
Get an insight into Nadia’s place of work - find out about the study
of Political Science, and explore the campus to see where Terri and
Dennis might live.
Harvard University
www.ksg.harvard.edu/cchrp/aboutus/staff.php#spower
Find out about the life and work of an ex– war correspondent at
Samantha Power’s homepage. Investigate the public role of the
academic by following her media appearances and public speeches.
Encarta
encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_701610462/U_S_-Iraq_War.html
Investigate the origins and development of the war in Iraq. Find out
about the reasons why America decided to go to war, and explore
the key turning points in the country’s military campaign.
From Our Own Correspondent
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/
Catch up on news from around the world and read the best of
contemporary journalism by BBC correspondents reporting from
key cities and conflict zones.
Everypoet
www.everypoet.com/Archive/Poetry/Wilfred_Owen/
wilfred_owen_contents.htm
Oliver, one of the characters in The Vertical Hour, tells his son how
much he admires the poetry of Wilfred Owen. Read Owen’s poems
and find out more about his life at this useful and accessible site.
© Royal Court Theatre, 2007