There was an
opportunity to attend a free discussion last night (10
th
November) at
Nottingham Playhouse about the forthcoming play 'My Judy
Garland life' based on the book by Susie Boyt and I attended, eager
to learn more about the play that premiers in January/February 2014.
The playwright is
Amanda Whittington, a prolific and successful
theatre writer from Nottingham.
The event began with an
introduction from
Nottingham Playhouse's Giles Croft who explained
the proceedings and the opportunity to get a copy of Susie Boyt's
book signed after the event. The actress Sally Ann Triplett was
introduced on stage and sang a belting version of Judy Garland's 'The
Trolley Song' from the film Meet Me In St Louis accompanied on the
piano by Steve Sanders. Sally Ann will be playing Judy Garland in
the new play and has a great talent and pedigree in the theatre and
musical theatre.
We then welcomed and
heard the author of 'My Judy Garland life', Susie Boyt reading from
the book and she was very amusing with her childhood anecdotes. I
paraphrase Susie's reading below.
Susie Boyt: I was a
very sensitive little girl. I was the kind of child that if someone
left a bit of mustard on the edge of the plate I'd really feel for
that bit of mustard and do you know when you go to the supermarket
and there's a little pile of items that people decide they don't want
at the last moment. Well my heart used to go out to them and even now
I try to buy one of them if I could possibly justify it in any way. I
wasn't quite as bad though as the woman I saw on television once who
used to cry every time she put the rubbish out because she was never
going to see it again. Though I wasn't a million miles away. And it
didn't help that my family had just returned from its biggest
adventure just before I was born. When my Mum's Mum died she left her
some money and my Mum brought a share in a rusty cargo ship and took
her four small children round the world. And they had incredible
adventures. They got stranded in Trinidad and had to sell limes and
when they were in Denmark the crew mutinied and they had to eat my
mother's face cream.
Everyone was always
talking about their experience on the ship and it was nothing to do
with me at all and people were always saying to me “You have got to
toughen up. You've got to grow an extra layer of skin. You can't go
round having all these feelings all the time or you're not going to
have a happy life.” Which is quite a severe thing to say to a five
year old. And yet one day my Mum took me to the cinema to see The
Wizard of Oz. It was the first film I saw and when I heard Judy
singing Over The Rainbow I thought, finally here is someone whose
feelings seem to run as high as my own and she's not embarrassed
about it. She's not ashamed of it, she's not hiding it. There was an
instant smash of recognition between us. It felt to me that there
couldn't possibly be better news than what she was communicating to
me.
I had a record of The
Wizard of Oz – not just the songs but the whole screenplay and I
used to listen to it in my bedroom on my own and recite the film and
so I'd be sitting in my room saying “That dog's a menace to
community. I'm taking him to the sheriff to be destroyed!”. The
more I listened to Judy Garland the more I felt that we cared about
so many of the same things. Chiefly, the idea that the most important
thing in life was making other people happy and I still believe that
one of the best ways to improve the environment is to be 50% kinder
to all friends and strangers and then just sit back and watch the
world improve. And although I didn't understand Judy Garland's
sorrows I saw that she had them and that they weighed heavily on her
small frame and that she was a bigger person because of them. Like
thousands of others before me I felt that just by listening to her I
could somehow help. Even as a child I could see that Judy's courage
was contagious. She must have been the most conscientious and and
unreliable person that ever lived and I was conscientious and
reliable. Chubby and intense – keen to stay a child for as long as
possible, forever if I could manage it. I felt that the grown up
world inhabited by my parents and my much older siblings was more
dangerous than I could bear.”
Susie continued with a
story about emulating Judy's dance routines by taking tap and dancing
classes three days a week tutored by a Miss Audrey She worked hard
and practised for hours using the mantelpiece in her bedroom as a
barre. She said that she learnt a song called 'Friendship' which had
the line 'if you ever lose your teeth when you're out to dine, borrow
mine' and loved the idea that someday there might be somebody she
might want to lend her teeth to! Her love of Judy Garland grew and
after the death of her father Susie said that, although saddened, her
outlook became positive and life, a little more possible and her
strength of feeling that some saw as an affliction, Judy seemed to
think could be the making of her. She went on to say:
“What does it say
about this extraordinary performer that I felt so powerfully linked
to her all my life? What does it say about me? But whatever strange
alchemy has been at work between us the facts are these: I was there
at her greatest triumphs and her greatest moments of despair and she
has been at mine.”
There followed a short
film clip of Judy Garland singing and washing up for a show. The
lines called out for the listener to “Look for the silver lining
and try to find the sunny side of life”.
In 1981 a fellow school
friend of Susie Boyt got an expressive poem published in a school
magazine and she confessed to the
Nottingham Playhouse audience that
she didn't know it was possible to have such thoughts and that she
longed (inspired by Judy) for a life on the stage and all the alleged
glamour of backstage life as portrayed in the MGM musicals. Then she
read amusingly and in detail of how she readjusted her theatrical
ambitions and went from downgrading herself from star to leggy chorus
girl. Failing that the understudy job would do and maybe she could
'accidentally' cripple the star and rush out on to the stage in her
place to great acclaim. Or maybe being the dresser or make up lady
would be a possible career 'warmly soothing and smoothing – a sort
of faithful human iron'. The stage door guardian and the box office
lady both got considered as options and spoken about with wit and
insight by Susie Boyt and then she slid down the ranks to ice cream
seller clad in a maroon polyester tabard hankering for sequins. He
maths teacher at school asked her what she wanted to be when she grew
up. She said she that she shyly whispered that she'd like to be star
of musical comedy to 'go on stage'. The maths teacher cruelly replied
“Well, you'll have to shift an awful lot of weight before that's a
possibility!”. Susie went on to say that later in life a friend was
compiling an anthology of regrets. Susie told her that she always
wanted to be a star of stage and screen. Her friend replied “That
won't do as a regret because for something to qualify as a regret it
has to be within the realms of possibility!”
The evening continued
with an audio recording of Judy Garland being comical and diverting
in an interview. Judy spoke about being in Paris with a chic friend
who she felt made her look very un-chic and it was suggested she got
her hair done by a French hairdresser who went to town and piled her
hair up on top of her head in extravagant bunches. Predictably the
tall hair started to collapse as she started to sing.
Susie Boyt retired –
with great applause- from the Playhouse stage and Giles Croft invited
Kath Rogers (director of the play My Judy Garland Life) and
adapter/playwright Amanda Whittington on to the stage to talk about
the process of the play making from the directorial and the writing
angles. I was particularly interested in the play making part of the
discussion – the process and the inspiration. This is because I
want to further my writing for the stage and it is always good to
learn from those who have success in the business.
The discussion
considered the phenomenon that was Judy Garland and what stardom and
fame does to you and what it is all about and that there is no better
person to have as an example of that. Giles said that he telephoned
Amanda Whittington and asked her if she was interested in writing a
play about Judy Garland. Amanda replied that it took about a tenth of
a second to exclaim a very keen “yes!”. There was an explanation
from Amanda that she realised that there was a play in Judy Garland
because of her very difficult life but she felt that the dark side of
her experiences was a 'known' and very well reported. She went on to
say that when you listen to the records you get all the heartfelt joy
and the love and the life and the celebration and during her play
writing research she wanted to find a different way in. She read
Susie Boyt's book and was knocked out by it because it is so original
and so different and because Susie is such an authority and fan there
were such a plethora of left of centre stories about Judy Garland to
exploit. I use the term exploit in a positive sense. Also there is
the central relationship between Susie and Judy and Amanda could see
great potential in that as a work for the stage.
Giles Croft then spoke
to Kath Rogers and we discovered that Giles first met her when she
was an actress at a theatre he ran before Nottingham Playhouse. Kath
described her transition for actress to director and spoke of how a
lot of actresses find at a certain age that work falls off a bit and
how she had always been 'that annoying actor' who thinks they know
better and wants to direct the play in their own interpretation. Now
she is a director herself she says that she realises how 'appallingly
annoying' it is. She continued saying that she works with students a
lot and she always tells them “Let the director direct her version
of the play and you can do yours another time.” Kath's first chance
to direct came from Nottingham born, Jonathan Church, at Salisbury
and she found that she really loved the responsibility of directing
and that one is creating something with amazing talents.
Kath met Amanda
Whittington through Amanda's play – the Will's Girls – which was
adapted for a Bristol audience at The Tobacco Factory. Amanda
explained that the play began with the title Players' Angels and she adapted
for it Wills so that it was relevant to the Bristol audience. The
play showed in the actual factory and was a big success. Lots of
people who didn't normally go to the theatre came to see it because
of the historical aspect and generations of their families had worked
at the factory. Kath and Amanda went on to talk about other projects
they had worked on including Radio Four and Tipping the Velvet which
was an adaptation of the novel by Sarah Waters. A play about slavery
followed and then Kath commissioned Amanda to write a play called The
Dug Out. I was very impressed with the creative output from Amanda
and would love to aspire to be the same. In relation to the play 'My
Judy Garland Life' Kath Rogers said, when asked, that she isn't a
huge fan of Judy Garland but is of Liza Minelli and realises that in
lots of ways they are quite similar.
On approaching the
adaptation Amanda explained that in adapting a book for the stage a
lot of the decision is what you leave out and it can be a bit of a
wrestling match because there is such a wealth of material and a lot
of it is narrative. You have to tease the play out of the original
and make it theatrical – bringing it into the moment rather than
story-telling and try to avoid a lot of narration. What was
interesting was the relationship of Susie and Judy, both complex
young women, although at different times, growing up, both with
commonalities and dramatic urges. Although Judy was there for Susie
in impressing her development as a girl and woman, Susie wasn't there
for Judy of course but, as Amanda explained – in the play she is.
The play dramatizes the emotional and spiritual truths of the
characters through a collaging of interaction. Plus there is the
musical element of live singing from the actress Sally Ann Triplett
who plays Judy. We heard that the writing has gone through countless
draughts and Amanda explained about a time when she and Kath met up
and they chopped up the text into sections and moved them around the
kitchen table to look at the scenes in a new light and perhaps new
order, sometimes cutting scenes in half to see what happens. There
had also been workshops with two actresses to develop the writing of
the play. Kath explained that the new play is nothing like anything
Amanda has written before. “A very distinctive piece of work”
echoed Giles Croft. Amanda said that 'the more unreal the scenario
got the real and truthful it became and a very strange kind of
alchemy that happened. As soon as you freed yourself from naturalism
the more believable it became.' Susie Boyt, in admiring this stage
adaptation of her work said that it was - like a dream collage.
Another new pay by
Amanda Whittington will be playing in the Nottingham Playhouse
Neville studio at the same time as My Judy Garland Life. This is a
very different show and is called Amateur Girl, a gritty drama about
a young woman who turns to the world of filming amateur porn films as
a way of getting extra income and her getting drawn into that seedy
and dangerous world. This started life as a fifteen minute play
written for BBC Woman's Hour and developed into a larger one woman
show. The character Julie was originally played on the radio by Kath
Rogers.
There followed a
discussion about the nature of good and bad fans and how this is
central to the book and one assumes, the new play. Actress Sally Ann
Triplett told of her childhood where she used to sit and wait for the
Judy Garland MGM films to appear on the telly because there was no
video facility to watch them at random times and that was the thing
she loved. She also loved Betty Davis and Al Jolson was her hero even
to the point of her doing impressions of him at school with white
bits of paper round her eyes and mouth and got detention for it.
Later in life she played Jolson's wife in a musical about the
entertainer. Sally Ann illuminated the fact that Garland too meant a
lot to her and that it wasn't her (Garland) but her energy that she
admired and feels that she herself has a similar kind of performing
energy to draw on. It was all about how Garland felt. It had to be
100% or not at all.
It was a very joyous
discussion and we continued with a question and answer session.
Questions ranged from “Aren't you a bit young for admiring an old
timer like Judy Garland?” to one aimed at Susie asking “Why do
you need another author to adapt your book into a stage play when you
could do it yourself?” The answer to that was an embellished
version of 'no, because it is a very different discipline and mind set
writing a play to an autobiography or novel and it would be very hard
for the original author to make choices in editing and making the
work a theatre piece'. The first question was also answered and
explained by Sally Ann Triplett as the love of Judy Garland and
similar artists from the period they lived and performed in was a
beloved legacy of the family all enjoying the films at the cinema and
the telly. Also the actress feels sympathy for Judy Garland in her
weakest moments as she was controlled by the movie bosses and felt
dis-empowered and turned to alcohol and drugs to cope and this still
continues with people this day. On a positive note Judy Garland as
the entertainer still is very present in our culture today with
children and adults still loving the famous film, The Wizard of Oz
and others.
My own question
(gentleman in grey sweater) was around the writing process as I was
intrigued to hear about this dissecting of the script and laying it
out on the table and asked if the working process had been used
before. Amanda explained that she had never used that process before
and always thought that it might be a particularly useful creative
thing to do but it never seemed relevant to other things that she had
done. She spoke of Bowie and how he famously used to write his lyrics
like that and reconstruct the feel and text by tossing it all up in
the air. Amanda felt it work because for this particular piece, it is
not a linear journey, it doesn't start at a beginning, have a middle
and an end. It goes backwards and forwards in time so the structure
and where we place certain events didn't have to be chronological and
it just felt right to get he Pritt Stick and the scissors and chop
away at it and physically try and make this thing sit together
properly. Kath interjected saying that there were certain bits of
Susie's book that we wanted to 'get in' could be set in different
places theatrically. She continued by saying that anecdotes and
scenarios drawn from the book helped form the narrative and that by
reconstructing the story in this way helped them find out the
emotional core of what the play was about.
Amanda explained that
writing is mainly a solitary process but there are times when you
work alongside a director or someone involved in a literary capacity
and it can be brilliant to have two heads looking at the work and
talking it through, figuring it all out. That to her as a playwright
is very valuable that right from the early days of the process that
is someone else is involved to give another viewpoint in the story
and aid with the mechanics of script development.
Susie Boyt said that
when she was writing the original book that she wanted those
transitions between Judy and herself to have a flavour and the reader
to have no idea about what was coming next. Giles Croft said that he
first came across the book whilst driving to work and listening to
the radio and it worked wonderfully and playfully on the imagination
and that is why he thinks it would work equally wonderfully as a
play.
Sally Ann Triplett sang
us out with a great rendition of The Man That Got Away.
The event ended with an
appeal from Giles Croft to the audience members to consider the
effects that the local proposed County Council cuts to the
Playhouse
grant funding might have and for us to make our feelings known
through various forums including the County Council website.
Susie Boyt was
available to sign copies of her book after the event and I for one
can't wait to see (and possibly review)
Amanda Whittington's new play
in January/February 2014
The play runs from
Friday 31
st January to Saturday 15
th February
2014
Nottingham Playhouse
Box Office is 0115 9419419
www.nottinghamplayhouse.co.uk
Sally Ann Triplett's own website can be viewed here.
http://sallyanntriplettofficial.com/index.htm
Playwright Amanda Whittington's website can be viewed here.
http://www.amandawhittington.com/
