The UK premiere of Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries is being staged at The Gate until 16 February. Mariah Gale and Felix Scott’s performances have already been highly praised in this intense 80-minute two-hander, described variously as a “crazily watchable anti-rom com” and “a fiercely honest story of modern America”. I chatted to Leverhulme Bursary-winning Director Justin Audibert about working on the show, his advice for young directors and what the future might hold.

Let me say now that the answer to that last point involves discussing the sex lives of the over 65s; a statement which I hope goes some way to demonstrate Audibert’s lively character and that he’s an interesting director. Trained on the Theatre Directing MFA at Birkbeck University, this 31 year-old has got his foot firmly in the door. He is Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio, holder of the 2012 Leverhulme Award, Associate Director at the Finborough and an education practitioner for the RSC and Told By An Idiot. So it’s no surprise he’s been heralded as “one to watch” on the back of this recent production.

Audibert is drawn to plays that “question why human beings do the things that they do”, and sees all art as a great reflector of the choices of humanity. He looks for writers who “create dialogue that has something to it, a wit or a character”. Upon first read of Gruesome Playground Injuries he was impressed by the sharpness of the writing and the way it “zings off the page”. He was also excited by the challenge of having to show the two characters moving from age eight to 38. A lot of rehearsal was spent “filling in the blanks” of their relationship between the ages, work that manifests itself in the show’s transitions.

In Audibert’s words this play is “a time hopping dysfunctional love story between two damaged people”. The rehearsal process was spent untangling this love story, and examining the nature of pain. Audibert describes himself as a text-based director, taking a Stanislavskian approach of discerning character’s objectives and obstacles and “looking for the clues with the actors in the text”. He learnt from Katie Mitchell’s book The Director’s Craft to seek the events in each scene – events that make everything shift for the characters. Working in this way he and the cast “made a set of choices that gave us an agreed set of parameters through which we were going to tell the story”.

He describes being a director as having “a desire to tell stories clearly”; it is the director’s job to coach the actors “so they feel as confident, happy and committed as they possibly can while they’re on stage, and have a clear sense of why they’re telling this story”. The big questions Audibert identified in Gruesome Playground Injuries are “why do we sometimes have relationships that are bad for us, and why do we love people that are damaged?” To help explore these in rehearsal he worked with movement director Joe Wild. Looking at the physical signifiers of age, and also of pain and injury, was combined with the focused text work. One of the major questions examined movement-wise was “the difference between pain in an immediate sense and long term decay”.

It’s certainly not an easy subject to work with, but Audibert explains how the rehearsal room always maintained a fun atmosphere: “anytime we got a bit stressed we’d play a game, run around the room like idiots or eat cake”. He speaks fondly of the process of working with his entire team, and says the show wouldn’t be what it is without the input of all involved. Lily Arnold’s design, for example, hugely influenced the acting and choices made. Audibert has a very clear understanding of the director as collaborator, as the facilitator of “a dialogue between artists” and shares the following piece of advice about his craft: “Mostly directing is about speaking the different languages of the people you work with accurately… If you do that, you have a happy team and a happy team makes good work.”

Another major piece of advice he offers young directors is “ don’t get yourself in financial debt to work” and “there’s no such thing as a big break, you just have to keep working at it”, which is wonderfully refreshing to hear. Reading this advice, you may pin Audibert down as a sensible, non-risk taking director. You’d be wrong. His dream production to direct is “a version of Spring Awakening set in an old people’s home with all OAPs”. Why? Because it’s a play that touches him every time he reads it, and “nobody talks about the sex lives of people over 65”. A very valid point and I agree with him that it would be a fascinating process where a young director could learn a lot. He also wants to direct King Lear, seeing it as the “greatest parable of humanity of them all”.

Gruesome Playground Injuries plays at The Gate until 16 February. For tickets and more information, visit http://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/gruesome-playground-injuries.aspx.

Image credit: Justin Audibert in rehearsals for Gruesome Playground Injuries by Ludovic des Cognets

Ellen Carr

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It has been a couple of weeks since I embarked upon my four-day run of work experience at the Brockley Jack theatre to observe Outfox Productions in its final week of rehearsal of Frank Wedekind’s Spring Awakening, but I still remember setting off on Monday for my local train station with a buoyant sense of optimism that was unfortunately short-lived.

Before I knew it, I had become truly mixed up in the train system, sped through London and been spat out the other side. It took an unfortunate argument with a ticket inspector, two payphone calls with money cadged from strangers and a large cup of Tetley’s finest to bring me back into central London, which did not prevent me arriving at the theatre half an hour late, sweating, lugging a chafing hessian bag and in a state of minor panic at the already poor first impression I must have been painting.

Within hours this state of apprehension had melted away. Perhaps oddly, it was because nobody made a fuss when I entered; I was able to sit down next to the stage manager and unobtrusively slot into a focused rehearsal, feeling very quickly assimilated into the process. The company’s treatment of me not as an outsider who needed to be kept occupied, but as a part of what was going on, made the experience far more enriching. Fast-forward to day four, and I had seen countless chats with the actors on subjects from American ‘grit’ to RADA’s audition panel over tea, chocolate fingers and stonking great pub lunches.

The effect of this informal learning process was in retrospect more revealing than it first seemed – this was not a manufactured Q & A session, where all-too-often one finds truthful but disappointingly open-ended answers. I had almost a week’s real look at what day-to-day living is like for an actor, in terms of the hours working can involve, the ongoing stories about chasing a good agent, the demonstrations of how some had branched out to follow particular related interests (including stand-up and scripting) and, most interestingly, how they all regarded life experience of paramount importance to an actor in so many different ways: travelling, university, working, educating.

At the same time I was also observing rehearsals: I saw beating and rape being choreographed, I read in for actors, I joined warm ups (one of which included a set of tongue twisters that I made a mental note of and then promptly muddled up), I made John the Director’s coffee (white, sugar dependant on guesswork) and I lay down as part of a relaxation exercise where the world was memorably described to us as a colossal lemon meringue pie. The scope of what was exercised in order to pull the best from each other was simply incredible.

I have seen many exercises and warm-ups as a drama student, but it was really the range of different exercises the company used to stimulate in between rehearsal time and their capacity to plunge back in with such focus that amazed me. One particular episode, where the actors stood in thin summer dress in a windy and wet cemetery for several hours in order to film a theatrical trailer, truly epitomised this focus. All faces showed real cheerfulness, stamina and dedication to each shot despite the situation. The amount that has to be given to a production has never been clearer to me.

It was through observing this dedication – as well as picking up multiple new ideas on staging, warm-ups, rehearsal blocking and filming over the week – that I learnt something more important: in giving yourself to a production the buck does not stop with you and your feelings. It is those around who should be drawn in, bound closer together by your attitude – even small, slightly nervous work experience students.

Spring Awakening runs at the Brockley Jack theatre in South East London from 20 June to 14 July. For more information, see their website.

Image 1: Ellie Morris (Thea), Evelyn Campbell (Martha) and Ana Luderowski (Wendla).

Image 2: Ellie Morris, Ana Luderowski and Evelyn Campbell. Credit: Amy Gunn.

Isaac Jordan

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Describing itself as a “free range theatre company”, OutFox Production’s “open approach” is certainly reflected in its choice of debut show, Spring Awakening. Notorious for its no-holds-barred look at teenage sexuality and angst, the play is being revived with a fresh adaptation by director John Fricker. Over 100 years old, it handles its themes with a frankness that Fricker – along with OutFox co-founder and Spring Awakening Producer Kirsty Fox – felt perfectly suited the company’s ethos.

Written in 1890 by Frank Wedekind in reaction to what he saw as the closed-mindedness of German society at the time, Spring Awakening was a play ahead of its time, as Fricker explains: “The translation’s just over 100 years old and the play’s a little bit older than that, but it’s still got themes that ring true today.” He encouraged Fox to read the script and she found herself agreeing. “The little twist in my background is that I qualified as a social worker and John said to me, ‘Read this script, I think you’ll find it fascinating’ and [I thought], ‘Wow! How can something written that long ago still be so relevant today?’” The play follows the interactions of a group of German school students as they each struggle to explore, understand and come to terms with their burgeoning sexuality. As society, their school and, perhaps most crucially, their parents fail to guide them through the messy waters of puberty and sexual awakening, their situations grow increasingly desperate and lead eventually to terrible consequences.

“[It’s about] the awkward conversations; people are still scared to talk to about sex with their children,” Fox explains. This is a play in which the inability to truthfully confront sex proves fatal. Fricker is aware that issues remain today. “There are still the same institutions around that are trying to impose their own moral guidance on youth [...] be that church, be that parents, be that school, be that the government. There’s still that sense of conflict which there always has been and always will be with teenagers ’cause that’s just how teenagers are!” Fox builds on this to explain the dilemma the characters in the play grapple with: “It’s that fundamental thing that everybody goes through: no matter who you are, you’re going to go on that journey to find yourself in some way shape or form. Does it ever stop? You don’t know, but adolescence plays a massive part of that.”

Capturing the experience of being a moody teenager proved important during casting, though they chose not to cast with the characters’ true ages. “Being aware of the content of the play, you can’t cast actual 14 year olds in it because of rules and regulations, and it becomes more about paperwork than performances,” Fricker explains. “Our youngest cast member is 19 and the oldest one of the younger [characters] is about 26, but it was just about casting people who are able to capture that sense of that awkwardness being a teenager, of being between childhood and adulthood.” With the casting of the older characters however, there were interesting real life parallels. “Our two mums in the cast are actually both mums in real life and both of them have teenage daughters, and it’s amazing how they’ve had conversations in the rehearsal room where they’ve been talking about things which are just a smidgen away from things that happen in this play.”

The need for frank communication within Spring Awakening relates to OutFox’s own outlook. “It’s about making the production process a bit more open, a bit more accessible for the people that we’re working with,” Fricker notes. “We operate under an open book policy with our company members, not just answering with that ‘well that’s for me to know and you to find out… eventually!’” But what does Fox mean when she defines the company as “free range”? “I think the main thing is that we have to be passionate about each project. So that was the idea behind ‘free range’ – if we’re passionate about it, believe it can be successful, and we get a good team, cast and crew on-board.” This dual approach has clearly worked in Spring Awakening, as Fricker adds: “It’s been incredibly, incredibly fun because everybody’s been adopted into this open atmosphere, and it’s only more encouraging to the performers [and designers] to have that level of openness and responsiveness, and it can only help in the performances.” In one such instance, a member of the creative team independently came up with the idea of engaging multimedia which eventually became an integral part of the show.

Founded by Fox and Fricker in late 2011, OutFox appears to rest firmly on their friendship. With alliterative surnames and an admittance that they finish each other’s sentences, the two have known each other since being the sole members of their A-level drama course and have remained in contact ever since. Together they make a complementary team, as Fox confirms. “John is mainly from the acting side and wanted to get some directing experience, whereas my side is the producing and organising. So [I said] ‘well I can handle that if you can handle that side. We’ve got a partnership that should work!’” Far from simply being a practical partnership, Fricker enthuses they have “been having fun working together again. It’s amazing how quickly we’ve clicked back into how to work together again.” For Fox, “getting to work with friends, someone that you know really well and do something that you love is… well, it can’t get better than that really!”

Spring Awakening also marks Fricker’s directorial debut. “I have always wanted to try directing [...] I’d also been missing theatre because a lot of my work as a performer has been on recorded media in various ways shapes and forms. So I wanted to get back into the theatre, I’ve wanted to direct and I love this play.” With Fricker on the creative side, Fox’s role as Producer “very much fell into ‘make sure everyone’s alright… managing the budget, working with the creative team and making sure they’re on track… at this level, people still have other jobs so we’re managing lots of different time constraints with jobs, holidays and auditions!” “She’s like the company Mum basically!” Fricker sums up with laugh. Parents they may not be, but in staging Spring Awakening, OutFox Productions is undoubtedly creating an exciting yet safe environment for actors and audiences alike to explore a play that really gets to the heart of being young – and that is timeless.

Spring Awakening plays at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre until Saturday 14 July. For tickets and more information, visit www.brockleyjack.co.uk and to find out more about the company, visit www.outfoxproductions.com.

Image credit: Mark Bowsher

Olivia Luder

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Anyone making the trip to Brockley in search of an alternative rock musical is liable to get something of a shock; this production is of the less-often-performed play by German dramatist Frank Wedekind, a late nineteenth-century tale that is as a powerful criticism of the rigid, exam-obsessed and authoritarian culture of Germany, where it was banned for decades. Wedekind’s exploration of the effects of this rigid structure on young people has an altogether darker tone, with bullying, suicide, teenage pregnancy and  child abuse lurking darkly beneath the trees.

New company OutFox Productions fully embraces these darker elements, without ever fully giving a sense of the culture that pushes the young teenagers to desperation; the costumes could place us anywhere in a 50-year span. While the often overly-intrusive sound design has strikingly effective moments, such as the opening scene of chaotic play set to folk rock, it often interrupts moments of real power with a blast of incongruous modernity. Similarly, the design is complex without being evocative, with the actors constantly sliding blackboard panels around into arrangements that produce exactly the same impression as the previous one, and laser projections that distract rather than suggest the contrast between the wild forest world where the teenagers let rip, and the rigid provincial morals of their homes and schools.

The direction of the play is fluent, perhaps too much so; as scene slides into scene, it’s sometimes hard to keep up with where we are and what’s going on. Speeches trip mellifluously from supposedly tortured tongues, presenting teenagers whose relentless eloquence cannot be interrupted even by masturbation or suicidal urges. That said, there are some strong performances from the younger end of the cast; Moritz (Joe Sowerbutts) is by turns impish, earnest and tormented, making it clear why he appeals to his darker and more intelligent best friend Melchior (David Palmstrom). Wendla (Ana Luderowski) is entirely convincing in a role that is impossibly naive by today’s standards, and her scene with her mother, Frau Bergmann (Rachel Dobell), has real charm. Unfortunately, some of the other adult performances jar, particularly in the overblown kangaroo court that opens the second half, with what should be Kafka-esque bleak comedy played desperately for laughs.

A projection at the play’s opening conveys the message in German – rather pointlessly for most of the audience – that a little learning is a dangerous thing, this quotation from the famously conservative Alexander Pope is in opposition to the true meaning of the play, which suggests that too much learning, forced on young minds, is far worse, and that sexuality and instinct need no schooling to be dangerous. Despite its weaknesses, this is an enjoyable and often powerful production from a new company that conveys the horrors that can arise in children overschooled in Latin, but underschooled in self-restraint and kindness, acting amorally even in a society desperate to police their every moral instinct.

Spring Awakening is playing at the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre until 14 July. For more information and tickets, see the Brockley Jack Studio Theatre’s website.

Alice Saville

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