This
afternoon I was given the opportunity to chat to actors Beatrice
Comins, Rob Goll and Adam Horvath all of whom are currently appearing
in Nottingham Playhouse's rural touring production of Andy Barrett's
new play The Second Minute directed by Giles Croft. This play is part of Nottingham's fantastic European Arts Festival - neat14.
Jo McLeish of
Nottingham Playhouse facilitated the meeting.
Phil: I
wanted to talk to you about your experience as actors in a touring
production of The Second Minute and I'm aware that you are going on
from Nottinghamshire down to Cambridgeshire with the tour. Primarily
I'm interested in your general experiences of being on tour with this
play and about the practicalities of touring and whether audience
members have approached you about the themes of the play and perhaps
how it has touched them personally.
Beatrice:
Yes, absolutely, that's the thing about doing this play at the moment
and why we are doing it because it is so pertinent. People are coming
with their own experience and expectations and then relating to the
play beautifully. It's going down really really well. We get quite a
few people who come up and they've got, not necessarily their 'own'
experience of course, but it may be within their family, some kind of
connection. Yesterday we were just over the border in Lancashire and
there was a very elderly lady who'd come and she'd travelled some way
to come and see the show and she'd come because she'd recognised that
it was about the Sherwood Foresters and her Grandfather was a
Sherwood Forester.
Not only
was he a Sherwood Forester in the First World War but he'd actually
had experiences that were quite similar to one of the original
letters that we use in the play. He'd been seriously wounded and
ended up in a shell hole and his arm was completely blown apart
basically and he was left abandoned there for a considerable period
of time and gangrene set in. However, he was there so long that it
got fly-blown and the maggots ate the gangrene and the result of that
was that he survived his terrible injury. He lost his arm and
survived and ended up in a German prisoner of war camp. Because the
play is based on real experience it resonates with everybody else's
real experience as well.
Rob: In
Tealby in Lincolnshire we had a Sherwood Forester who came to see it
at the Tennyson D'Eyncourt Memeorial Hall. Was he called Desmond?
Beatrice:
That's right. Desmond.
Rob: And
he came along along with his cap badge. He said he could provide his
cap badges and was almost fiercely proud of his regiment there and he
was thanking us profusely for telling him things about the regiment
that he didn't know before. It's incredible actually to meet people
who are touched in ways we hadn't thought of before and for them to
tell us about these very personal experiences of something they've
done/ something they known. Andy Barrett the playwright has done the
research and written it in the play and he's done this really well
because you find that it is reaching out to the people to whom it
concerns and they are saying “Yes that's right – that's how we
feel about the regiment”. It's been great and in the small venues
it's a very intimate piece. It's ideally suited to the village halls
and small theatres. (laughs) If they're big enough! We've had some
tight squeezes!
Phil: Are
they all front facing as at the Derby Theatre Studio where you opened
the play?
Beatrice:
Yes we pretty much have to do that because we are so self contained.
We take two lighting stands and we've got a very simple set up but
that means there's very limited scope for where the lights go.
Therefore it needs to be end on. We can't do it any other way than
end on.
Rob: Last
night, for example, our dressing room was a cupboard. (They all
laugh) A luxurious cupboard but still a cupboard. In most of the
venues the dressing facilities are elsewhere so we have to 'hide
behind the set' virtually for the whole thing.
Adam:
Sometimes we get chairs!
Beatrice:
I had a chair offered me backstage the other day but then I'm all
right because I’m on stage most of the time and so I get to sit on
stage and don't mind what's back stage.
Phil: Do
you get many people asking you about 'the book'?
In the
play Rob's character talks about a book titled The Second Minute. It
is a fictional book.
Beatrice:
Yes!!! Yes!!! People keep wanting to buy the book! We've had so many
people asking to buy the book and they are often shocked that it
doesn't exist. There are 'other' books but not a 'Second Minute' book
that everybody wants.
Adam: We
had some people who came to see it and they said that they'd come to
see it because of the book and they claimed they'd read the book.
We thought 'have you?' There must be a similar book around. Lots of
people have asked and they want to know where they can get a copy?
Beatrice:
Yes they have.
Rob: The
programme is rather nice because it has the facsimile letters in.
Beatrice:
I wanted to say something earlier and that is related to people's
personal experiences and as an actor performing this play it gives
you a very easy direct line into maintaining truthfulness because you
know it is so immediate to so many people. The subjects you are
dealing with I mean and it really is a short-cut to trying to
maintain a strong line with truthful emotions. It really keeps you
grounded. And having things like knowing when you are performing –
I never see them but - having the projections behind of photographs
of the real individuals who appear in the letters. Knowing that's
behind you when you are performing is actually quite a profound
experience.
Rob: In
these less formal spaces people don't tend to act like theatre
audiences would and you can hear comments in response to various bits
of the play like “Oh, what a shame!” They are reacting
immediately.
Adam: Very
in the moment. It's very touching.
Phil:
That's great that they are so moved by it that they feel the need to
say so out loud and to each other.
Rob: It's
a shame that Ali's not here because she, as we're getting changed
afterwards, she … hears the bulk of the audience reaction or the
feedback about the people in the stories. Apparently, was it two days
ago, in Oxfordshire, there was a whole family who were moved to tears
at the end. They brought their children too. I see all this because I
address the audience so much and there are varying degrees of
engagement in their faces either listening to me or watching the
projections or watching Bea (Beatrice). I see how fixed they are in
it but also, the other day, up in Ellesmere Port we had a large GCSE
school party in from Warrington I think. They had come quite some way
to see this play.
Adam:
About twenty miles I think.
Rob:
That's right and it was the first time we had run it without the
interval. So it was straight through – all ninety minutes - and
they were sitting on uncomfortable squeaky chairs in a full theatre
and it was quite warm as well...
Beatrice:
Oh it was really warm.
Rob:
Towards the end, quite off putting, someone left to go to the toilet
and the kids at the front shushed them to be quiet in the middle of
our final scene, but their own concentration held fast. Apart from
the squeakiness of the seats they were completely focussed on the
whole thing. Then we did a Q&A afterwards and the questions were
good and this is year ten – fourteen and fifteen year old teens.
Beatrice:
The kind of age that you think would be the hardest to play to and
that is the really gratifying thing about the piece because it does
work for the full cross section of the ages and demographics although
our audiences tend to be quite a lot older and that's just
inevitable in so many ways. I mean the nature of rural touring those
audiences and the subject matter tends to appeal to an older
audience. But, when we do get kids in its great because they are as
equally involved as the older ones. We played another college in
Lincolnshire and they were great as well and that was largely a
student audience.
Phil: In
practical terms do you all help set up the performance space on
arriving at a venue?
Beatrice:
Yes. There are only four of us on the road and out stage manager Ali
Murray is in charge of everything and does a brilliant job. We unpack
the van and build the set and the chaps do all the heavy stuff and I
do the tweaking. (laughs) But it takes us about an hour or so to
actually build the set but it has been very well designed for this
kind of touring and they've really taken that on board beautifully so
it is pretty straight forward. Ali does all the electrics and by the
time the set is built she's usually ready to start focussing the
lights. We need to be on stage for her to focus so we're in the right
position. Actually that takes a fair bit of time. It probably takes
as long to focus the lights and sort all that out as it does to do
everything else.
Rob: It's
because the lighting stands are placed in relation to the size of the
venue and sometimes they're wide and sometimes they're deep and
sometimes they're really really close. Sometimes we don't have the
steel decks. In Chipping Norton the other day, for example, the stage
was about six foot high with the audience low and a really
characterful balcony. So we didn't have the steel decks because that
would put us too high so we've got more space.
Beatrice:
But these means, because we are used to stepping up all the timing of
the piece can get thrown out if you are not careful..
Rob: At
the Century Theatre in Coalville where the stage was lower and we
didn't have the decks and the lighting was then hung on their rig
so...
Beatrice:
So we have to look at it and reposition ourselves on stage because
sometimes the lighting is very sideways and so we are blocking each
other so we do have to do have to look at it to make sure... it
affects us significantly as to where we are on stage.
Phil: You
wouldn't want to walk into that experience and think “there's
'something' wrong' and for that consciousness to throw you.
Beatrice:
No, there's still, inevitably a sense of leaning backwards and
forwards and thinking “Ah there's a big light blob on my face”.
You still have to work around it.
Rob: We
also have to watch that there are no bottoms in the projection
either.
Rob went
on to explain that the projections used in the piece are actually
projected from a filing cabinet on set, not back projected as I
thought when I saw and reviewed the show in Derby. He explained that
if any body parts interrupt the line of projection you will have
given away the trick so the actors have to be constantly aware of
their position on stage. No random or rapid of hands or arms flung
about.
I said that there was one thing that I did like and that was the
visuals of the cascade of crosses/kisses that tumble down the screen
at one point in the play.
Beatrice:
Yes in the speech my character uses both words kisses and crosses and
I'm sure that's quite deliberate. Plus the audience and particularly
the children loved the projections because they were hand drawn and
shaky and such. That was part of their charm. They were basic but
actually that made them more effective. And I think for Sarah Lewis
the designer her whole concept was that they were hand written
letters and so she wanted very obviously hand drawn pictures in the
projections but of course I never see them! I've always got my back
to them so I never know when they are there.
Rob:
Through the design process she did so much that were lost because of
tweaks and cuts and I suppose we never got a chance to see them all
and it was half way through the tour that I realised that there was a
garden growing in one of them! I never even knew that went on!
Phil: Well
that' s great. Thank you all very much for you time and al the best
for the remainder of your tour and this afternoon and tonight in the
Neville Studio at Nottingham Playhouse.
More touring dates and details HERE
.png)
.png)
