Close To Home

theatre alibi
Close to Home Education Pack
contents
click the links below to navigate
 Close to Home Script
 Theatre Alibi’s Style of Work
 An introduction by the director to the ideas behind the show
 An introduction by the writer to the process of writing the show
 Practitioner Fact Files
 Evolution of the Set Design
 Evolution of a Moment
 A timeline of what happens when
 Exercises for Storyteller
Written by Daniel Jamieson
THANKS TO MIKE ALFREDS, HELEN CHADWICK, LAURA DILLON, DORINDA HULTON, STUART NUNN & JORDAN
WHYTE
Close to Home
Written by Daniel Jamieson
Based on documentary material
Copyright Daniel Jamieson, February 2005
1
(Deniz walks up. It would appear he has travelled far and
has further to go. He carries a large piece of luggage. His
feet tell him this is a good place to stop and rest so he
puts down his luggage and sits. He looks round and takes
in his surroundings. This is a thoroughly inbetween place,
most definitely neither here nor there, and certainly not a
real place. He sits on the back of an old bench and
smokes a cigarette. Soon Katie strolls up, also apparently
on a long journey, carrying luggage too. She sits near
Deniz without acknowledging him but apparently aware of
his presence. She pulls food and a bottle of water out of
her bag. Not long afterwards Neil comes by. He also
chucks his bags and himself on the ground for a rest.
Everyone gets on with their picnics. Without talking to
each other or looking at each other, the three of them
belong together loosely like three animals in a herd or a
flock or whatever is the collective noun for whatever they
are.
Katie drinks from her water bottle and looks out front to
the horizon. She speaks to us, but at the same time to her
fellow travellers and to herself. They listen as they eat and
smoke.)
2
1.Who can see the sea?
Katie
When I was little we lived in Australia. My mum’s parents lived
a twelve-hour drive north. The highway didn’t go that far at the
time – the road north was called “The Goat-track”… So when
we visited Nan and Pop my parents would leave at two a.m.,
waking me and my sister to feed us travel sickness pills before
bundling us in the back of the car. We slept most of the way.
Towards morning, when we were awake and bored, my
mother would keep us amused by asking us, “Who can see the
sea? Who will be first to see the sea?” Then we’d kneel up in
the back of the car, straining to see ahead, to see the sea first.
(Katie kneels and peers ahead, looking for the sea, and
begins to sing the Waltzing Matilda. Deniz and Neil sing
too, but carry on doing their own thing. Katie sees the sea
first.)
Katie, Deniz and Neil
Once there was a swagman camped
by a billabong
Under the shade of a coollabah tree
And he sang as he sat and waited till his billy boiled
You’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me.
Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
3
You’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me
And he sang as he sat and waited ‘til his billy boiled
You’ll come a waltzing Matilda with me.
Katie
There! Every time I catch sight of the sea, even now, I have an
overwhelming sense of coming home.
2. The Bench
Deniz
There’s a bench in Istanbul looking down on the Bosphorus
near my old school. I probably wasted a month of my life sat
there, just looking at the sea, thinking about things, making
plans. I had my first cigarettes there and my first drink of
alcohol. I think I fell in love there the first time too. It was
raining, I remember. I said, let’s go and sit under the trees and
she said,
Girl
Why? I want to get wet.
Deniz
I was sat on the back of the bench and she was sat in front of
me. She was leaning back, her hair on my lap. I remember,
her hair was wet. I didn’t mind the rain after a while.
3. Little Things of Everyday
4
(Katie takes some things out of her bag to re-fold them.
First she pulls out a towel.)
Katie
My nan bought this for me when I was six – my first beach
towel. I still use it now. I like to carry a sense of family in the
little things of everyday around me; these teaspoons were my
great grandmother’s; pyjamas – my mum usually sends me a
set at Christmas; Wondercloths from Woolworths – I bought
them with my mum last time I was there. Every time I use them
I think of her.
Katie
(Sings,) You carry it with you
You carry it within you.
All
(Sing,) You carry it with you
You carry it within you.
Katie
You carry it with you
You carry it within you
There isn’t one house, I could call home
All
You carry it with you
You carry it within you
Cape daisies, they grow in dust.
5
4. Fish Fingers
Neil
If you’d asked me, what does home mean to you, when I was
six years old, I’d’ve said…
(Neil pulls a toy puppet out of his bag. It looks straight out
of the Jim Henson workshop, although not recogniseable
as any of his characters. If he’d made a Muppet called
Neil, it would have looked like this. Neil animates it.)
Muppet Neil
Neil
Muppet Neil
Neil
FISH FINGERS!
We used to have ‘em all the time when I was a kid.
Can we have ‘em tonight mum? Please?
When I was six years old, I lived with my mum and my
brothers and sisters. (Katie and Deniz get out a crowd of
cuddly toys recogniseable from the late 70’s, early 80’s.)
Muppet Neil
Little David, Emily, big David, Robert, Elizabeth and
sometimes my other sister Mary and her three kids, Sarah,
Vicky and Alan. (Muppet Neil is crowded by all these toys.)
6
Neil
When her kids stayed, we slept head to tail in the beds like
sardines.
(We hear the faint sound of Sesame Street on TV.)
Now, one day when we were all getting ready for school, me
mum said, “Don’t put your uniform on son, you’re ‘avin’ the day
off.”
Muppet Neil
Oh yeah! Great! (Muppet Neil is made up. Neil puts the rest
of the toys away again.)
Neil
Everyone left the house and I was sitting there playing with me
cars, watching Sesame Street, while mum had a doze on the
couch. About 11 o’clock, there was a knock on the door. Mum
was still asleep, so I got up and answered it. (Muppet Neil
answers the door. Katie and Deniz have made themselves
into two women, one with frizzy hair and rosy cheeks, the
other with dangly earrings and John Lennon glasses.)
Auntie Jo
Hello, I’m Auntie Jo.
Auntie Ann
And I’m Auntie Ann. Is your mum in?
Muppet Neil
(Muppet Neil is slightly overawed.) Erm, yeah… Come in.
7
Neil
Now after a cup of tea and special biscuits and a long chat
with me mum, they said,
Auntie Jo
You’re coming on holiday with us.
Muppet Neil
Oh yeah!
Neil
Chuffed again. First the day off school, now going on holiday.
Muppet Neil
I’ve never been on holiday before.
Auntie Ann
Your mum’s packed a little bag for you. You’ll see her at the
weekend. We’re going on a Mystery Tour! That’ll be fun, won’t
it?!
Neil
They had a blue mini. It was the first car I’d ever been in.
(Muppet Neil gets in their blue mini and they set off. He
looks out of the window.)
Muppet Neil
Bye mam, bye!
Neil
Off we went, off on the Mystery Tour. Past the end of our
street, past me school, past all the shops, and then further,
further than I’d ever been before, leaving Birkenhead, didn’t
8
know where I was going. I remember we went through a long
dark tunnel with flashing lights – I thought it was like Star Wars
and we were going to arrive at the Death Star…
(We hear scary music from Star Wars and the sound of X
fighters whooshing past. The car gets dark, lights flash
by. Muppet Neil looks scared. The car emerges into the
daylight.) But we didn’t. We arrived on the other side of
Liverpool.
Auntie Jo
This is it.
Neil
We pulled up in the driveway of a massive house with a
garden all round it.
Muppet Neil
Oh wow! A swing! Can I ‘ave a go? Can I?
Auntie Ann
Come in Neil.
Auntie Jo
This is Auntie Pauline, and Auntie Mary, and Auntie Stella…
Neil
They were all drinking tea from green cups like you get in
hospitals.
Auntie Jo
Sit down Neil. We’re going to have a little chat.
9
Muppet Neil
Oh… OK.
Auntie Ann
There’s a few things we need to tell you.
Auntie Jo
This is going to be your new home. Your mum isn’t very well at
the moment so we’re going to look after you here.
Auntie Ann
There’s lots of other children here. And you’ll get to see your
mum at the weekends. How do you feel about that? Neil?
Muppet Neil
Auntie Ann
Great. Can I go and play on the swings now?
(Muppet Neil gets down and starts running towards the
garden.) Neil. There’s one more thing we need to tell you.
(Ann and Jo look at each other nervously.)
Auntie Jo
Your mum’s not your mum. She’s your nan. Your mum left
home when you were young, so your nan brought you up like
she was your mum.
Auntie Ann
But she’s not. (Muppet Neil looks puzzled and sits down.)
Muppet Neil
Where’s my mum?
10
Auntie Jo
We don’t know Neil.
Auntie Ann
She’s not been in touch. (Muppet Neil thinks.)
Neil
At the time, I thought this must happen to everybody.
Auntie Jo
Right. (She takes Muppet Neil by the hand. He looks a bit
lost.) Let’s go to the big freezer. The other children will be
home soon. As it’s your first day, you can decide what we all
have for tea… (She rummages in the freezer, showing
Muppet Neil one box after another.) Burgers?
Muppet Neil
Auntie Jo
Muppet Neil
No.
Pies?
No.
Auntie Jo
Fish fingers?
Muppet Neil
(Cheering up.) Yeah! Fish fingers! Fish fingers! (Sings,) Fish
fingers are home…
Deniz/Katie
(Sing,) In batter…
11
Muppet Neil
And home is fish fingers.
T/K
So healthy.
Muppet Neil
All golden brown…
T/K
And oblong.
Muppet Neil
In crispy breadcrumbs…
T/K
With ketchup.
Neil
(Speaks, ) So. That’s what we all had for tea, my first night in
the children’s home.
Muppet Neil
Fish fingers.
5. Books
Deniz
Books! (Arranging a few books around himself,) I like
having books wherever I go. If I stack some books round me, I
feel at home.
12
Grandfather
(Katie has dressed as Deniz’s grandfather. He/she wears a
big old smoking jacket and a hat.) Deniz! Up you get.
(He pats his legs, inviting Deniz to sit. Deniz sits and his
grandfather tickles him and rocks him, blowing
raspberries on his face.)
Deniz
My grandfather. We lived in his house until I was four.
Grandfather
My little lamb.
Deniz
I was really attached to my grandfather. In his house, he had a
huge library. It was the most exciting thing to go into that room.
It was my grandfather, that room. He would let me just play
with the books and he would read me whatever I wanted. (As
he speaks, Deniz searches about his grandfather’s person
- up his sleeves, in his pockets, down the back of his
collar etc. Finally he takes off his grandfather’s hat and
there is a book perched fluttering on his head. That’s the
one Deniz wants.)
Grandfather
(Reading,) “Once upon a time in a very old land, people grew
confused and became frightened of books. Then they would
go down to the shores of the sea and cast their books into the
water until the waves rustled and murmured with the turning of
pages…”
13
Deniz
(Out of nowhere,) Why are travelling singers called “Lovers”?
Grandfather
Mmmm?
Deniz
“Arsik” – why “Lovers”?
Grandfather
Lovers of life, I suppose. (He thinks about it and quotes
Rumi.) “The springtide of lovers has come, that this dustbowl
may become a garden…” (He thinks some more.) When I’m
driving on my own, a long way from home, sometimes I think
of all the women I’ve ever loved, one by one, and it makes me
cry, and sing. Don’t tell your grandmother.
Deniz
My grandfather died when I was seven, but whenever I miss
home, it’s him that I think of. (Katie stops being his
grandfather.)
I grew up after the military coup in 1980, so lots of books were
banned during the first years of my reading. They would collect
lots of them and burn them in heaps. Or people would get so
scared if they had certain books in their houses they would
throw them away themselves. People would throw their books
in the sea. But by ‘87, ‘88, things were relaxing. For the first
time in years, some publishing houses could print “dangerous”
books again.
14
(Suddenly there is the sound of a great throng of voices,
commerce and excitement.)
Every November in Istanbul there’s a huge book fair – you can
find every book published in Turkey there - very exciting. I
went when I was twelve or thirteen. I’d been the year before
but I didn’t have any money. This time I was prepared – I’d
been saving all year. I went round madly!
(Katie and Neil pull books from their luggage and throw
them to Deniz almost faster than he can catch them. He
gathers them in a great stack tucked under his chin.)
I got very excited and bought all these books with titles like…
“Marxism for Beginners”… “Social Development Explained”…
also some Turkish writers who’d been banned. Then I took all
these books home, and very proudly I put them on the table to
show off – look what I’ve done with my money! Great stuff,
eh?!
Father
(Neil has dressed as Deniz’s father. He looks at the books
Deniz has laid out. Katie watches close by.) What’s all this?
Deniz
Books dad. From the book fair.
Father
How did you get them?
15
Deniz
I bought them – from the book fair - I told you. With my
money…
Father
Don’t be cheeky. (Deniz is sullen. His father picks up one of
the books.) “Marxism for Beginners”?
Deniz
They’re just books…
Father
These aren’t books, they’re rubbish. (Deniz can’t say
anything.) If you want to read, fine, but read a classic.
(Pause.) You’re taking them back. (He starts to collect up
the books purposefully.)
Deniz
What?
Father
You’ll have to get your money back…
Deniz
How? The book fair is finished?
Father
Use your ingenuity. There’ll be a list of traders…
Deniz
But why dad…?
Father
BECAUSE. I don’t want them in the house. Get rid of them.
16
Deniz
I can’t.
Father
Then I’ll get rid of them for you… (He starts throwing them
violently away.)
Deniz
Dad! Please! (He tries to retrieve the books and smooth
their pages.) You’re hurting them. You’re hurting them.
Katie
(Sings,) Oh mother, oh mother, go make my bed.
Make it both long and narrow.
Sweet William died for love of me,
And I shall die from sorrow.
6. Between two stools
Katie
We moved from Australia to England when I was six. My dad’s
family lived in Cumbria, so that’s where we went to live. An old
woman once stopped my mother on the streets of Carlisle and
said,
Woman
(Neil puts on a hat and becomes the old woman.) You’re
not from round here, are you? You’ll never belong. I’m not from
here either. I’ve lived here sixty years and I still don’t belong.
17
Katie
(Sings,) O father, o father, go make my bed,
Make it both deep and narrow.
Sweet William died on yester morn,
And I shall die tomorrow.
I started at Bishop Goodwin Junior School. (Neil and Deniz
become two girls clapping and singing. Katie watches
them, sucking her thumb nervously.)
Girls
Em pom pee para me
Para moscas
Em pom pee para me
Acca dairy, so fairy
Acca dairy
Poof poof!
(As they begin again, Katie starts to do the clapping on
her own but tentatively singing her own version of the
song.)
Katie
Em pom pee diddy vee
Diddy voskus
Em pom pee diddy vee
Diddy voskus
Diddy voskus, diddy voskus
Poof poof…
18
(The other girls stop and come and watch Katie with their
arms folded. Katie stops.)
Helen Caruthers
Katie
What y’ doin ?
Singing the song.
Helen Caruthers/Susan James
(Lauging at her, imitating her accent.)
“Singing the song”! That’s not how it goes.
Katie
That’s how they sing it at home.
Helen
Yeah. Well. You’re putting us off.
Susan
So shut it.
Helen
(After a pause, looking meanly at Katie, not ready to leave
it yet,) My mum says your mum’s a snob cos she wears jeans.
Susan
And you eat spaghetti.
(Satisfied, they go and start singing and clapping again.
At first Katie is quiet, but then she starts to sing her
version defiantly. A battle develops, the song getting
19
louder and louder on each side until Helen Caruthers
snaps and starts pushing Katie.)
Helen
Fight me! Come on! Fight me!
Susan
(Chanting,) Battle! Battle!
Katie
Get off you berk! (Helen grabs Katie’s hair and pulls her
towards the ground.) Ow! (Katie grabs Helen’s hair and
pulls it back. She looks shocked at this retaliation. They
sink towards the ground, pulling harder and harder, until,
with an awful rip, a clump of Helen’s hair comes away in
Katie’s hand. They stand up, shocked. Katie lets the
clump of hair float onto the ground and they look at it,
appalled. Helen Caruthers runs away. Susan James picks
up the hair.)
Susan
That’s evidence, that is! (And runs after Helen.)
Katie
Then one day I came home from school. (She talks to her
mum.) Mum, Anne Briggs says that it gets so cold here in
winter that your mum has to rub margarine under your vest
and sew brown paper round your tummy ‘til May the first, and
that the snow gets so deep you have to go in and out of your
house through the bedroom windows…
20
And she said, “Katie! Speak properly! I can’t understand you!”
Katie
And that’s how it’s always been. A foot in both camps and
belonging to neither.
7. Leaving home
Deniz
I left Turkey in 1998.
You know, with some people you share something. Whenever
you’re with them you feel alright. You feel at home. I said
goodbye to Melika at the airport.
(Katie goes and sits silently next to Deniz, but neither
looks at each other. And now there is a flight
announcement in Turkish.)
Announcement
The 17.35 flight to London Heathrow is now boarding.
Will all passengers please proceed to Gate 14. The London
Heathrow flight is now boarding at gate 14.
(Deniz and Melika stand and look at each other without
speaking. He carries a big bag. She only carries her
handbag. She remembers something and fetches a book
out of her bag.)
21
Woman
Here. (She gives him the book.) I’ve written in the front. (He
starts to look.) Don’t look now.
Deniz
Thankyou.
(Pause.)
Woman
It’ll be years won’t it? I’ll be fat. You’ll be bald. We’ll both be
holding children we’ve had with other people. I expect we
won’t… we won’t kiss or touch. It won’t be proper. (She shuts
her eyes and they touch each other for the last time. When
Deniz walks away from her, she sings.)
8. Barbara Allen
Katie
(Sings,) “Sweet William was buried in the old church yard
And Barbara lay beside him.
On William’s grave there grew a rose,
On Barbara’s, a green briar.
(Katie opens her eyes.) I loved it when my dad used to sing
in the car. I was only little but I can remember it like it was
yesterday. We’d be coming back from dropping mum off at
22
work, and dad would start singing his heart out over the
steering wheel.
They grew and grew up the old church wall,
Till they could grow no higher,
And then they formed a true-love knot –
The red rose and the briar.
Mum and dad split up when I was 14. Mum went back to
Australia after I graduated, back to where she felt she
belonged, I suppose. And Dad stayed in Carlisle. Border
Country. That’s where he felt at home.
9. Adoptive parents
Neil
I was quite happy in the children’s home. I stayed there for
about a year, then one day Auntie Jo said there was this man
and this woman and that they wanted me to be their son.
(Katie and Deniz drift to Neil as his adoptive parents and
sit on either side of him.) He was Bengali, like my birth
father. She was English. First I went on a picnic with them,
then I went to stay the weekend at their house. We went to the
pictures in Southport to see “The Muppet Movie”. It was the
first film I ever saw.
23
Mum
Would you like to come and live with us?
(Neil looks at his stepdad. He nods and smiles.)
Neil
OK. I had a very happy, full childhood.
But somehow I always felt somewhere inbetween.
10. Christmas hols.
What I did in My Christmas Holidays by Neil Khan 1F.
(Katie and Deniz put up a screen. The lights dim and Neil
gives a film show to illustrate his essay.)
The first time I ever went to India was with my new mum and
dad in 1984. I was ten. We flew to Calcutta.
(Film.)
When we came out of the airport the sights and sounds and
smells were unbelievable: smells of curry and sewage all
mixed together; tiny, wiry men carrying bundles three times as
big as them; For a change, I wasn’t the only brown face. In
fact, all the faces were brown. Browner than mine. I started to
feel very at home. There were children like me everywhere –
running, playing, begging, washing.
24
My uncle Gouranga came to meet us in his new, white
Ambassador and drove us from the airport into the centre of
Calcutta.
We stayed at the Royal Hotel. There were leather sofas,
swimming pools, carpets, lifts that went ding. In the morning I
woke in the luxurious bedroom and flicked on the telly –
(Muppet music.) I felt right at home! But when I looked out
through the thick net curtains, there were the street kids still
running round half naked and the old ladies squatting in the
gutter. I didn’t feel like the Royal Breakfast after that.
But then we left on the train for my dad’s village – Rampurhat.
As we came out of the city, we began to see the countryside.
All
(Sing,) I have crossed an ocean
I have lost my tongue.
From the root of the old one
A new one has sprung. X2
It was beautiful. This was my father’s home and it was part of
me.
When we arrived in Rampurhat my cousin, Priya, came to
meet us at the station. (Katie steps in as Priya, illuminated
by a slide of a cycle rickshaw. Neil steps into the frame,
25
into the coloured light, and Priya takes his hand. He’s
bedazzled.) She was fourteen, and beautiful. I fell in love
instantly. She took my hand and helped me onto the rickshaw.
My mum and dad went in the one behind. She held my hand. It
was a dusky evening. Fires were being lit. A wedding party
was gathering by the river and drums were starting to play.
Priya stared into my eyes, stroked my cheek and said,
Priya
You’re white!
11. Theatre story
Deniz
When I first came to London I lived in a theatre for a year, a
theatre became my home, and one of the dressing rooms was
my bedroom. I had nowhere else to go.
We were doing “Rosencranz and Guildenstern are Dead” and
the director wanted to use the whole space, you know, action
happening in every corner, people coming and going through
every door. I was playing Hamlet. He doesn’t do much in that
play, just… comes and goes. One evening I was relaxing when
the director came to my room. (Deniz lies on his hammock
reading. Neil becomes an actor pacing downstage,
learning lines to himself. Katie, the director, comes in to
Deniz’s “bedroom”.)
26
Director
Deniz…
Deniz
Knock-knock… (Not looking up, continuing to read.)
Director
Sorry. (He goes out and knocks.)
Deniz
Who’s there?
Director
(Looking round the door.) Someone who needs a favour…
Deniz
No.
Director
You don’t know what it is yet… (The actor downstage is
getting rather loud.)
Actor
…Don’t you see? We’re actors – we’re the opposite of
people…
Director
James! (She shushes him and indicates she’s in the
middle of a delicate negotiation. The actor mouthes his
apology and sits down.)
Deniz
You want to use my bedroom as an entrance.
Director
An exit. And an entrance.
27
Deniz
You promised…
Director
I know but Hamlet’s got to put the dead body somewhere
hasn’t he? It needs to be somewhere just… slightly different.
Deniz
What about all my stuff?
Director
I’ve been thinking. If you just open the door to… here, and you
put all your stuff… here, nobody will ever know.
Deniz
I will. (Pause.) Alright. But I’ll go mad. There’ll be nothing in my
head between real and pretend anymore.
Director
Thankyou! I knew you’d understand!
Deniz
(Talking to the audience while he shifts his stuff grumpily.
He also stuffs books into his pale, papoose-style sleeping
bag to make a corpse, then lays it in his hammock and
sits next to it.)
So. I became Hamlet and my bedroom, my home, became
another chamber of Elsinore. One night, there I was, waiting
for my cue, sat there looking at my dirty underpants, my books,
my dead body… (He looks at the pretend corpse and his
mood changes – memories float to the surface.) I started
28
thinking about my grandfather. I was seven when he died. In
Turkey they lay the body in the house for a few days covered
in a white cloth. After my grandfather was gone my
grandmother kept a chair for him by her bedside. She said he
came and visited her and sat in that chair. That’s what she
believed. I believe it too. (Deniz gently takes a book from the
heart of the sleeping bag and sits reading it.)
12. Smell of home
Katie
When my mum sends me a parcel of clothes, I quite often hold
onto it for a while and don’t wash it, because there’s a smell of
her. She said that after I’ve stayed with her she keeps the
window and the door to my room shut for a couple of days –
“So I can just inhale the sense of you after you’ve gone.”
12. Homesickness
Deniz
(He reads,) “The springtide of lovers has come, that this
dustbowl may become a garden. The proclamation of heaven
has come, that the bird of the soul may rise in flight.” I was far
away at boarding school when my grandmother died. It was
unbearable. But my sister was there - she was only seven or
eight. She was watching television with her, lying on her chest.
29
My sister says her head just suddenly fell back. She’d had a
heart attack with my sister lying right next to her heart.
Neil
(We hear Ravi Shankar. Neil takes some headphones out
of his luggage and looks at them.) My dad got quite
homesick during the last few years of his life. He started
listening to a lot of Ravi Shankar – he’d always have it on
round the house. Me mum didn’t like it much. One day she
said, let’s go down Rumbelows and buy him a Walkman. (He
puts them on. We hear Ravi Shankar remotely, as if
escaping from the headphones.)
He used to sit round the house with his woolly hat on, listening
to it. Sometimes you could just hear him singing. Very softly.
(He sings.) He’d come from a poor village a hundred miles
north of Calcutta. He decided to get a profession to rescue his
family, so he joined the army to save for medical college. After
college, when he’d trained to be a doctor, he joined the army
again to save to come here, and got to Britain in ’63 or ‘64.The
stories he told me… Those signs in pubs saying, “No blacks,
no dogs, no Irish…” - he said he wasn’t even represented on
the list, but he knew he wasn’t welcome. London first, then
Edinburgh, then Liverpool, all the way from a small village
30
outside Calcutta. It’s a well-documented history of migration, I
s’pose, my dad and thousands like him. But I forget
sometimes, all that way he came, cold and alone, half way
round the world… And people are still being invited to come
and made to feel like shit when they arrive.
(Sings,) My mouth is everyone’s mouth.
My feet are everyone’s feet.
So my hunger is yours
My walking is yours.
My walking is yours.
All
Hey! Nyum bani.
My mouth is everyone’s mouth.
My feet are everyone’s feet.
So my hunger is yours.
My walking is yours
My walking is yours.
Hey! Yuva.
Deniz
(Reads,) The proclamation of heaven has come
That the bird of the soul may rise in flight.
13. Nan’s death
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(We hear a muted, Radio 2 compilation.)
Katie
It must have been Sunday or the school holidays, because my
sister and I were at home. We were in the back room, the
living room, and my mother was ironing and listening to Radio
2. At this time, my mother would iron and record songs off the
radio. But the tape recorder would also record the sound in the
room, so me and my sister had to be very, very quiet. My
mother’s got loads of tapes with songs, which are suddenly
interrupted by me and my sister arguing and my mother
shouting, “KATIE, JENNY, SHUT UP!”
On this day, the phone rang and my mother shouted SHUT UP
before she answered it. The phone hung on the wall and my
mother stood by it with the receiver to her ear. She went very
quiet and turned her back to us. Then my mother wailed. I had
never heard a sound like it. And she curled down the wall into
a ball. The phone swung beside her and I could just hear my
Aunty Valmai’s voice calling down the line “Moyna?… Moyna?”
My mother didn’t respond. I don’t think my mother has a tape
recording of this.
That was the day my Nan died. She was in Bellingen, New
South Wales, Australia. My mother was 17,000 miles away in
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Carlisle, Cumbria, England. Now my mother’s moved back to
Bellingen, Australia, 17,000 miles away. And I’m here.
My greatest fear is that my mum will die there whilst I’m here.
(Panic sweeps over her. She shuts her eyes and sings as
if reciting a spell, a prayer.)
(Sings,) Kookaburras; and magpies; mum singing in the
shower; leftover Chinese for breakfast; spaghetti Bolognese on
toast for breakfast; sausages with gravy for breakfast;
kookaburras; (Beginning to speak,) ants in the jam;
tamarillos; custard apples; snow-peas; gramma pumpkin;
passion fruit straight from the vine; kookaburras; Summer
Rolls; Violet Crumbles; Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs; Musks; Life
Savers; Caramello Koalas; Twisties – “Because life would be
very dull if it was straight”…
(We hear a chorus of kookaburras. Neil and Deniz have
been in their own worlds, half listening. Now they come to
comfort Katie. Gradually she has invoked the sound of a
chorus of kookaburras and magpies. When she stops
talking they all look up and listen to the birds. Night is
falling. Katie’s panic has passed. The chorus subsides.)
33
All
(Singing,) I’m walking on a long narrow road
My life has been walking on a long narrow road.
So I keep walking
So I keep walking
So I keep walking
I’m walking day and night
There are two doors to an inn, one in, one out.
So I keep walking
So I keep walking
So I keep walking.
14. Wings of Desire
(Deniz digs out a little box and offers the other two
something special to eat, something from home.)
Deniz
It’s halva.
Katie/Neil
Thankyou.
Deniz
(In Turkish) You’re welcome. (They look at him blankly. He
speaks in English.) You’re welcome.
34
(Deniz searches in his bag again.)
Deniz
Have you heard of a film called “Wings of Desire”? This angel
comes down to Earth. There’s a point in the film when he
walks through Kreuzberg, which is the Turkish part of Berlin.
He walks past a shop, and there’s Turkish music coming out of
it! Nazim Hikmet – he was one of the old wandering poets at
heart. He was in exile from Turkey because of his political
beliefs.
(We hear the Zulfu Livaneli song from the film.)
I don’t know if the director speaks Turkish but it’s the perfect
song – (roughly translating the words,) a man’s walking in a
forest. It’s a snowy night. He’s looking at the sky and he’s
saying, is my country or the stars more far away? He’s walking
in that forest and thinking of home, when he walks by a house.
He looks in the window and there’s a family inside. It looks so
warm inside, so happy…. He wishes someone would just call
him in to the house…
(The three of them listen to the music, picturing the little
house.)
35
The bit I really love is when the angel first falls down to Earth.
Suddenly now he can see all the colours, the graffiti, the grass,
everything. Also, he’s hit his head, so it hurts. For the first time,
he feels some sort of physical sensation. He feels the cold.
And then he starts walking. It’s very early morning, so the city
is just waking up. He can hear, listen, feel things… It’s just like
when you go to a foreign place, like when I first came here.
Everything is that sharp, that fresh, like your first few minutes
on earth.
15. Nan’s pants.
Katie
(Sorting her bag again,) Tablecloth – Australian. Socks –
Australian. Pants, Bond’s pants – I bought them with my mum
last time I was there… (She comes across a huge pair of
pink, brushed cotton bloomers and holds them up.) Nan’s
pants! When we stayed at my grandma’s I used to have to
sleep in a little cot at the end of her bed. I was supposed to be
asleep when she came to bed. She’d put on her little bedside
lamp and I’d be lying there squinting, pretending to be asleep
but watching her. She wore these enormous pants – she was
from a different generation you know, she’d be over a hundred
now – down to her knees. (She’s put them on and looks at
them fondly, then she rummages in her bag for
something.) All the dolls clothes she made me, the pants
36
were always like hers. (She pulls out an old doll and shows
its pants, just like her grandmother’s.)
Katie
I’d like a daughter.
16. Home birth
(We hear the faint sound of a Muppets video.)
Neil
(Neil is sat with Muppet Jack beside him. They watch TV
and eat crisps from a bag between them. In Neil’s arms is
Muppet Daniel, a small pink baby.) It was a nightmare when
my son was born. Hospital, epidural, Vonteuse, the works…
Little Jack
(Katie does Little Jack’s voice, and helps animate him
when she’s ready.) What’s “Vontoose”?
Neil
It’s like a bath plunger for pulling babies out of their mums. It
goes on your head…
Little Jack
On mum’s head?
Neil
No! On your head. It kept slipping off… The doctor had to put
his foot on the end of the bed to pull better but you still
wouldn’t come out.
37
Little Jack
Did it hurt?
Neil
Mum?
Little Jack
No, me.
Neil
Well. Your head was a funny shape for a while afterwards.
(Jack feels his head then goes off to look for something.)
So we had a homebirth for this one. Shower curtains on the
living room floor, pethidine in the fridge, Nora Jones on the
C.D. Four hours was all it took. An hour later, a neighbour was
popping in with some lunch for us… (Jack has returned with
a bath plunger and tries to put it on the baby’s head.)
Don’t! He won’t like it!
Little Jack
Please!
Neil
Here, come here. (He puts the plunger on Jack like a hat.
Jack proceeds to run round shouting jubilantly.)
Little Jack
Von – toose! Von – toose!
38
Neil
Come on, I thought you wanted to watch…You can still get
Sesame Street on video. And the Muppets. He loves ‘em!
Don’t you? You’re a chip off the old block, aren’t you?
Little Jack
Chips! Yeah! Peas! Yeah! Fish fingers! Yeah!
Neil
Maybe. If you’re good… (Song begins on the video. Jack
settles down and sings it with Neil.)
Why are there so many
Songs about rainbows
And what’s on the other side?
Rainbows are visions,
They’re only illusions
And rainbows have nothing to hide.
So we’ve been told and some chose to believe it
But I know they’re wrong wait and see.
Someday we’ll find it
The Rainbow Connection
The lovers, the dreamers and me…
17. Little King December
39
(Neil turns off the TV, puts Muppet Jack and Daniel in his
bag and packs to leave. The stars are visible now. Katie
takes out a book, lies back with the doll on her chest, and
reads to it.)
Katie
Little King December is two centimetres high. And he’s
shrinking. Listen.
(Reading,) “One beautiful summer evening, King December
and I went out on the balcony. We lay on our backs and looked
up at the stars. Well, to be exact, I lay on my back and the
King lay on my stomach between the fifth and sixth shirt
buttons and I could feel his little body rising and falling with my
breath. “What do you feel when you look at the stars?” he
asked.
“I feel small and unimportant,” I replied, “as small as you are,
smaller even.”
“Do you know what I feel?” said the King. “I feel enormous. I
grow as big as the universe – it’s like I am the air. In the end,
I’m not just part of the whole, I am the whole, and the stars are
part of me. Can you imagine what that feels like?””
(Katie puts the doll and the book away. Her bags are
packed now. She’s ready to move on into the night. So is
Neil. It begins to snow. They look at Deniz’s tent – it has
40
little windows of opaque plastic that shed a warm light.
Then they start their journeys, but when they’re a little
way off, Deniz comes out and sweeps open the whole
front of his shelter like a curtain. Yellow light spills out
from two camping lamps. There’s a carpet on the floor, a
small Turkish carpet. Hot food is laid out. The inner
surface of the shelter is papered with the pages of books.
A place is set for Katie and Neil. Deniz looks for them,
surprised that he can’t see them. When he sees them on
their way off, he beckons to them.)
Deniz
Come in. Please.
(They hesitate. Deniz looks at them. Snow falls. They start
back to the shelter. Katie sets down her bag outside and
steps in. They all eat and drink. Then Katie sings to the
night, to the stars.)
Katie
“The springtide of lovers has come, that this dustbowl may
become a garden. The proclamation of heaven has come, that
the bird of the soul may rise in flight. The sea becomes full of
pearls, the salt marsh becomes sweet as nectar, the stone
becomes a ruby from the mine. The body becomes wholly
soul.”
END.
41
THEATRE ALIBI’S STYLE OF WORK
Why tell stories?
We think humans need to tell stories. More than that, we think this need to tell stories is part of
what makes us human, part of the unique intelligence that makes us different from other animals.
Telling stories, listening to them, watching them, talking about them, thinking about them…
without necessarily realising it, we’re processing our experience in a very sophisticated way.
When watching a scene between characters on Eastenders we might unconsciously be chewing
over our own urges and inclinations. When we reach such a moment in real life we might not
immediately think of Eastenders, but in some tiny way we might have used it to expand what we
think about that aspect of reality.
If we’re constantly using stories to get an angle on a chaotic world, then as the world changes,
so must our angle. Theatre Alibi is always searching for the right stories to tell and the right way
to tell them in order to question the world around us as best we can.
The way we’ve chosen to tell stories is through theatre. In theatre the actor is right there in the
same room with the audience. As a result, a split reality is presented to the audience in which the
actor is both himself, here and now, and someone else in another time and place, a character in
a fictional world. This is absolutely unique to theatre. When we approach our work, we try to take
advantage of this split reality. We often begin shows with the actors talking directly to the
audience, beginning to tell a story and then slipping from describing a character into becoming
them. So unlike many theatre companies we choose to reveal to our audience the moment when
the actor takes on their role.
“So what?” you might ask. But wait. This actor is here in the room with you, and then suddenly
they step through an invisible wall into a realm where anything, anything imaginable, can happen
and if they’re doing their job well, they’ve taken you with them! It’s like someone’s taken you by
the hand and led you through the back of the wardrobe, or through the looking-glass, or
whatever…. You’re not watching it happen on telly, it’s happening right there in front of you.
In keeping with these thoughts, here are some of the ways we choose to work:
•
We reveal transformations: actors leap from being themselves to being a character (or several) and back again
before the eyes of the audience. Simple props and set are taken up by the actors and used to suggest places and
things that weren’t there before (a duvet becomes a field of snow, a walking stick becomes the rail of an ocean
liner).
•
We develop our actors’ resources to help them suggest other characters, things and places: their voices, dance
skills, puppetry skills etc.
•
We enjoy working in unconventional theatre spaces, from shopping centres to warehouses, where audiences are
made especially aware of the “here and now”.
•
We incorporate other artforms into our theatre to make it more effective at whisking people from the “here and now”
to the realm of the imagination: music, sculpture, photography, film etc.
•
We work from stories rather than scripts. This helps us remember to ask certain questions such as why are we
telling these stories, and how should we be telling them? This lets us experiment in rehearsal with how the actors
can best bring the audience to the particular imaginary world in question.
IDEAS BEHIND CLOSE TO HOME – by Dorinda Hulton (Director)
Close to Home is, in some ways, a new departure for Theatre Alibi. For a
number of years, Theatre Alibi’s storytelling show for adults has been based
on fictional stories imagined and written by Daniel Jamieson. This time Daniel
has developed the show out of true stories that have been ‘gathered’ from
different people. So his writing task has been one of looking at different ways
of adapting these stories for the theatre and also ordering them in a sequence
to give some sense of a developing relationship between the three
storytellers.
All of the stories, and fragments of stories, relate in some way to the theme of
‘home’. Their order has partly evolved organically and partly schematically.
We found it useful to group the stories loosely into five sections.
•
The sense of feeling at home – The show begins with stories that were
inspired by sensory memories and objects associated with the sense of
feeling ‘at home’: the sight of the sea, a remembered view and the
smell of fish fingers. We all have special memories and objects that
mean ‘home’ to each of us individually.
•
The sense of not knowing quite where, or what, home is – so many
people now (for reasons both within, as well as beyond, their control)
have moved from one country to another. Each of the storytellers in
some way tells a story about migration, travel and somehow feeling ‘in
between’ - moving from Australia to England at the age of six, travelling
from England to India to visit family at the age of ten, coming to live in
England from Turkey at the age of twenty one.
•
The sense of connection with the past and especially with grandparents
– John Berger in his wonderful book, and our faces, my heart, brief as
photos, talks about ‘home’, not just as a physical place but also a place
where we feel closest to our ancestors. In this section the storytellers
share their memories of their grandparents who have died.
•
The sense of being away from home – sometimes we only know how
much we value something when we are away from it. When we are in a
new place, as well, we can often see things more clearly. Everything
seems bright and fresh. In this section there is a story about
homesickness and another about exile that is based on the story in the
Wim Wenders film, Wings of Desire.
•
The sense of home in the present and in the future - In this last section
the storytellers share their sense of what home means to them now
and their hopes for the future.
All of the stories, and fragments of stories, in the show, in a way, are
examples of stories that might be told by any member of our audience. In
different ways each of the storytellers is like a nomad, carrying a sense of
home with and within them. They tell their stories as a way of creating a
feeling of shelter, a ‘home’ between them and with the audience.
CLOSE TO HOME: The Writing Process by Daniel Jamieson
I’ve found it enormously exciting working on this project. I usually read a lot before
writing, but the end result is normally entirely fictional. This is the first time I have
worked as a writer on a show made entirely from found material. Here’s an outline of
exactly the writing process that led to Close to Home.
The company was interested in doing a show based on true stories and asked
Dorinda Hulton to direct it. She suggested that “home” would be a good subject for
such a show, and that she wanted to gather stories from people who were distant in
some way from their people or place of origin. We agreed that their experience might
offer particularly resonant material on the subject.
After much deliberation, three people were selected and asked to gather material
relating to their own personal sense of home. Here is the ‘research brief’ they were
given:
“For our project together please could you choose 1 place and make 4 collections.
The place should metaphorically represent your idea of ‘home’. It need not be indoors and it need
not be in this country.
The four collections are:
1. a collection of personal or autobiographical stories that are in some way connected with
ideas of ‘home’: a feeling of belonging and not belonging, of feeling at home and not
feeling at home, or whatever. Your collection could include stories about your family
history that your parents or grandparents may have told you, for example. They could be
tiny fragments or whole narratives. T
2. a collection of stories or fragments about other people that in some way connect to, or
contrast with, or resonate against your personal or family story (or stories). These could
be historical stories about groups and communities of people, or archival stories you may
have discovered or they could be stories told to you by people who may live in your
neighbourhood.
3. a collection of songs or music connected in any way with any of the other material you
have collected. These could be a mixture of songs sung live by you, or songs/music sung
by others recorded by you onto mini disc or similar, or they could be found recordings.
4. a collection of sounds recorded by you for example, a conversation within your
community or family, or sounds recorded in a place associated with home for you, or
other sounds relating you to the theme of HOME .
It would be helpful if you could write some notes, or even a text, in relation to the stories that you
could pass on, but your research could also be transmitted through enactment, interview or audio
visually, whichever is the most appropriate.”
They were then given a month to draw the material together. Subsequently Dorinda,
the MD/composer and I visited each person in turn and talked to them. Each person
responded in different ways. Some had carefully written stories, some chose just to
talk through things more anecdotally.
I sat down with all this material to bring it together somehow into one expression we
could explore together with the actors, composer and designer in a week of research
and development. Initially the task seemed mind-boggling, how to sensibly integrate
such a wealth of disparate material. But the more I tuned into it, the more I began to
perceive how each person’s stories echoed the others. It was genuinely moving to
see how people of such different backgrounds shared such sympathetic perceptions,
and how much I identified with their experiences myself, having ostensibly lived a
very different life. Their stories began to interlock in my mind.
We looked for an appropriate metaphorical context, an imaginary setting in which
characters might meet and share these stories. We felt it should arise naturally out of
the flavour of the material, and shouldn’t be too contrived or elaborate. Also, We felt
this situation shouldn’t be too naturalistic, but should allow more dreamlike shifts
between stories. We came up with the simple notion that our characters could be
travellers who carried their stories with them as luggage. They all find themselves
stopping for a rest in the same unreal, inbetween place and sharing some of their
stories with each other and us. They share in an instinctive way as you might share
food with a fellow traveller along the road. They share in a dreamlike way, allowing
each other and us to tune in to their innermost thoughts with telepathic ease. Their
sharing brings them together, comforts them, and in some way affords them some
shelter against the “aloneness” that surrounds them, as inhospitable as snow.
In the first draft, my approach was simply to get a broader sense of meaning by
juxtaposing certain stories and anecdotes without altering them too much. After the
week of research and development, it felt appropriate to be more “hands-on” with the
material: to re-order some of it, modify its tone, extrapolate whole scenes from
passing anecdotes or boil down long stories into an essential few sentences.
Examples:
Material re-ordered – In conversation, the real person who talked about the film
Wings of Desire, spoke first about something joyful in it, an angel’s first few minutes
on earth as a mere mortal, then about something sad in it, a song the angel hears
coming out of a shop about exile and loneliness. So, his reflection about the film
ended on a melancholy note. In Close to Home, the character, Deniz, talks about
the film the other way round, ending with the uplifting part, in order to raise the spirits
of his fellow travellers.
Material modified in tone – Originally, the person who talked about the huge array of
foodstuffs available in Australia but unheard of in England was speaking in a lighthearted way about things she craved. In Close to Home, we use it differently. Katie
uses the list almost like a magic spell against the rising panic that her mother might
die without her on the other side of the world.
Whole scenes grown from anecdotes – I “made up” the following scenes, complete
with dialogue and characters, based on short descriptions:
o Deniz saying goodbye to his lover at the airport in Turkey.
o Katie getting bullied at school in Cumbria for having an Australian accent.
o Neil watching TV with his son and talking about the home birth of his baby.
Stories boiled down to an essence – When Katie talks towards the end of the piece
about keeping a sense of family in the everyday objects you have around you, it was
boiled down from a long conversation about making your own home away from your
family home.
When Deniz speaks briefly (but not lightly) about the deaths of his grandfather and
grandmother, this was derived from a much longer meditation on how grief and
homesickness can roll into one.
PRACTITIONER FACT FILE – THE ACTOR
Name: Jordan Whyte
Why did you choose to be an actor?
Ultimately, I didn’t choose to be an actor, acting chose me. I first started getting interested when I was still
in high school but I didn’t decide to be an actor ‘til I was in my early twenties, ‘til I’d finished university.
Then Theatre Alibi offered me a job! Which saved me really because it stopped me having to make a
decision. I kind of fell sideways into it. Ultimately, I chose to be an actor because I found nothing else
more stimulating, more interesting, more self-fulfilling. Although I was passionate about Art, passionate
about English, they didn’t provide the constant challenges that acting did. I’ve never found anything that’s
more constantly challenging. Every night you do a show, you’re constantly learning, constantly pushing
yourself.
How old were you?
Thirteen to fourteen when I first got interested.
Where/how did you train?
First at Cumbria Youth Theatre where you worked with professional directors, then when I chose to train,
I went on to Exeter University, and I chose to do English and Drama. The course was fundamentally
practical and based on people working together, which was, and still is, what I’m interested in.
What’s your role in the rehearsal process for Close to Home?
It’s my job to make the characters I’m playing come alive and to fulfil the writer’s, director’s and
designer’s visions of the piece. In the rehearsal room, we help to solve problems in the text to do with
staging and character, sometimes giving a different interpretation from within our characters. In Close to
Home, some of the actors contributed stories towards the show. Before doing the project it was made
very clear to me that the company needed people who were willing to give up their personal stories to the
process and allow them to be staged. Months and months before rehearsals began we were given a
research brief from the director, the musical director and the writer, asking questions about our
relationship with the idea of “home”. We were asked to think of stories and to record sounds from around
our homes and music we associated with particular stories. Then we were interviewed by the writer,
director and musical director. During the course of a long conversation we expanded on the material we’d
found in our research. Afterwards, the writer took it all away and had to make sense of hours and hours
of material. We had no idea until we saw the script, which of our stories were being included in the show.
In many ways it was delightful and interesting to find what had been chosen, and how your stories related
to other peoples’. It immediately made you think about your stories differently.
What particular challenges does this show present to you as an actor?
Contributing material for the show has made things easier in some ways, because we automatically have
a connection to the stories being told, as the material belongs to us. But there’s also a performance
difficulty in getting past playing yourself and beginning to play a character instead. One of the difficulties
is losing your own knowledge of the stories and working out how to perform them for the dramatic
purposes of the script, rather than just re-enacting your life. That’s a good part of the process, getting
away from it being your own story and being released into performing it in a different way. Playing out
your stories with different people helps you get a sense of distance. You have to react to the other actors,
who, of course aren’t the people who were originally involved. Another challenge with this show is that we
don’t ever leave the stage. Once we enter, we’re on stage until the end. There’s no chance to go offstage
and have a breather or a cup of water, or collect yourself, you have to be onstage all the time and
focussed on the action, staying within the world of the story. Therefore you have to change into different
characters in full view of the audience. There’s no running off and completely changing your costume.
You have to be able to turn very quickly into someone else and inhabit that character to make them
believable.
Every theatre company must have a different flavour. What is particular about working for
Alibi?
Alibi has a particular flavour of work. The least tangible thing with any company is understanding what the
work is about, and what the style of work is, and I think with Alibi it’s very delicate. It’s often about making
something that’s incredibly complicated look very simple. It’s not confrontational theatre, not in your face
or trying to be cleverer than the audience, if anything it’s trying to make the audience feel comfortable
enough to go on what can be quite a difficult journey. Though they might not have been in the situation
on the stage, the emotions are just about being people, it’s about being human, it’s about living.
PRACTITIONER FACT FILE – THE MUSIC DIRECTOR/COMPOSER Name: Helen
Chadwick
Why did you choose to be a music director?
I was in a theatre company and we needed some songs. Someone else normally wrote the music
but one time he was away, so I started writing songs for that company. And then I was in an
extraordinary, seven-night voice workshop with a member of Grotowski’s group, Ludwig Flaszen.
It’s hard to explain what happened, but other sounds came into my voice. Later that year, I started
writing, first of all poems and then songs. That was the beginning of me making my own work. So I
never planned to be a composer. I wanted to be a dancer. I went to theatre college wanting to
study dance. I’d already had some dance training as a child, and my dance teacher was very
theatre orientated. Also, we heard lots of classical music in the dance classes. So I grew up with
music and theatre being intricately bound up together.
How old were you?
I wrote my first song at college, so I was nineteen. Then we started our first theatre company when
I was twenty-one, and I wrote my first song for them when I was twenty-three. The first time I was
employed specifically to write music for theatre was for director, Katie Mitchell. I was about thirty.
But I’d already been writing music for my own work for a long time.
Where/How did you train?
I trained in theatre at Dartington. Then I did a voice course to train actors to use their speaking
voices at Central, but I never did a course in composition. I don’t even have music ‘A’ level. But I
did have piano lessons as a child, which is a fantastic musical training.
What’s been your role in making Close to Home?
With Dan and Dorinda, to interview the three contributors about their relationships to home; to help
audition the actors; to work with the actors every day on a physical and vocal warm-up that they
can do together on tour when I’m not there.
Then I’ve been working on the music for the show. I’ve developed the music in a number of ways:
some of the tunes were written through improvisation; one of the lyrics is a rough translation of a
Turkish song that Taylan (one of the actors in the piece) brought; I’ve also found a few poems that
are related to the themes of the show and written music for them.
Another part of my work has been with the sound designer, Duncan Chave, on the recorded
sound. We’ve played in a very open-ended way without really knowing where things might go, but
making things that relate to the performance in an overall way. For example, there’s a Turkish
instrument called a saz, and Duncan’s created a short piece of music which he’s made into a loop,
and I’ve written a song that goes with it. Or I’ve improvised Turkic scales into the microphone and
he’s added the sound of me flicking books. The Turkic scales obviously relate to Taylan, the
Turkish actor. We’ve tried to go beyond what the Music Director normally does, which is to provide
the music stipulated in the script (which, of course, we’re doing as well.)
What particular challenges does this show present to you as a music director?
Finding how the songs fit into the ideas of the play. Another thing is that there are three actors with
different singing backgrounds. That’s the same in every show, but three is not that many actors in
terms of singing. I’ve done shows where you’ve got seventeen actors on stage. So the kind of
noise you can make with three or seventeen actors is very different.
What’s particular about working for Alibi?
Because it’s a small company there’s a very friendly atmosphere. The people who are permanently
employed here make a big effort to make the experience of working for the company a good one,
which I really appreciate. I think that’s more often the case with smaller companies. Also, Alibi has
a very strong relationship to storytelling, and this show is yet another way in which that’s being
explored.
PRACTITIONER FACT FILE – THE STAGE MANAGER Name: Laura Dillon
Why did you choose to be a Stage Manager?
I’ve been into theatre since I was a little. I did dance as a child and all that sort of thing. Then I
grew out of performing, but still loved the theatre. Much later someone offered me the opportunity
to shadow an ASM (Assistant Stage Manager) on a show at the Plymouth Theatre Royal in The
Drum. I loved it – it’s a practical and creative job, and I really enjoy that mix. I decided that was
what I wanted to do, so I applied to drama schools to do Stage Management.
How old were you?
I went to theatre school when I was eighteen.
Where did you train?
I went to The Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did a degree course in Stage Management. It was
very hard work. Although it’s a degree course, you’re not like a normal university student. All my
friends only had about three hours of lectures a week. I was in school at eight a.m. every day and
finished at seven p.m. most nights, and sometimes doing shows in the evening. In your first year
you do lesson-based training. You do lighting rig-ups and build sets, things like that. Then in your
second and third years you actually put on the student shows, which are pretty much like
professional shows, except they rehearse for six weeks rather than three. And you get to do all
sorts – lighting design, prop making, set building, sound… everything. You choose in your last year
what you specialize in. I chose Stage Management and Props.
What’s your role in the process of making Close to Home?
Organising everybody to a degree, although Dorinda does a great deal more than other directors
might. That takes a bit of the pressure off. Also, I deal with all the money and budgeting side of
things. And I help the design team with practical things including making props and the set, doing
the scenic art, going shopping etc. The biggest job has been making the set look like it’s made out
of old wood. We’ve been doing that with fibreglass, which is a very long process, very smelly, very
dirty and very sticky. You build up the surface with polyurethane foam, which you sand away to get
the right shape and then cover with sheets of fibreglass and stick them on with resin. It’s a difficult
job, but when it’s finished the end result is rock hard, so we’ve got a very durable, tourable set
now. I won’t be spending half my time on tour mending it. Also, I generally do all the paperwork
and running round that you wouldn’t expect the designer or the director to do.
What particular challenges does this show present to you as stage manager?
Pretty much the whole job actually, but in a really positive way! I only graduated a couple of years
ago. I’m really happy I’ve done it. The other Stage Manager positions I’ve done have been a lot
less responsibility. This is more like being a Production Manager, minding the budget, ordering
materials etc. Normally as a Stage Manager I’d just be looking after the props and managing my
own team. It’s been a real challenge to think about all aspects of the production at all times. There
aren’t enough hours in the day! You find that there are things that you haven’t thought of. So that’s
been really difficult, trying to juggle everything.
What is particular about working for Alibi?
Alibi works in a very different way, in terms of the role of the director, the designer, the writer…
Usually you never see the writer during rehearsals. They might pop their head in to see a run, or
you might get an email from them. That’s how it usually works in a rep theatre. At Alibi, the writer is
there throughout rehearsals. And the director wouldn’t usually take such a role in organising
everything like the rehearsal schedule, the production week, the sound etc. Normally that would be
the Deputy Stage Manager’s role. In most theatres you might see the designer a couple of times a
week during rehearsals. They might send you pictures, and you’ll have one really complicated
meeting with them each week, asking them what they want. But at Alibi, the designer, Stuart, is
here as many hours as I am. So we’re working very much as a team. Decisions that need to be
made are made on the spot, which I think is definitely the way it should be done! It makes
everyone’s job so much easier. Obviously it’s great that his assistant, Trina, is here and we’re all
working together. She’s not off in her own workshop somewhere, making props that end up
nowhere near what you want. It’s definitely a real team effort, nobody working on their own.
PRACTITIONER FACT FILE – THE DESIGNER
Name: Stuart Nunn
Why did you choose to be a designer?
I went to see The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at the Bradford Alhambra when I
was a child. I’d not really been to the theatre much before that – my parents weren’t
big theatre-goers. I saw this amazing production with a beautiful design and I thought
it was a form of magic. I wanted to work in the world where that sort of thing
happened all the time. I was too young then to understand how that picture had been
created, I just knew that when you went to the theatre, magical things could happen. I
wanted to learn more about theatre, but I didn’t know in what role. When you go to a
youth theatre group, it’s assumed you want to be an actor. I realised I wanted to be a
designer when I realised how bad an actor I was! I was quite lucky, when I was
fifteen I got involved with a fantastic theatre company in my home town, Halifax, The
Actor’s Workshop, run by an eccentric and inspiring man called Mike Ward. I realised
no-one else was particularly interested in design or putting sets and costumes
together, so I offered to have a go. I designed four or five shows for them. It was very
good practice.
How old were you?
I was about fifteen when I started designing shows for The Actor’s Workshop. I was
sixteen or seventeen when I decided I wanted to work as a professional theatre
designer.
Where did you train?
By the time I decided I wanted to be a theatre designer I’d already made my choice
of subjects at school and gone down the humanities route, Geography and Religious
Studies etc. Previously I’d wanted to be a forestry warden, something outdoors like
that, but I soon realised I wanted to do something creative instead. So I had to go
back and do GCSE Art alongside the ‘A’ levels I’d already chosen. I was also trying
to learn more about theatre, so I went part-time to a local college to do an ‘A’ level in
theatre studies as well. It was hard but it was worth it. I got the bare requirements to
get onto an art foundation course. Then I got a place on my first choice of degree
course at The Nottingham Trent University and spent three years there. As soon as I
graduated I started assisting established designers, watching how they worked,
making 1:25 scale models of the designs, etc. I think that was the most significant
part of my training in many ways.
What’s your role in the process of making Close to Home?
With the set, I’ve tried to provide a space, in a physical and an artistic sense that
supports the climate of the piece, while creating an image that explores its themes
and emotions. The design needs to comment on the piece without overshadowing it.
I started by reading the script and trying to get inside the minds of the characters.
Then I talked with Dorinda, the director, and tried to get inside her head, get her
vision of the piece, and also the writer. Then I started making sketches and rough
models, trying to work out by a process of elimination what was needed. Once a
rough model of the design was agreed, I made a final model that would be an exact
replica at 1:25 of what we’d see on stage. Then I produced technical drawings to
show how the set should be made and handed them over to the set builder. When
the set was built it came back to us. Because Alibi is quite a small company and
because we’re working to a budget, we finished the set ourselves, sculpting it with
fibreglass and painting it. The costume design had to meet a variety of needs. The
show is set in two distinct time frames, in the 70’s and today. Also, the actors are
very physical on the set so they need to be very free to move. They need to inhabit
each others stories so they need to quickly change age and gender, but the changes
have to look very in control, not like a dressing-up party. Finally, the characters have
to look like they inhabit the world of the set, that they are real people in an outdoor
environment. The props for this show are unusual in that they all have to come out of
bags that the actors carry on their backs. Also, they have to seem precious to the
characters, they can’t just look like a random selection of objects. And of course,
there’s the issue of puppets. Puppet making is a whole skill in itself. Trina Bramman,
the Design Assistant, has taken my design sketches for the puppets and worked with
the actors to decide how they are operated. She then built up the form and character
around the basic mechanical structure. Ultimately she has taken the original design
and made it her own. There’s an element of my job that is managing the strengths of
the people around me, bringing out their skills. We’re lucky that Trina is a very skilled
puppet maker and Laura Dillon, the Stage Manager is a great props finder and keeps
us all on schedule. Also, we’re lucky to have the skills of scenic artist, Meg Surrey,
who painted the floor and backcloth. What is really important for a designer is to work
well the lighting designer, in this case Marcus Bartlett, because it is only through his
interpretation that my work is seen by the audience. The end result is richer than I
can envisage at the beginning of all the processes because the final design that the
audience see is in fact a guided collaboration of so many people.
What particular challenges does this show present you as a designer?
The scale of this show is a challenge for me. This is the first time I’ve worked on a
small-scale show. I’m used to working for much bigger spaces. It makes for a very
intense experience. It frees you up to be more imaginative somehow. The scale
doesn’t allow for any changes of scenery, no theatre tricks, no flying things in and
out. It’s all got to be done in front of the audience. So, it’s an honest way of working.
Also, the fact that the show tours, that the set has all got to fit in a van, is a challenge.
I have to rely on the experience of Allan Veal, the set builder to think of clever ways
that things come apart etc. I’ve never had to make so much stuff before and I’ve
never done any scenic painting before. I’ve always told other people what to do. With
doing so much of the making, I’ve found it a challenge to keep an eye on the bigger
picture. The final result will be quite a surprise to me which is exciting but I somehow
feel just on the edge of being in control! Things are always changing day by day.
What’s particular about working for Alibi?
I think that it is really important to see the piece as part of the development of the
company. It is a company with a massive catalogue of inventive and exciting work,
there’s a huge resource of experience to draw upon. There’s also a recognition of the
difficulties of being a new member of a wider team, there’s lot of creative support but
also lots of really practical support from the office staff which is essential when you
are away from home for five weeks!
EVOLUTION OF THE SET DESIGN FOR CLOSE TO HOME
These images show some of the designer, Stuart Nunn’s inspirations,
sketches, models and technical drawings for Close to Home. Looking at them
gives a vivid sense of the many different ideas explored in the design process.
In the commentary that accompanies the images, Stuart outlines some of his
thinking.
1. My first reaction to the piece. A sense of comfort, humanity, and
the natural environment. The hand feels almost parental.
2. This sketch for a structure on stage embodies contrasts between
interior and exterior, shelter and exposure, safety and danger. It’s
also intentionally ambiguous as to what it is.
3. A dream-like, derelict, railway waiting-room in the middle of an
empty wilderness. It has a sense of limbo, of waiting for
something that’s never going to arrive.
4. This design puts the spiral of the staircase in picture 2. into a
vertical plane. It’s like looking down a stairwell. It gives me a
sense of lots of people living on all the other floors.
5. A photo taken by the travel writer, Bruce Chatwin, of an abandoned
sheep farm in Patagonia. I like the vertical of the telegraph pole, a
connection between earth and the celestial, and the phone lines, which
give a sense of connections between people over great distances. The
fireplace seems poignant to me – the hearth should be the heart of a
home. Where are the people who lived there now?
6. This is a rough sketch-model of the chosen design at 1:50. The
feel of the structure is of a pier or part of a bridge, reaching out
but not connecting. You can reach out to the past but you can’t
touch it. It also has a sense of launch, of taking off.
7. The final, full-colour model at 1:25. The proportions have been
fine-tuned. Having decided on the colours of the set, I can now
move on to consider costume design. The model is also a tool for
me to communicate with set builders, scenic artists etc. and
provides the actors with their first glimpse of the design.
8. Here are some of the technical drawings I made to help the setbuilder construct the set. A designer needs to be able to translate
something painterly into a practical language.
EVOLUTION OF A MOMENT
The Little House and the End of Close to Home.
In the first draft of Close to Home, the piece ended in a very different way.
After sharing their stories, the characters parted company. Neil and Katie
packed their bags and set off into the night in different directions, while Deniz
remained on stage until the end, sitting on his bench looking at the stars. On
reflection, after the Research and Development week, it was decided to
change the ending. It felt too sombre somehow, that after meeting and
sharing something of their lives, the characters dispersed into the night like
ghosts.
Instead, we came to the idea that Deniz might put up a tent by the end of the
show and invite the other characters into it. This seemed a warmer ending
and gave a sense that “home” might be re-found in the connections we make
with others throughout our lives. Also, if the tent had windows through which
warm light might glow, it would echo the house Deniz refers to when talking
about Wings of Desire, the house in a snowy forest, an archetypal image of
home and company. A tent felt right too because it made sense within the
proposed set design. A tent put up in an exposed place spoke of vulnerability
but also of resourcefulness.
The designer then took the idea of a tent further and had Deniz make a
shelter within the abandoned structure that the characters find themselves
drawn to. This was practically easier than putting up a tent on stage. It also
felt appropriate for Deniz to be improvising a shelter within an existing
environment. It spoke of human adaptability to given circumstances. The
designer took advantage of the dreamlike world of the piece to allow the set to
transform magically towards the end of the show and make a vivid picture of
the little house in the forest Deniz is talking about.
Finally, the inside of Deniz’s shelter has been made to look as inviting as
possible. Like many aspects of the show it contains real things alongside
more dreamlike objects - enamel camping mugs, hot tea and candles,
alongside the inner walls of the shelter lined with hundreds of pages of books.
Deniz’s spontaneous, impromptu hospitality gives the end of the show a
sense of hope, that people might be able to shelter each other from aloneness
in the sharing of their stories.
“(…It begins to snow. They look at Deniz’s tent – it has little
windows of opaque plastic that shed a warm light. Then they start
their journeys, but when they’re a little way off, Deniz comes out
and sweeps open the whole front of his shelter like a curtain.
Yellow light spills out from two camping lamps. There’s a carpet
on the floor, a small Turkish carpet. Hot food is laid out. The inner
surface of the shelter is papered with the pages of books. A place
is set for Katie and Neil. Deniz looks for them, surprised that he
can’t see them. When he sees them on their way off, he beckons
to them.)
Deniz
Come in. Please…”
TIMETABLE OF EVENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF CLOSE TO HOME
Director, writer and company discuss making a show about “home” based on true
stories
Autumn 2003
↓
Theatre Alibi applies for a grant from the Arts Council of Great Britain to tour the
show nationally
January 2004
↓
Arts Council award the money
May 2004
↓
People chosen to gather stories about “home” from
April/May 2004
↓
Research brief sent to contributors. Their research begins
Early June 2004
↓
Material gathered from contributors and integrated by the writer into a first draft of the
script
July 2004
↓
Tour is booked
Summer 2004
↓
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT WEEK – Artistic team (director,
composer/musical director, writer, designer, actors and stage manager) spend a
week trying out ideas of how the show might be staged
August 2004
↓
Design process begins
September-November 2004
↓
Script re-written
October-November 2004
↓
Publicity designed
November 2004
↓
Main rehearsal period and production week – lighting and sound rigged and plotted,
tech and dress rehearsals
th
24 January – 24th February 2005
↓
First public performance of Close to Home
25th February 2005
↓
National tour
February – April 2005
↓
Feedback meeting to discuss how everything went
March 2005