feature

Feature | “This show is a process, rather than an outcome” Led by the Wind by Kiki Ye

by Luisa De la Concha Montes

Led by the Wind is a queer story that follows K (Kiki Ye), a young woman from Fuyang, China living in the United Kingdom. She has been convinced by her family back home to go on a blind date with Bryan (He Zhang), who, according to her family’s standards, is the perfect husband material. As their relationship progresses K starts zoning out, sinking deeper into beautiful dreamscapes with Windy (Vivi Wei), a mysterious woman that represents K’s deepest queer desires. In order to unveil the process of writing this piece, and to deconstruct the complexity of K’s character, I caught up with director Kiki Ye.

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Feature | Rehearsing Bad Sex

by Diana Miranda

Painting a raw picture of sex and substance addiction, Bad Sex delves into the challenges of a young man spiralling in a hectic acting career while dealing with the emotional strains of showbiz and family conflict. Written and performed by Theo Hristov, this work-in-progress solo show was presented as part of A Pinch of VAULT Festival, a platform for artists to share their newest work onstage to get audiences’ sweet feedback.

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Feature | Unveiling Ensemble Not Found

by Diana Miranda

The London-based theatre company that goes by the fitting name Ensemble Not Found is a group of East Asian artists that bend storytelling boundaries and explore unconventional ways to connect with audiences. The company first caught my eye at VAULT Festival 2023 with their debut show Project Atom Boi. The piece is a multi-media insight on existential dread through the perspective of a self-indulgent filmmaker attempting to capture the memories of a young Londoner who grew up in a Chinese nuclear town. It involves audiences through live video and drawing boards, inviting volunteers to doodle words that trigger the protagonist’s memories.

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Feature | On connection and safe spaces: Borders ألسياج הגדר in rehearsals

by Diana Miranda

Written by Nimrod Danishman, Borders explores the relationship of two young men who meet on Grindr, one is in Israel, and the other in Lebanon. Although deeply affected by political circumstances, their digital relationship strengthens against all odds. I spent an afternoon in a rehearsal ahead of the run at VAULT Festival 2023, after looking at the show from the sidelines for some years now.

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Feature | Building (Hi)stories: Ladyfriends in Rehearsals

by Diana Miranda

Period dramas have become the ultimate weekend watch according to trending British media. And while Ladyfriends, written and directed by Clodagh Chapman, is pretty much suffragettes Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney’s story, this isn’t one of those dramas. Ladyfriends starts from the premise that Annie and Christabel are dating. Though historians dispute this based on ‘lack of scholastic rigour’, Chapman’s take doesn’t engage in these controversies and sees Chris and Annies’ dating as a fact. To her, a more exciting endeavour is to explore how people relate to history, and what lays behind re-visiting it and pursuing new readings.

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Feature | Bringing Characters to Life

https://images.cm.archant.co.uk/resource/responsive-image/8290230/article-lead-image/lg/4/image5.jpg

by Laura Kressly

Passion Fruit is very much Dior Clarke’s story, but it’s not a solo performance. Though the first rehearsal I observed consisted of the director Melina Namdar solely working with Clarke, the second included actor Hayden Mampasi, who takes on a varied collection of supporting characters. In this rehearsal, director Melina Namdar uses a range of exercises to develop Mampasi’s characterisations and ensure the people he plays are distinct from each other. It’s an intense day full of work on the details that bring characters to life on stage, showcases Namdar’s expansive director toolkit, and the techniques that actors use to bring characters to life.

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Feature | Making Passion Fruit

PASSION FRUIT Tickets, Multiple Dates - London | OutSavvy

by Laura Kressly

Despite the best of intentions, working with friends doesn’t always turn out well. It can lead to crossed boundaries, arguments, and environments that make others uncomfortable. Work can be sidelined by inside jokes and messing about. Additionally, being mates doesn’t mean you have the same creative vision. However, none of this is the case with actor/writer Dior Clarke and director Melina Namdar. The close friends and creative associates are working together on the premiere of Clarke’s autobiographical, coming-of-age story Passion Fruit, about growing up in north London as a Black, gay man.

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Feature | Re-framing Narratives with Maybe You Like It Productions

Pleading Stupidity | Camden Fringe | Maybe You Like It Productions

By Diana Miranda

Maybe You Like It Productions has just finished a run at the Camden Fringe premiering their comedy Pleading Stupidity, a show written and directed by Caleb Barron and inspired by the real case of the ‘Dumb and Dumber bandits’, as the media called them. The show tells the story of two Aussies who robbed a local bank during their gap year in a Colorado ski town, whilst wearing name tags from their jobs and making no attempt to hide their accents. The crime was solved in eight minutes.

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Feature | Henry VI Part One: open rehearsal project

Cast revealed for RSC's Henry VI Part One: Open Rehearsal Project | WhatsOnStage

By Diana Miranda

The Royal Shakespeare Company flung open their locked playhouse doors with a new project that engaged audiences in a socially distanced but immersive manner: they put the making process of a play online for anyone to watch. From 1- 13 June, audiences (or rather Vimeo viewers) could join the cast and creatives of Henry VI Part One every weekday for live streams of the company’s morning physical and voice warm-ups, lunchtime rehearsals, and evening green rooms that answered audience questions and allowed the team to expand on their crafts, normally kept behind the scenes. All the live streams were available to watch until 25 June. If uncovering a rehearsal process doesn’t sound unconventional enough, the show did not hit the stage boards. Instead, the final performance consisted of a live-streamed, rehearsal room run-through from the RSC’s Ashcroft Room on 23 June.

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Feature | Dismantling Rehearsal Room Hierarchies

by Laura Kressly

In some of the recent popular discourse on the abuse that pollutes the theatre industry, hierarchies and the power they bestow on those at the top have – rightly – been criticised. A rehearsal room mostly populated by freelancers, but run by a single salaried person on staff with the production company or venue, creates a massive power imbalance that can be weaponised. Of course, many rehearsal processes are steered by good people who don’t exploit their position, but in my 20+ years of working in theatre, I’ve rarely seen these hierarchies dismantled, either partially or fully, when the production company operates with one in place. Power is clearly and consistently utilised, with the person in charge easily visible at all times.

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