Ophelia #Revisited.

Ophelia In Souiloquy – Revisited from In Souliloquy on Vimeo.

 

Part of #InSouliloquyRevisited

Performed & Choreographed by Katharine Hardman
Written by Tilly Lunken
Directed by Victorine Pontillon
After William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

In Souliloquy is devised and produced by V&T
Special Thanks to Caroline Salem & Space Clarence Mews.

Vocals & Composition by Katharine Hardman

We are so excited to launch #InSouliloquyRevisited with our collaboration with Katharine Hardman.

Katharine Hardman is an actor, writer and Movement Director and recent graduate of Drama Centre London. Artistic Director of ‘Entita Theatre’ having produced fifteen shows alongside Jamie Woods. Working as the company’s Movement Director and Choreographer (for a little more please see:www.entitatheatre.co.uk ). Katharine has recently curated an all female new writing night at the Greenwich Theatre, Lost in London, this night hosted six new places centered around London living with New Light Productions.

Theatre:  Cassie Grey EIGENGRAU (Greenwich Theatre), Ophelia CURTAIN’D SLEEP (Peckham Basic Space Festival), Arkadina THE SEAGULL (Vakhtangov Institute, Moscow) Jean Bird METHOD IN MADNESS (Rose Theatre Kingston, Edinburgh Fringe Festival & National Tour) Zelda YOUR FRAGRANT PHANTOM (National Tour, Marlowe Theatre, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, NSDF)

Katharine has also worked with Ita O’brien on her Intimacy on Screen movement.

@KatHardman

On Jessica and the Other.

As a writer tackling classical work and characters I’ve not had a problem feeling a contemporary resonance in the words, performance, character, form of anything we have produced. Yet, with Jessica In Spring I specifically wanted to address the tone, vitriol and horrendous narrative that has become a part of our politics, our media and our life over the past few years.

Brexit, Trump – 2016 was a year that apart from anything else legitimised voices that Othered. ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ – let’s blame poor people, people with a disability, different gender, immigrants, those who do not look like us. Let us not turn in and look at ourselves, let us not look to work together; let us point fingers and be rude, because that is Presidential, isn’t it?*

So Jessica came out of this place, of giving a voice to this Other – to someone who is Othered by circumstances, birth and also in her choices. Her choice to convert and marry out of her religion gives her some level of acceptance in society but she can never truly become part of the world she has made the choice to ‘join’ because she knows it for the sham it is.  Like those of us who are Othered, she knows much more of the world and her place in it than someone who has never been in that situation. I wanted her to articulate the fierceness that comes with this knowledge.

The concept of privilege is interesting to me because awareness has some bearing upon it but also those who are resolutely unaware often have the most. Jessica is privileged in some ways but she’s also Jewish and a woman in a time where she was legally a chattel of first her father and then her husband. It her experience as the Other experience that rounds her person into who her husband fell in love with – she dares the listener and him to accept her for all she is, shadows and all – rather than a beautiful construct of a good little wife. Ultimately that’s who we all are. People. I think Jessica speaks of that.

In Spring too, we have all these connotations of ‘new life’ and ‘rebirth’ of the year but this can be sad too. She is someone (in our version) who actively embraces this duality. I think her words in voiceover over the moving images works really nicely to communicate this. There are layers to her that she won’t deny.

Jessica In Soulilouqy from In Souliloquy on Vimeo.

 

So please watch AND listen – both, together, separately. She has something other to say.

 

x Tilly

 

*FFS. No it’s not and I know Orange McOrangeFace won’t read this but omg, ew, what an awful excuse for a human.

The Ides! The Ides! The Continuing Relevance of The Soothsayer.

Don’t want to stress you out but this it’s the Ides of March and you’d better beware of your besties and their swords if you’re a general with eyes on a greater throne. Listen to your people.

The Soothsayer In Souliloquy from In Souliloquy on Vimeo.

And then reflect.

Does this piece have more meaning at this time of year? Has our shifting political context given new understanding to these words? Where does this voice sit in our collection?

The continuing relevance of your work is something we writers of theatre think a lot about. There is a tendency in the ‘New Writing’ scene (particularly in London) to write contemporary, immediate and responsive work to the world we are currently experience – which is great. But the cute satirical short play ‘Flood’ I wrote a couple of Australian Prime Ministers Ago doesn’t really belong on a 2017 stage.

I’ve been lucky enough to have had the same work performed more than once and it’s fantastic. I LOVE IT. ‘Fresh Legs’ was produced in both 2015 and 2016 and was an absolute joy to watch develop with both production teams. I think a writer should embrace the form and part of the form is for a work to exist in many different ways.

Theatre is also is about revisiting texts. It’s about rediscovering the new in performance and about interpretations. Nothing is fixed and it can and should exist in many forms. We are looking to explore how this can manifest digitally (see Snout!).

With Shakespeare we get a lot of productions of a lot of texts. This of course means we get snooty critics getting hot under the collar about casting or people getting political about the use of lighting in a traditional space – but it also means we can do ALL of this and more. There are post-colonial versions, queer reinterpretations, puppetry – we might be celebrating 401 years this year but these texts are so alive.

So are ours. We hope. Not just on the Ides.

This year alongside making new work well be revisiting some of our existing texts #InSouliloquyRevisited and continuing to play and develop what Digital Theatre can mean.

Meantime rewatch Chris Rogers’ great performance as the Soothsayer and think about that lost Empire and what we live now.

x Tilly x

 

 

Four Cycles Down!

For the past few months I’ve been re-releasing our Souliloquies on my personal blog with some notes on the writing, performance, process etc. It’s nice to take the time to not only share a bit more of the process but also think back and reflect on the intensity of production and how far we came across the four cycles.

Today I shared Don John our final souliloquy from the 4 2016 Cycles – it feels appropriate to mark the occasion with a reflective blog because it is pretty momentous. We produced 24 original new pieces of writing in 6 months! From the idea right through the writing, casting, direction, filming, editing, release and all the associated social media and admin – that is a lot of work. It’s quite satisfying as a writer!

You can check out the blog about Don John here  – and click on through for other insights about the other characters across our 4 cycles – they’re all there!

Interestingly, Don John was a character I had expressed an interest in writing way back in Cycle 1 but he kept getting bumped down our spreadsheet. He doesn’t say much and the productions I had seen pitted him as a very panto villain but we were determined to do him at some point and this was last chance saloon.

Boy does he kick down those doors and hold you up!

Thanks to everyone who has watched our 2016 Cycles – here’s another chance to dive in and sample a few more – discover new sides to loved characters or find out about someone you didn’t know existed.

Tilly x

 

Introducing #ShakesHead and @insouliloquy on instagram!

As part of our continuing management and growth of this platform we have diversified our social media to instagram – we have the same handle as our twitter @insouliloquy and are already busy posting #behindthescenes photos, stills and various bits and pieces from existing and new work.

Both of us love instagram. It’s a platform we enjoy as well as twitter – so please come check us out. One of the key pieces of new content we are launching on this platform is #ShakesHead – a talking heads doodle web comic with Shakespeare’s bust and Yorick having a rather one sided conversation. It’s pretty simple but totally cute.

#ShakesHead One.

At the moment it’s very low tech, non-fancy but we shall see how it develops as we potter along. #ShakesHead is a little ambitious – certainly in terms of zines.

We will be cross posting, some of the content here to the blog – collating a (optimistically) weekly #ShakesHead blog post for example. In the mean time – we’d love to see you there!

xx