24 hours ago I was in Rome, sitting on the floor at Ciampino airport and trying to ignore the ache in my feet. Now I’m back in Edinburgh, my feet hurt slightly less, and I can hardly believe that the past three days have happened.
The reason for the mad dash to Rome was that one of my plays was being performed there – my first play outside the UK! Comfort & Joy, my Christmas tragedy, was on the bill at the Trend Festival, part of a programme of British new writing.
I was delighted to see my play featured alongside work by established writers like Simon Stephens and David Greig, and very excited to see what would be done with it. The two actors, Elisabetta Scarano and Bianca Vanoni, proposed to translate it. That was daunting – it’s nerve-wracking enough handing a script over to a director, but giving my words to someone along with permission to turn them into other words was something else. I speak Italian and can translate from it into English, but I’m not nearly fluent enough to translate into it, so I knew I couldn’t tackle the task myself. I concluded that I could either breathe down Elisabetta and Bianca’s necks and demand approval of the text, or I could just put my trust in them and see what happened. I chose to do the latter and gave them carte blanche to cut and rearrange as they saw fit.
So, having handed the script over to a group of perfect strangers, I was quite nervous when I arrived at the beautiful Teatro Belli, tucked away in Trastevere, on Saturday night…
The first thing I saw was a blank stage, bare apart from two chairs and two microphones. I was intrigued. I wondered how handheld mics were going to fit into a play that draws heavily on Dickens and the dark side of festive Victoriana. When the house lights went down and Santa Claus is Coming to Town began blaring over the speakers, I wondered even more. Of one thing I was certain – this was not going to be a straightforward naturalistic production!
Although director Marcela Serli had never met me, she seemed to have had a good look into my gothy little mind. Her production was tight, sparse and monochrome. The two sisters, identically clad in black, were lit only by stark white spotlights, two pale ghost-faces trapped in darkness. Where the script called for them to sing or dance, the sisters would try and fail. Stage directions projected onto the wall would spell out their intentions while the characters found themselves unable to participate in their own story. I loved it.
I really appreciated seeing a director doing something so abstract with the script. Comfort & Joy lends itself to that more than my other plays, and I was keen to see the script treated as a starting point rather than a blueprint. What I saw drew on Brecht and Artaud. Where I had envisaged pain so suppressed that it can barely be expressed even in soliloquy, Marcela had seen pain that she could bring out with operatic intensity. The world she created was even smaller and more claustrophobic than the one I had imagined, which made the antagonism between the sisters feel sharper and more vicious. I felt more acutely aware of the presence of their domineering late mother than I did when I wrote the piece.
It’s hard to write this post without it simply turning into a love-in. Before I get any more caught up, suffice it to say that I was delighted with what I saw. This was the first time I’d seen a play of mine directed and performed by people who didn’t know me at all. Usually I’m directly involved – I write for specific actors, I come into rehearsals, or I give the piece to a director whose work I’m familiar with. They tend to know me fairly well. On those occasions when my work has been directed and performed by people I didn’t know, I haven’t been able to attend. So this was a new experience, and I’m very glad to have had it.
It was also amazing to hear the play in Italian. Bianca and Elisabetta, in addition to giving very fine performances, did a great job with the translation. Their cuts and amendments made sense, and the language added a new dimension. The rhythms and cadences of Italian suit the heightened feel of the play. The sisters are theatrical by instinct and upbringing. Their words, particularly their soliloquies, are lyrical even in English, so they work well in a language which, as someone once said to me, non si parla, si canta.
The company is keen to take the show further, and I sincerely hope that they will. I’d be very happy to see them doing more with it, and to extend it and tailor it to them now that I have some idea of their qualities. Brave, Elisabetta, Bianca e Marcela!
Now I’ve just about got time to let my blisters heal before I’m back into rehearsal for #SonsOfGod: Vox with Charioteer Theatre, which will open in Milan in April…
I was going to close this post with an embedded video, but since WordPress has changed everything and I don’t know how to do that any more, CLICK HERE TO SEE A LITTLE OF COMFORT & JOY!
(It’s not a rickroll, I promise.)
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