UK theatre has a rich heritage of work outside theatrical spaces, from schools to site-specific and from universities to prisons. But theatre and film company Second Shot Productions is doing something a little bit different. Based within the walls of HMP & YOI Doncaster, the company works with serving prisoners, ex-offenders and others. With projects ranging from film-making and graphic design through to drama and arts projects, offered in both custodial and non-custodial settings, Second Shot arrives at Soho Theatre next week with its unique show, Glory Dazed.

Who are Second Shot Productions?

We’re a company and trade for profit, but as a social enterprise all of that profit is invested back into our projects. We’re committed to providing education, training and employment to serving prisoners and ex-offenders, and using the arts to facilitate positive change. To that end we currently employ 15 serving prisoners at HMP & YOI Doncaster who work for the company full time. They are trained to deliver our services whilst working towards a BTEC in Creative Media Production.

The ideas and stories we explore in our theatre productions tend to be those that have some kind of relevance to prisoners and ex-offenders. We have worked with our team at HMP Doncaster to look at theatre as a way of exploring restorative justice and drugs awareness, for example, and then performing these pieces on the wings of the prison so as to make them available to as much of the prison population as possible. We also produce regular children’s plays in collaboration with students studying Applied Theatre at Central School of Speech and Drama which allows the prisoner participants’ families the chance to come and see a different side to their loved one as they perform on stage.

How does being based within the walls of a prison affect who you are as a company?

It allows us to work towards reducing reoffending by offering training and education in theatre, film, design and music that may otherwise be unavailable to those serving custodial sentences. Working at Second Shot is seen as a privilege by those who work for us and in them we instil a sense of pride in doing something constructive with their time in prison.

Working in a professional job for the first time can be daunting when you’re not in prison, but it is an opportunity to learn how to hold down a job upon release, whether that be in the arts or not the fundamentals remain the same.

It’s also important for us to allow our team to explore talents they may have or just be developing if this is their first chance of working in theatre and film; some are very natural theatre practitioners whilst others have a great eye for film or turn of phrase for journalism. In developing skills in these areas, the team comes together on corporate projects as well as those designed for the BTEC.

Where did the idea for Glory Dazed come from?

I’d been working at HMP Doncaster for a few months when the Governor, who was also new to the prison, asked if I’d noticed that many of the prisoners seemed to have had experiences in the Armed Forces before they came to prison. I hadn’t noticed it until that point, but it struck me as true and I started to do a bit of research. I discovered that some organisations working in criminal justice think that as many as one in ten of the UK prison population are ex-servicemen, although the Government puts the figure a lot lower than this.

Could you tell us a bit about the show itself?

Glory Dazed tells the story of Ray, a returning soldier who turns up, after hours, at his mate’s pub in Doncaster, looking for his estranged wife. It takes place in real time over an hour as Ray tries to win Carla back, only to discover that she is seeing his mate Simon. The story unfolds to reveal the truths of Ray and Carla’s relationship but also the reasons why she stayed with him for so long.

The play is also Second Shot’s first full-scale professional theatre production. We rehearsed it at HMP Doncaster so that prisoners and ex-offenders could take part in the project as stage managers, set builders, graphic and web designers, photographers, film-makers and musicians.

How did it develop during theses early stages at Doncaster?

We began with a number of discussion groups involving ex-servicemen serving prison sentences at HMP & YOI Doncaster. The men discussed their experiences of both being in the armed forces and their return to civilian life. To varying degrees they revealed difficulties with alcohol, aggression and multiculturalism, and a deterioration in their relationship with their families.

Following these discussions I took away all the information and developed a story and the opening section of the play. This was taken back to the ex-servicemen, this time through a number of drama workshops run by the play’s director, in which they were asked to improvise alongside professional actors, to further develop the characters and the story. This helped to provide further ideas and insights from which a first complete draft of the play was written.

What was the relationship like between the writer and the ex-servicemen involved in creating the show?

It was a great experience working with the ex-servicemen. In follow-up sessions, they all said that they found the process really interesting and valuable, to be able to share their experiences in this way. By the end of the development process I’d like to think there was a mutual respect between the ex-servicemen, the actors and me. They were very frank about what they were willing to discuss, but I was adamant from the outset that Ray wouldn’t be based on a particular person and that none of the stories in the play would be real. I was more interested in trying to find an emotional truth than in depicting something that had actually happened to a particular individual. Some of the stories that the ex-servicemen told were harrowing and very moving, but it would have felt exploitative to put these experiences into a play.

Has the production evolved much over the past year from visiting the Edinburgh and Adelaide festivals?

Yes, the show has changed since its first festival run and that’s for a number of reasons. Due to availability, we had to recast the role of Leanne and that meant that there would inevitably be some changes as to how the actors worked together as a different group. The original cast members had the opportunity to re-examine their roles between the two tours as well and this meant that when rehearsals for Adelaide started, they had each gone on a journey with their characters since playing them in Edinburgh. That showed through in Adelaide as they became increasingly comfortable in each role. I also think that having to consider how aspects of the play would go down with an Australian audience made everyone focus more closely on how each character could engage with the audience and this brought an added edge to the performances as well. The overall result is very positive, because now the play has an intensity to it that has only developed over time. The sense of urgency and desperation of the situation makes it feel very claustrophobic and I’m hoping that this will be further heightened at Soho Theatre.

What kind of issues are you trying to tackle with the production?

When we began the discussions, we started by considering the question: why do so many ex-servicemen end up in prison? The ex-servicemen provided varied and interesting answers that were in part what I was expecting and knew to be true, about lack of support and reacclimatisation to civilian life, but they also raised things I hadn’t considered, like certain personality types being drawn to the army, and how these might be the same personality types who could find themselves in trouble with the law. I don’t know whether this is true or not, but it seemed like an interesting thing to explore.

The ex-servicemen were all different ages and had served in a number of different places as a result, but it seemed that age didn’t dictate whether you were more or less likely to have difficulties when leaving the forces. Some struggled because they went from a very regimented life to a much freer one. Many had seen really horrific things and had either received very minimal or no counselling to deal with those things. Some of the men were from backgrounds where they felt they had very little opportunity and that going into the Army had merely postponed the almost inevitable downfall of becoming involved in crime and being imprisoned. Some had been discharged from the Army because their mental stability had been in question, though this wasn’t followed up in their civilian life. Some, particularly those involved in special operations, talked about being trained as killers, but not ‘detrained’ when those skills were no longer required. Some of the men mentioned a big drinking culture in the army and that for many years, periods of leave had been characterised by getting very drunk and getting into fights. While the army was in some way tolerant of this, the men found themselves in trouble with the police when they behaved in the same way on civvy street without the army’s protection.

Finally, what can audiences expect from the production?

Sometimes people ask where the humour comes from in such a bleak theme, but I think even the bleakest stories have humour in them, for the simple reason that human beings are funny and our sense of humour is almost at its sharpest at moments of adversity. One of the things that really stood out about meeting the ex-servicemen was that they were quite witty and funny and enjoyed a very entertaining banter with each other. This is also true of prisoners generally in my experience; there’s a certain gallows humour that is generated when human beings share difficult experiences together.

Hopefully they will see it as funny and entertaining but also because the characters are believable, audiences will engage with them and the themes raised in the play. I think characters that behave badly but are still likeable are very attractive to audiences, because we’re all flawed but we all have redeeming features.

Glory Dazed plays at Soho Theatre Upstairs from 23 April to 11 May. For tickets and more information, visit http://www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/glory-dazed/.

Image credit: Alex Brenner

Jonathan McGuinness plays numerous roles in Vesturport’s reinvention of Kafka’s literary masterpiece, Metamorphosis. Complete with gymnastics and a spectacular set, this highly physical adaptation has been playing  at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, on its third London outing since the original sell-out tour in 2006. Having reached the end of its run, McGuinness reflects on his experiences of both the play and working with the Icelandic company Vesturport.

Metamorphosis itself begins with Gregor Samsa waking to find himself transformed into an unspecified type of creature. His family are, understandably, horrified. But for McGuinness, it wasn’t the story alone that drew him to this production: “Initially what excited me was the opportunity to be working with Vestuport: learning about the way they work, rather than the specific roles,” he explains. “When I first met them, the script wasn’t even finalised. I knew what the parts were, but these parts changed quite a lot during rehearsals.”

Companies wishing to stage adaptations of Kafka’s German novels generally use English translations of the original text, or do their own interpretation of the German text. “David and Gisli [Farr and Örn Gardarsson, the directors] essentially worked from English translations, however they did look at the opening lines quite a lot.” These “opening lines” have caused debate amongst numerous translators and today there are still two different versions of these lines. The first states: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin”. However, the term “monstrous vermin” becomes “gigantic insect” in the other most common version, as translators dispute which is closer to Kafka’s German term, “verwandelt”.  Because of the difficulty of this translation, McGuinness explains that “[Vesturport] didn’t want to specify what the creature Gregor transforms into was. We had quite a lot of debate about how to stage this, wondering whether we would have some sort of costume to represent his transformation, for example. In the end, we settled on not doing any of that, instead, leaving it to the audience’s imagination.”

Although the book is called Metamorphosis, McGuinness points out that Gregor has transformed before the play actually begins. “What you see in the play and what you read in the book is actually the metamorphosis of everyone else around him – how they react to his changing. So we thought that to have a big, buggy costume would just look a bit ridiculous in the end.” I suggest that with Gregor’s movements, jumps and swings across the walls appearing so uncannily insect-esque, a costume hardly seems needed somehow. “We decided it was better for him to dress normally whilst everyone else reacts as if he has changed into something repulsive,” McGuinness agrees.

With regards to other decisions of what to use from the novel, McGuinness recalls, “From the English translation we came up with a storyboard of scenes that they wanted in the play, then wrote the scenes up and chopped and changed those quite a lot in rehearsals, playing around with the order they came in, so it became its own thing once we were in rehearsals… They amalgamated some moments in the book and added a couple of scenes that aren’t in the book. For example, there’s a scene where all the family have dinner together, which isn’t in the book but it seemed to be the only way we could get everyone to interact together in one moment.”

Vesturport are no strangers to staging physical theatre, and perhaps it’s therefore not surprising they chose to create their own reinvention of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, as opposed to staging Steven Berkoff’s adaptation. “Gisli, the Artistic Director, had represented Iceland as a gymnast when he was young, so the physical nature of the play, the circus style and aerial work, were key to his vision,” explains McGuinness. “David Farr, who was then the Artistic Director at The Lyric, wanted to work with Gisli and he suggested Metamorphosis, which Gisli liked the idea of, so they settled on it.” Vesturport’s artistic vision and set design are original, too. “Gisli’s initial ideas for how to stage the play was formed around his vision of the set – one room on top of another, with the top room flipped 90 degrees, so that the furniture appears to be  on the wall – was one of the primary ideas. The other artistic decisions were formed around that.”

Metamorphosis was originally published in 1915, and so it would have been understandable for Vesturport to have chosen to highlight different elements of the story, to make it accessible and enjoyable for a modern day audience. However, McGuinness insists, “Metamorphosis is a classic novel in that it’s open to your own interpretation, and anyone who has felt like a bit of an outsider at some point in their lives, or a bit misunderstood or ignored, can relate to it”. Recalling the first read-through, he tells me: ”I was amazed to find it had been published in 1915. It’s a really old piece and yet it still feels quite modern.” For McGuinness and many others, Metamorphosis has a timeless quality. “What I find interesting when we talk to audiences is that a lot of teenagers in young audiences relate to it, because essentially, Metamorphosis depicts the story of a young guy, in his bedroom, going through changes whilst no-one understands him.” Likening the play to ”an average teenager’s story”, McGuinness describes the “lack of communication” Gregor has with his family and others around him, as a process common to many teenagers.

In terms of style, McGuinness explains that, after lengthy discussions in rehearsals, Vesturport chose to use a slightly heightened Gothic style for their production. He recalls that there was a consensus amongst all involved to draw out and emphasise the humour of the play, too. “The story is quite abstract and there’s a lot about it which is quite comedic. We wanted to draw out that element of humour and sharpen the contrast with the darker elements, making the two quite extreme in opposition to one another.” Indeed, once you have laughed at Gregor’s father chasing and swatting him with a newspaper, you cannot help but feel a deep pain for him, as he is slowly dying, whilst his family, unable to understand him, continue to shut him out of their lives.

The basis of Kafka’s novel is an interior monologue of Gregor’s thoughts, and transforming these internal musings into a play that gives both dialogue and perspective to other characters was a challenge Vesturport had to overcome. McGuinness explains, “To stage the play, we had to turn these thoughts into a dialogue between the various characters. In turn, this meant we had to bring other characters to the fore a bit more than they originally were in Kafka’s novel and concentrate on the family dynamic, rather than Gregor’s mind.”

Music is inherent in this production, with a score written and produced by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, another element that makes their production differ from those preceding it. “Warren Ellis was often in rehearsals with us and from that he wrote a sound scape to play throughout most of the show, making it almost filmic, and that’s something which is not always done in theatre – a lot of productions use less music.” For McGuinness, the experimenting with styles and looking beyond the boundaries of Berkoff’s adaptation, also played an important role: “We played around with lots of different styles in rehearsals, from doing bits completely naturalistically to completely over the top.” The most emotional aspects of the play truly emerge in the final scenes with an accompanying song written by Musical Director Nick Cave. “The sun’s rising and everything feels quite different again. We found people were quite affected by that.” At this moment, Gregor is left hanging upside down from a red rope, as if underground, whilst his parents smile and push his sister on a swing in the garden above. “The audience are thrown so fast between the humour and the tragedy of the play. Like life, it’s not black and white.”

Vesturport’s Metamorphosis played at the Lyric Hammersmith in February and is now on tour, visiting international venues. For more information, visit http://vesturport.com/theater/metamorphosis-hamskiptin/.

Image credit: Vesturport

Sex, money and the world wide web in Shanghai: this weekend saw the premiere of Consumed, a play produced in a revolutionary new collaboration between Border Crossings, Shanghai Arts Centre and Tara Arts. A love story set in the virtual world and a visual spectacular, Laura Turner spoke to Michael Walling, the Director of this unique show created by theatremakers from the UK and China.

What is Consumed?
We devised Consumed in co-operation with the hugely prestigious Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre from China. We’d worked with them before on Re-Orientations (a play spanning the UK, China, India and Sweden, which ran at Soho Theatre in 2010), and their leading actress Song Ru Hui wanted to do another, more concentrated piece with us. So this time there are just three characters, caught up in a web of personal and business relationships, and attempting to communicate through new technologies. It’s got industrial espionage, language games and a very modern love triangle!

Why did you decide to create a play on this theme?
Because that’s the world we live in. Our lives aren’t shaped by cultural tradition or political decisions any more. Our lives today are shaped by the interests of trans-national corporations. The internet is playing a huge part in the shaping of this new globalised world, and so we wanted to address that. In some ways it’s quite tricky – being on the internet could actually be quite boring theatrically because people just sit and type. So we wanted to find ways of showing how these new technologies impact on the living body – and that’s where it turns into exciting visual theatre.

So it’s about communication?
Yes – it’s really basic to everything we do. On one level, all theatre is about communication, of course – dialogue between characters, dialogue between the audience and the stage. We are trying to push that further – deliberately setting up barriers to communication so as to make the art form move on.

The two main characters can’t speak the same language, though, surely raising the theme of our lack of communication, too?
Language is just one form of communication, of course, and in some ways the play is quite positive about just how much these characters do manage to engage with one another in the absence of a common language. But what we found, as we explored the technology and the lifestyle of these business people who are constantly on the move, was the way in which our world, which is apparently so linked-up, is actually isolating us from one another. In many ways, it’s a play about loneliness and the desperate desire to communicate that emanates from that.

The bilingual element of the production must come with challenges.
It’s fantastically, unbelievably difficult! But the difficulty is the point: we wanted to address complexity, and so the work has to be complex too. Our multi-media artist, Dori Deng, is Chinese but lives here, and she’s totally bilingual. Her cross-cultural, cross-media brain is like the meeting point where all the different strands of the piece come together, and I don’t think I could have done this without her!

Is the production cross-cultural in feel as well as theme?
Clearly modern China is key – and we’ve been very interested in the enormous cultural shifts that have happened in the last 30 years. The contrast between the China of the characters’ youth in the 1980s and today is very intense – it’s difficult to imagine what it must be like to live through a revolution like that. In terms of theatre, Chinese performers are very Stanislavskian, very focused on the characters’ psychological journeys. My approach as a director leading a devising process is very different from that – for me the psychology is something which emerges once you’ve located the different things the character does in order for the story to unravel. What’s happening now, in the last weeks of rehearsal, is that these processes are coming together in a very exciting way.

How has the storytelling developed?
The way we work on our devised pieces is to have an initial development workshop, during which we create the characters and key storylines, and make some of the main scenes. Then there’s a dramaturgical period, during which we work on the script, create a structure and flesh it all out with more research. The rehearsal period carries on developing the work within that structure, so we can be really precise about the journey of each character, and how one event leads to another.

So what effect do you hope Consumed has on audiences?
I hope they will recognise themselves in it.  The struggles people go through to overcome the ever-more isolated existence of the modern world: the yearning to reach out and touch. I hope that will be very true to all our experiences today, and so very moving. There are questions they might ask as well: How can we work out a relationship with what will soon be the world’s most powerful nation, given that the cultures are so different? How do we reconcile ourselves with history? Has modern communication technology really brought us closer, or has it actually made us more isolated? What, as human beings, can we really share?

Find out more about Consumed and Border Crossings at http://tara-arts.com/whats-on/consumed/about.

Image credit: Richard Davenport

Emerging South-West company Idiot Child has been making a name for itself over the past couple of years with a playful mix of movement, emotion and storytelling. With the support of Bristol Old Vic and accolades from the likes of Lyn Gardner behind them, it’s no cliché to say there’s nothing idiotic about co-producer and Susie Riddell and Jimmy Whiteaker, writer and performer of I could’ve been better, a show about swimming competitions and turning 30. Currently at the Pleasance Islington until Sunday, they tell AYT’s Laura Turner more about the show, working with friends and some unique dentistry dreams.

Who are Idiot Child?

Riddell: Idiot Child was born out of friendship. Jimmy had written a play, Nostalgia, which was being produced by Theatre West in Bristol and which Anna [Harpin] was directing. I was already friends with Jimmy and auditioned for the play and got the part. So the three of us worked together on that and had a great time and found that our senses of humour and attitudes to theatre were very similar. So we decided to form a company to enable us to work together more. Ruth [Richardson] came on board at the start of 2012 to help with our application to the Arts Council and to be a co-producer.

You each have different specialisms that you bring to the core team – do you stick to these strictly?

Riddell: Our roles have been quite defined for this show as doing a tour has increased the work load for all of us. We will mix about a bit for our next show but this process has helped define what each of us like doing and how we work together in fulfilling those roles. But we all do lots of other things as well as Idiot Child! Anna is a lecturer in drama at Exeter University and is about to publish her first book; Ruth is a participatory arts manager working across all art forms (not just theatre); Jimmy is a successful performer and writer outside of Idiot Child. I am a jobbing actress and have just finished working as a member of the BBC Radio Drama Company. So really it is quite amazing that we have all managed to juggle our other commitments with running a theatre company and to complicate matters further, we all live in different cities – Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham and London!

Things obviously mesh well though; you agreed on a striking name for the company. Where did “Idiot Child” come from?

Whiteaker: Idiot child is a term that was hurled at me a few times as a kid. It’s a term that’s funny and slightly harsh, which reflects our work: childlike and a bit bleak!

So is I could’ve been better typical of your work? What can audiences expect?

Whiteaker: A good story told in an interesting way. They can expect it to be theirs alone; a show that’ll never be repeated for any other audience. We make a point of celebrating the audience, using quite a bit of (very low risk) audience participation. They can expect to laugh and be moved and be taken on an unusual journey.

The production developed from a scratch performance as part of Bristol Old Vic Ferment in 2011.

Whiteaker: We put it together for that scratch in under a week and the Old Vic generously asked us to develop it for a three night run the next year. After that they gave us a bit of money for us to finish the show for a two week run in their studio this Autumn season. In many ways the show is the same show as the original scratch: primary images we had remain. First instincts (after going in different directions) have proved correct in many instances.

It sounds like the Old Vic has really nurtured you – and now you have support from the Arts Council too. How does it feel?

Riddell: Fantastic! The Ferment team at the Bristol Old Vic have been so helpful and encouraging as the piece has developed and a 12 performance run in the Bristol Old Vic Studio gave us the opportunity to test the piece and our ideas about theatre over a fortnight, with a constantly changing audience – some who knew us and most who didn’t. People want to come back and want to share their experience with us. That is absolutely invaluable.

What does the future hold?

Riddell: We’re aiming to tour I could’ve been better to a wider audience next year and to develop and tour You’re not doing it right, taking both shows to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and other arts festivals. But mostly, keep playing. Enjoying it. Wanting to do it, rather than slogging away at it. It should be a pleasure as much as hard work.

And in your wildest dreams?

Susie: To be one of the Arts Council’s portfolio organisations – to receive funding enabling Idiot Child to continue developing new work and to be able to work in different areas (such as education). In the current economic climate with so many organisations clamouring for funding, this would be amazing and quite an achievement. Fingers crossed…

Whiteaker: I’d like to reduce the size of my teeth as I look like a horse and there’s always some sort of joke about them in every show.

I could’ve been better plays at Pleasance Islington until 18 November. Find out more about the company at www.idiotchild.com or book tickets for the show at http://www.pleasance.co.uk/islington/events/i-couldve-been-better.

Image credit: Matt Collins, Crush Images. Lighting Design by Aaron J Dootson.