Friday 10 September 2010

A lovely quote from The Stage

"You know that sensation, when you don’t want something to end? Like a great book that you start reading less and less so as not to reach the last page. The Fever Chart, performed by Warwick University Drama Society, had precisely this effect on me."

Read more here: http://ed.thestage.co.uk/student_reviews/1054

A lovely review to end a fantastic experience

Thursday 12 August 2010

Credits






Mourid/Ali:
Ben Osborn










Yuval:
Josh Roche










Um Hisham:
Soraya Moghadass










Sami:
Tegid Cartwright
















Tanya:
Amy Tobias












Shlomo:
Gwilym Lawrence










Co-Director: Cara Verkerk
Co-Director: Lydia Rynne
Co-Producer: Katie Fahy
Co-Producer: Pascale Barget
Designer: Caitlin Ince

Monday 9 August 2010

Lights 'n Action

a day to try out design ideas - specifically lighting


On the way to rehearsals... a loop-amp-suitcase and wheelbarrow of books

Animal shadows, cut out book pages





Mop keeping time, Tegid conducting movement with a beat

workshopping & experimenting & fishing for ideas

Sami & his mop - his friend and 'God'

"With what this mop gathers I could build, particle by particle, out of abandoned parts, an entirely new human being! A mop is an extension of divine power, a gatherer of the slough, a mop is, in short a functional God."




Josh had an idea

Textual Analysis


at the beginning of our rehearsal period, discussing the text - with a friend.


One of the characters, Sami the cleaner, has a special attachment with his mop. Tegid (acting Sami) has been inseparable from it from the beginning of rehearsals...

Summer Rehearsals - playing about with books



Source of inspiration! - building blocks of our set

Shlomo the Architect at work

Another one of his bookish skills - an architect juggler






Sunday 25 July 2010

A Teaser Taster



At the end of Warwick University's Summer term big celebrations explode - in the form of Warwick University Student Arts Festival - a couple days cram packed full of creativity! As part of the festival we thought it'd be great to perform part of 'The Fever Chart', as a taster for Edinburgh. The play's comprised of three short pieces, and so we decided to perform 'A Retreating World' - the final piece, a monologue by an Iraqi man speaking at a pigeon convention. Since our rehearsals only began in the Summer holidays and everyone was very busy at the end of term we only managed to find time for a couple rehearsals. So with a short rehearsal time, this was really going to be a teaser taster of our final show.

With this in mind we started to workshop the monologue with Ben, who's acting Ali. Without having to think "But how will this look in the final performance" - we were all freed to try the text out in various ways and experiment. Ali's language is so nuanced and packed with layers of meaning that just by playing with intonation of his lines we could find many ways to ring various resonances from them. Another aspect we played around with was ways of visually telling Ali's story, for instance with the aid of a flip chart. We knew this wasn't going to be part of the final piece, but the idea came up in discussion and we wanted to see how it might help Ben navigate his way through the text - and so also steer the audience through Ali's story. Since he's presenting at a convention this fit with the setting. As it was also Ben's first time performing in years having the flip chart signal key points in the performance gave him some support. We also decided to use a lectern (or a lectern-look-alike), which helped him adopt the physique and stance of a presenter more easily in rehearsals. This acted well as stable point in the performance space for him to move around. However, as Ben grew more confident with his script he found himself tending to move away from the lectern so he could address his audience more directly. This was a natural way for us to then start to block out his movements over the course of Ali's presentation. Although we aren't expecting to use it in the final show, we thought we'd use the Warwick performance to try out what it'd look like using a lectern made of crates - filled with books and a sprinkling of pigeon feathers. Though we worked with these set pieces in rehearsals as guiding points for Ben's movement and pace through the narrative, by the time he performed he wasn't using them for support at all. Lydia and I were blown away with what he pulled out on the day with an audience (and adrenaline)! Suddenly in front of us was someone boldly leading his audience through his story - when he paused with a twinkle in his eye, book balanced on his head, his audience laughed - when he paused for breath while retelling a harrowing story, they paused for breath too.


"a man with a bookish face"

Pre-show, waiting for the audience. Ali reading a book on Pigeon Fancying.




"A couple of us wanted to write a few polite words of complaint to the United Nations Sanctions Committee, but it had blocked the import of pencils as it is feared they might be used for making 'weapons of mass destruction'. Just recently it was reported that despite the blockades, at the very tops of some of the most remote mosques, nests have been found made entirely of pencils.
Stockpiling."




...Crates, books, a few floating pigeon feathers...


Ben rehearsing... in the sunshine