Author: richardhare
Post: In A Dark Place
Blog: in situ: theatre

Richard, let’s start with the title, Skareee Monstas. What’s this telling us about the new production?

Skareee Monstas is an adaptation/translation of Homer’s Odyssey. Or rather a bit of it.

It’s the bit that most people are familiar with, in which Odysseos and his crew are on their way home from Troy and encounter Skareee Monstas – Cyclops, a one-eyed giant; Scylla, a six-headed female man-eater; Charybdis, a consuming whirlpool; The Sirens, strange birds whose beautiful song lure men to their deaths on the rocks.

All these creatures have long been part of literary and popular culture and have fascinated artists and writers for centuries. They embody one of our basic fears – the fear of being eaten.

As you say, Homer’s work is fascinating. But is it really relevant to today’s world?

It absolutely is relevant. Odysseos and his crew, heroised in Boy’s Own stories and in very recent feature films, are little more than marauding pirates. The first thing they do is massacre the inhabitants of a seaside town and steal all their possessions, including the women who live there. That’s all they were doing in Troy in the first place. That’s all they ever do. They steal things. I feel they are the real ‘Skareee Monstas’.

I hope the audience may be aware of an irony here. We of the twenty-first century live in dangerous times, when massacres and robbery are as common as they were in Homer’s world and are justified in all sorts of appalling ways, whether by nation states facing ‘existential threats’ or ‘terrorist’ organisations.

Our world is a world of Skareee Monstas and Homer speaks loudly and eloquently about it. I hope to bring out these themes in my translation and performance.

As you’ve said, Homer’s work is originally not only in Greek, but ancient Greek. So where does the text you’re using come from?

It’s from Homer’s Odyssey and the bit I’m doing is the story that Odysseos tells when he is a guest in Phaeacia,following one of his many shipwrecks. He describes what happens after leaving Troy and his thwarted efforts to get back home to Ithaka, the dangers encountered and the eventual loss of all his ships and crew.

I’ve myself developed the performance text. I’ve used the original Greek, but I’ve also referenced bak to previous translations, notably that of both George Chapman, who produced the first English translation in 1615 and of Alexander Pope, about 100 years later. These translators are literary giants, the greatest poets of their times.

I wanted to refer back to these early translators because in more recent times Homeric translations have on the whole been produced, not by real poets, but by classicists obsessed by textbook accuracy. As a result the text has become blander and blander.

So I’ve tried to create a translation which gets close to the weird fascination, violence and music of the original text, and have found inspiration in great early translators such as Chapman and Pope.

You’ve told other tales over the past several years in your solo performances, always to audience acclaim. Why do you think storytelling performances are so popular and compelling?

The last 10 years of my work have been an amazing journey into the world of solo performance, especially storytelling. What I like about it, and I think many people respond to is its unmediated nature.

There’s no spectacle, no technology, no effects. It’s just me and the audience. And between us – between my focused performing and the audience’s focused attention – we make a highly-charged atmosphere
We don’t know exactly what the ‘rhapsodes’ (bards) did in Ancient Greece when they recited these great epics in a world without written language, but I like to think it may have been quite similar to these solo performances. There’s a very strong sense of a ‘gathering’ to create and witness something unique, something which is not a commodity.

Your performance is very dark – the Monstas in the title are indeed Skareee. What’s the attraction of such terrifying material that’s made it popular from ancient times to now?

If it’s dark, if it deals with difficult, violent, unsettling things, then it speaks to us about the world we really live in and the problems we face in being human in an in human world.

There’s no real point in doing anything else. What is there to say about the innocuous, the harmless, the safe and the unproblematic?

One of the very noticeable things about all your solo performances is your use of Voice to create atmosphere. Can you tell us. more about your interest in that?

The Voice is one of my main interests as a teacher, actor and singer and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with several brilliant voice practitioners over many years.

Conventional acting has quite a narrow range when it comes to the Voice – the human voice can do way more than it usually does in mainstream theatre, music and cinema. So I’ve long been committed to an exploration of its possibilities and some of them will be on show in my current performances.

The Voice is integral to Odyssey. It’s sometimes terrifying – Cyclops’ monster voice, the screams of men being eaten by Scylla. It’s sometimes beautiful but dangerous – the Sirens’ song lures men to their death, Circe’s voice is ‘past earthly thought’ – but she turns men into pigs. And the poetry itself is musical – somewhere between speech and song.

Christopher Logue, in his preface to War Music – his brilliant adaptation of Homer’s Iliad – says ‘The world of Homer isn’t humanistic. It’s musical.’ So music, voice, song are all vital aspects of both translation and performance.

What are the main messages… insights… experiences that you hope audiences will take away from Skareee Monstas?

I hope people enjoy it. Everyone will take away something different, I would imagine. I hope people feel they’ve encountered one of the world’s great epics. I hope they feel contact with Homer’s strange world, unfathomably distant but at the same time, paradoxically, right up close. I hope they feel that the work addresses difficult and important issues that we’re all facing in today’s violent and rapacious world. I hope
they remember it for more than a couple of hours afterwards.

One final thing. Some audience members may well have not only enjoyed your performance, but want to get involved directly with in situ:’s work. How can they do that?

We run regular courses throughout the year, often leading to performances for the
public.

This year we’ve been working on The Voice and will continue to do so next year, starting in October. We have very experienced and dedicated performers with whom I have been working for years, but new people are always joining us and of course our future depends on that.

So if you’re reading this and are inspired to want to do it yourself, please join us.

Author: richardhare
Post: Richard Spaul talks Skaree Monstas
Blog: in situ: theatre

The installation is in the Cambridge Leper Chapel from Wednesday June 25 to Sunday June 29.

Artist Maria Pesma says about her installation

What was your motivation/inspiration for doing the installation?

As soon as I saw the chapel I knew that it was something important for me. I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew I had to explore it.

I was already working on issues of expulsion – due to various past experiences – but my first inspiration was the chapel. The installation developed from wanting to do something in it.

It feels as if the chapel chose me. I have this bizarre notion that I’m just a medium here. I’m doing a few things with my hands, but it’s something beyond me. It’s the chapel, the energy of the chapel.

Why the title Out of Place?

The title has multiple significances. Central is the idea that the space of the Leper Chapel was constructed for people who were placed outside society.

There is something more complex – the building itself is next to a road and railway lines from which it seems detached. It doesn’t have other historic buildings to support it. So the building itself seemed to me to be out of place – it came to represent the ‘out-of-place-ness’ of those people suffering from leprosy and who had been exiled there.

The title also connects to my personal associations and history. Not only because I myself am a person who is in a sense out of place because I don’t come from Cambridge or from England, but also because I came to Cambridge because of events which made me feel out of place in my own country.

Plus, in the installation, the title is clearly reflected by the images and 3-dimensional objects, representations of human bodies from which the actual body is absent, leaving only the skin. Something has been removed. Something is not in its place.

Are the artistic ideas you use in the installation new ones for you?

I have been dealing with the issues of how to present absence for decades. And I’ve been working with images, costume, installations, theatre design for many years. So some of this reappears in Out of Place.

The forms made out of strips of material had their beginning when, working in Athens about 15 years ago, I had the notion of constructing costumes as sculpture, not to be worn but to personify the roles the actors played. I put two or three of them alongside each other and was amazed at the effect – it looked like bodies in space.

That said, for Out of Place I also deliberately broke away from many things I was doing before. I also avoided anything which conveys a narrative and painted fragmented faces, often on an unconscious level without knowing exactly how or why. I also decided to use different materials and to use paint in different ways without aiming at a ‘polished’ result .

What do you hope that we, the audience, gain from the installation?

I certainly wanted to create an immersive experience for the audience to enter, to connect with the space.

I am not trying to communicate ideas, neither to put thoughts into words when I”m working.

But I do hope that the audience will experience some of the things I have experienced while making the installation, the unconscious stirring of something. I do hope they experience a sharing of common humanity – the installation is not just for the people who are here but also for the people who are not here.

Why did you invite in situ: to add a performance element to your installation? What are you hoping the performance will bring to the event?

Working with in situ: is an amazing coming-together of things. Meeting the in situ: people and their voice work just clicked for me.

I have always worked with actors, so it’s not surprising that I wanted this collaboration. That said, the installation is not a set for a performance. It is instead a statement that the images, the forms, all these people which the forms represent, have no voice. The voice is absent. They are absent. And when in situ: adds their voices, that’s fascinating – for the audience and for me.

New angles and potential arise from dynamic interaction. I’m extremely grateful for this collaboration and the warmth between us as it has developed.

What now? What is the future of the installation once this showing is over?

I find that, as an installation, it achieved a completeness in the context of this particular space with its historic significance. As far as the sculptural forms are concerned, I’m presently thinking of creating these out of metal to explore further the abstract aesthetic of the form itself. As far as the paintings are concerned, a lot of development is already happening and am looking forward to see where it leads me.

Richard Spaul, Artistic Director writes about in situ:‘s integrated performance

Maria Pesma’s remarkable installation explores ideas of exclusion and marginalisation, taking place in The Leper Chapel, a space that speaks eloquently of that marginalisation and exclusion. Maria is concerned with the gap, the void that is created when a person, group or community is excluded, eliminated or destroyed.

In response, in situ: has created a voice performance which seeks to explore and give concrete form to this ‘presence of an absence’. Something has gone, but the void left by its absence remains.

How can that void be articulated in the voice? That is the question we are attempting to answer in our short performance. There are many uses of voice which indicate, in a mysterious and uncanny way, the absence of the person or people making the sound.

Whispers, breath sounds, echoes, fragments of speech, speech blown away by the wind, incomplete words and sentences, gaps in speech. Ghosts.

The result is the extended vocal improvisation we present on the last two days of the performance, Saturday June 28 and Sunday June 29.

The piece takes two forms. One form is a continuing series of echoes and fragments throughout the weekend, in which one, two, three or more of the 10 performers perform certain moments, sometimes extended over time. These echoes and fragments happen at random but at 7pm each evening they cohere into a complete performance of approximately 20 minutes, presented by the whole company as the conclusion of each day.

Out of Place is a sort of haunting. Our voices are the ghosts.

What was your motivation/inspiration for wanting in situ: to do the performance to accompany Maria’s installation?

Maria’s a very good, powerful artist and I feel a great affinity with her work. So when I found out she was doing an installation in the Leper Chapel, I was very happy for us to collaborate.

This is the first time in situ: will be working with an installation artist and that will be a new and exciting aspect of our site-specific work. We will need to understand and respond powerfully not just to the chapel itself – we’ve done that before – but to the new and original artworks which Maria has placed there.

Over the past two seasons we’ve collaborated with two visual artists – Helen Cook in Master Builder Project and Melissa Pierce Murray in Bacchae. Out of Place will allow us to develop our collaborative skills much further.

It’s very exciting for the performers to work in this way with talented artists creating in another medium. And this seems to be a new direction in the group’s work.

Were there any difficulties or challenges in developing the performance?

One difficulty is that we will be working in an installation which is very powerful anyway. It could easily be reduced and rendered less interesting by performers fooling around in it,

So we face the challenge of ensuring that our work, our presence, enhances the artwork and doesn’t diminish it. For this we need to be very sensitive to the feeling which the work communicates.

We need to respect it, understand it, and engage with it to the best of our abilities. We’re confident that we can.

What are you hoping the performance will bring to the event and what do you hope that we, the audience, gain from the installation?

I hope that we will bring added power to what will be an impressive installation and that the audience will experience a remarkable vocal performance in a truly remarkable space.

I hope Out of Place will stay with people for a long time.

Installation and Performance details:

Out of Place by Maria Pesma

Opening hours:
Thursday 26th June and Friday 27th June: 12.00-17.00.
Saturday 28th June and Sunday 29th June 11.00-15.00 and 18.00-20.00.

On Saturday 28 and Sunday 29, members of in situ: will be present at random times during the day to perform segments of their work based on the installation. At 1900 each day the whole company will together perform the full 20-minute work.

Entrance to both the installation and the performance is free.

Author: richardhare
Post: Out Of Place
Blog: in situ: theatre

Richard, why a course on The Voice?
A person’s voice is one of the most important things they’ve got. It expresses thought and feeling and it’s the most intimate tool of communication. The artistic uses of The Voice are infinite – speaking, singing, sounding.

Yet many people aren’t confident about it, don’t think about its possibilities, neglect it – or even don’t like it. So I’m very excited about a year-long course which explores The Voice in detail.

Do you have a particular interest in voice work? What’s your own journey in learning about it? What’s been your own experience in using voice work in your own performances?

I’ve studied voice work for many years and have explored it as a singer, actor and teacher. I’ve worked with many practitioners who come from what is now called the Wolfsohn/Hart experimental tradition.

These people were mid-20th Century pioneers in exploring the human voice in a much more exciting and radical way than was previously being offered – and in many cases is still being offered – by traditional
voice teaching.

The Wolfsohn/Hart approach is based around the idea of exploring what the voice can do which is not necessarily talking or singing. This is usually called ‘sounding’ or ‘extended voice’ and involves a range of sound which, though fundamental to human voice, is usually ignored.

So it’s yawns, sighs, sobs, laughs, shouts – elements which are absolutely basic not just to all acting technique but also to humanity. Actors – including traditional actors – have to use these elements all the time, but they are poorly understood and valued. In the course I’m offering, we’re going to put all that right.

As for my own work, most recently in my solo performance of Hamlet and Metamorphoses, I have found that an understanding of the Wolfsohn/Hart techniques has increased my vocal range beyond what I would have imagined possible. The techniques have even allowed me to extend my voice beyond a human range – for example to animals, ghosts, and elemental forces.

There’s a very big and exciting world of voice out there and most people don’t visit it – but we will!

Will the course include the more traditional aspects of theatre voice work such
as projection or elocution?

No, definitely not. Of course there are many times when one needs to be loud and clear in theatre work, but there are far more interesting and sensitive ways of achieving that than studying projection and elocution. Those techniques derive from big proscenium arch performances where one is addressing a very distant audience. This is not true in in situ:’s work and is increasingly irrelevant to contemporary
theatre as a whole.

Does the title of the course indicate that there’ll be little or no exploration of movement or other bodily theatre skills apart from voice?

One can’t actually separate ‘movement’ and ‘voice’. Those words may indicate different categories when used in a drama school syllabus but they’re inextricably linked – voice is every bit as body-based as anything else is.

So we’ll be exploring the relationship of voice and movement, voice and text, voice and emotion, voice and character. It’s a very wide subject area and even over the course of a year we will only be able to explore a part of it.

A course entirely on The Voice sounds quite challenging. So do participants need to have done voice work already? Do they need to have a good grasp of English? Do they need to have done much drama work before?

Learning anything new and exploring any new techniques is of course challenging and requires courage and determination. But in situ:’s approach is always supportive and nurturing, allowing participants to discover things in their own way.

The Voice course is ambitious and will make demands on its participants. But there are no entry qualifications and different ranges of experiences and language mastery will all be integrated. Many experienced theatre practitioners are in fact beginners in this area of work, so I don’t want to lay down too many preconditions.

What will participants actually be doing? Give us a taste of what a class might look like and feel like!

As the course begins, we’ll meet each other and do little games and exercises so everyone feels comfortable and included.

After that, most classes will include a big chunk of group exercises where we are all learning vocal techniques together. Then we might work in pairs or small groups to take things further, and from time to time this will result in short episodes to show to the rest of the group. This process is good fun and very helpful in developing understanding and skill.

An important aspect of this course, maybe more than in other recent in situ: courses, is the idea of individual work. Voice is a very personal thing and the difficulties and opportunities involved vary greatly from one person to another.

So one person might experience their voice as thin and weak. Another might have a strong voice but feel they always sound the same and want to change that. Someone else might be controlling their voice all the time and need to relax that control in order to increase their expression and their pleasure.

These very different issues call for different ways forward. So during the classes, I will often work for a short while with one person. The group can help and support through their observation and comments, but most of all by joining in and using their own voices to encourage and develop. It’s very common for one participant to do easily what another struggles to do, and so learning from other members of the group is incredibly necessary and helpful.

The classes last 2 ½ hours and will fly by very fast.

Previously, in situ:’s autumn term course leads on to more detailed work and then a final public performance. Is that what you’re planning to do this year?

Over several decades, in situ: has developed a very good reputation for outstanding public performances. But this course offers something a little different.

We will do performances in the summer. But rather than ending the year with a formal charged-for show, we’ll be doing informal showings, ‘works-in-progress’ you might call them, free and offered only to a small, invited audience.

The accent here will be on sharing our experiments and processes rather than presenting fully-fledged artworks. It’s a more appropriate way forward when there is so much to explore around voice in terms of technique and approach.

I’m hoping all participants will want to work up to these informal showings, but it’s optional – people are welcome to do one or two terms and then take a break.

How do you think people should decide whether to get involved in the course?

I would suggest that – whether experienced or not – you look at the course description and simply see if you think it sounds exciting. If so, sign up, plunge in and start doing it!

Course Details

Course: Voice, The Muscle of the Soul, an 8-week autumn course on The Voice
Dates: Mondays, October 7 to December 2 (except November 11th)
Times: 19.30-22.00 pm
Venue: St Andrew’s Church Hall, Chesterton
Cost: £250 per term

The second term follows the same pattern, Monday January 20-March 17 (except
February 17th), venue St Andrew’s Church Hall.

The third term follows the same pattern of Mondays and will be held from the end of
April to mid-late June, firm dates to be confirmed. This term may include some work
on an outdoor site.

Author: richardhare
Post: New course for autumn focusing on voice
Blog: in situ: theatre

Ghost Stories III is the latest in the series. Passages from the oldest ghost story in Western literature – The Dead from Homer’s epic The Odyssey –  provide the setting for two more modern stories – The Signal Man by Charles Dickens (1866) and Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen (1941). In this way, the tales present the ancient alongside the relatively modern.

And, as I discover when I attend the performance, the tales also focus on an age-old theme. That of internal conflict. Inner struggle. The universal human experience of feeling ‘torn’.

I settle into my seat in the darkening atmosphere of the Leper Chapel, and am immediately transfixed as Richard’s voice dips and rises, levels and then soars again in the first extract from The Dead.

The text is ancient, the words – newly translated by Richard himself – tell the story of Odysseus and his men setting sail to Hades to seek a prophecy from the ghost of the blind prophet Teiresias.

Understandably, the warriors are torn between wanting to know the future and fearing their visit to the Underworld. Already, the audience and I are entertained, but also unsettled by the tale.

The focus shifts. In Demon Lover we are taken to World War II London, where a woman who promised she would wait for her soldier fiance, but married another when her betrothed was reported killed, is horrified by his seeming return from the dead.

Through Richard’s narrative, we both witness and identify with the woman’s inner struggles as she in turn fears vengeance, hopes for forgiveness, denies any danger, yet is terrified that the past has caught up with her. As the tale concludes with her endless screams, I am not the only audience member who shifts uncomfortably in their seat.

A moment only to take breath and then Richard’s eerie vocalisations once more recount how Odysseus’s men face the ghostly figures of the Underworld, with the inner conflict here being the pull between courage and terror. And I myself am starting to feel a shiver. I am safe. I know I am safe, here in Cambridge in 2024. Yet I nevertheless feel torn between fascination and anxiety as I listen to these stories of the supernatural.

There follows a further story of emotional struggle in Dickens’s The Signal Man. The
title character wants to do what he knows is right, yet is aware that by doing so he could create tragedy. Richard guides us through to a chilling climax where the signal man howls his powerlessness, his utter inability to resolve his inner conflict. The story’s denouement reveals that there is in fact a resolution. But it is one which fills us with horror.

And so to the final episode from The Dead, where all the ghosts emerge from the Underworld in a frightful surge. Overwhelmed, Odysseus’s men reconcile their courage-terror by fleeing headlong to their boat and making their escape.

As the show ends, the audience and I have no desire to make our own escape. We all applaud long and loud. One or two of us whoop with delight. We stay to talk, to celebrate the play, to gather round Richard and say how much we loved his work.

But nevertheless, we are thoughtful as we leave for home. We have not only been entertained by classic spooky tales. We have also been reminded by those tales, and by our own reactions through the performance, that inner conflict is a normal, natural and central human experience.

Such conflict does not need to end in horror, as it does for Odysseus and his crew, for the war-time wife, for the Signal Man. Inner conflict can be reconciled, can end in inner peace, can help us grow and develop in strength and maturity. Being torn does not mean being broken.

But ‘torn’ does need to be acknowledged, admitted, accepted. We shouldn’t ignore this central fact of human experience. We need to face it full on.

By exploring inner conflict in this most compelling of ways, Richard Spaul’s Ghost Stories III helps us do just that.

Susan says: I am currently heading a research project developing knowledge, insights and resources around the topic of inner conflict. If you would like to contribute your personal experiences of ‘feeling torn’, or have expertise in any field which explore the topics – perhaps artisti, psychological, philosohpical or scientific – I’d the thrilled to hear from you. All contributions can be anonymous and confidential – or attributed if that’s what your prefer. Please fill in the contact form on our current placeholder page https://www.thetornproject.com and we’ll get back to you.

Author: richardhare
Post: Review of Ghost Stories III by Susan Quilliam
Blog: in situ: theatre

I found the play very powerful. It is re-occurring to me occasionally, in a nice way, for pondering. I’m mulling over the various stages and sets, movements, statements and songs. It really is a very special and unique rendition of the power of the primal group dynamic to bring people into inhumane acts and loss of sense-of-self. The setting is fabulous for creating an atmosphere of mystery and anticipation of ominous happenings.

Review by Elspeth Campbell

At the start of the show, as the performers came down towards us, the audience, I thought I had stumbled on people who had escaped somewhere into a forest but didn’t know they had.

The atmosphere was both haunting and eerie and I wanted to really be a part of it – but I also wanted nothing to do with it. I felt that once I was in this, I could never escape it, could never return to the ordinary world.

I was really impressed with how I always knew where in the scene I should be looking… so everything felt concentrated… and that drew me in and allowed me to be sucked into the Bacchae world. Although the performers would every so often fade into the background, I was never taken away from a focussed scene.

I forgot that I was in a forest. I felt I was in the home where the performers lived… but what was this home?

It was also so beautiful the way each character slid between being a sinister, wise character and being a really small child. This made me giggle but it also made me feel unnerved.

Review by Bar Groisman

in situ: continues its tradition of site-specific theatre with the hugely impressive The Bacchae set in the equally impressive setting of Wandlebury Woods.

The sensory journey opens with the audience being led on a short but none-the-less transformative journey to Wormwood Hill. The layering-on continues with a distant Tannoy proclamation hitting us immediately with other-worldliness. This is amplified by the visual of actors emergent on high, descending to form a close contact corridor as you pass into the land of the Bacchae.

Is the effect disconcerting? Slightly. Is that blood I see? Yes, yes it is. Are these figures demonic or manic? Not so sure. Is it exciting? Most definitely.

At the top of the mount the play begins to hit its stride. The tragic tale emerges with revolving and evolving images overlapped with visuals of actors spread at a distance then collapsing into high intensity nuclei. The attack – or is it now delightful playing – on the senses continues with shattered glimpses of phrases transforming to chorus, transforming to song, transforming to expertly-acted scene, then back to shattered glimpses. The imagery of sound and stage is further enhanced by evolving installation that adds a dynamic physical presence to further amplify the sense of tragedy. And it is tragic – a tragic, tragic tale – but set in such beauty.

How am I feeling? Privileged to have experienced it. Thank you in situ: so very much for the journey.

Review by Mat Wollerton

I absolutely loved the in situ: theatre performance at Wandlebury Country Park. The walk to the site was atmospheric and created an excited anticipation. The opening scene was second-to-none – striking, moving, disturbing. Throughout the performance, the environment was used beautifully and in very exciting ways, and the changing light from the setting sun made the experience mesmerising. Despite the spread-out nature of the production, the intensity and focus of the performance never dropped. The end scene, under the rising moon, took my breath away.  Beautiful, thought-provoking, touching evening.

Anonymous written review

For me there are many stand-out moments.

At the start, as we the audience stood at the foot of the hill, I was wondering whether there was anybody else there at all, any actors, anybody.

Then we heard a voice through a loudspeaker, which could have come from anywhere but in fact came from the top of the hill. Then the actors started to walk down the hill. They kept coming towards us, and kept coming and coming. There was this really intense feeling that we the audience were going to get trampled on…

Another strong memory is of the relationship between the white rocks of the installation and the actors all dressed in white. When the actors were scattered on the hill, it was as if they themselves were the white rocks, as if they themselves were part of the installation.

I also loved the use of space. Having actors gathered round, or behind the trees, or in among the rocks of the installation… there was a moment when actors were kneeling around a tree stump and there was something particularly intimate and powerful about that.

At the end, the loudspeaker voice came through again, and the actors in white once more walked down towards us… then paused in a circle around the stones in a ceremonial moment of remembrance, while the two actors playing Cadmus and Agave walked away from the scene.

As those actors walked away, the woman was wearing a top with a red flower embroidered on the back.

To me, it looked as if she had been shot, and the red was her blood. So, having throughout the play the theme of blood and gore, it was as if death had come to her too.

Finally, as we the audience walked away from the performance, we were directed to halt and look up to see the actors hidden among the trees, to hear the sound of their chanting voices. As if, having completed the ceremony that was the performance, they had once again become part of the scenery and the landscape.

Review by Rachael Duthie

Going to see The Bacchae at Wandlebury Park was like becoming more and more immersed in a completely different world, transported to ancient Greece in a very very physical way.

I remember long silences at the beginning, then seeing all the actors progressing very slowly down the hill towards us. And gradually, as we the audience joined the actors at the top of the hill, it felt like a sacred place.

Just as the women in The Bacchae did, we found ourselves in the hills, in ancient woodland. It’s very hard to put into words, the mixture of faces and voices, and the way everyone – actors and audience – were together as a whole group.

At the start, Dionysus was seductive, playful, humorous. But the mood gradually became much darker, with the brutalism, the terror, the being torn apart of both the cattle and Pentheus himself. It all had a gruesomeness and horror, made all the more visceral because we the audience were in the centre of it all.

Impactful too were the eye-witness accounts we were hearing – different people’s experiences, telling the story as it was happening to them. That gave the scenes an aliveness, a clarity. So even though the production had this wonderful exploratory and experimental feel to it, there was also clarity about the horror of the story.

It was an experience of great contrasts. There were times when everyone came together in unified choral speaking, and there were times when there was chaos.

There were times when things were very very physical and there were times when things were very very poetic.

And then, coming out of all that, when we the audience and the cast processed down the hill at the end of the play, we saw sunny clearings with cows… a setting for the parting of the ways between Cadmus and Agave. Again, so many difference perspectives.

What surprised me was how moving it all was. I am familiar with The Bacchae, having looked at it for A level. But the loss of Pentheus, the way he was torn apart, his mother gradually ‘coming to’ and realising what she had done, the sculpted rocks symbolising the part of Pentheus’s body… it was very moving.

The production itself was Dionysian. It didn’t have the rigidity of Pentheus, it wasn’t pre-thought-out by a man with clipboard instructions. Fitting with the wildness of the location and the essence of Dionysus, there was clearly something wild at the heart of it all.

It also, to me, conveyed a different take on morality, a different take on what happens if you offend the gods, if you display the arrogance and rigidity of Pentheus. The play showed what happens to you – and it’s not neat and tidy, nice and comforting!

Review by Joseph Kao

The performance was intimate, tender, funny, controlled, considered… and very moving.

The invisibly-moving human tableaux descending Wormwood Hill at dusk were very moving indeed; I lamented that more people wouldn’t witness it.

The additional sculpture enhanced the work, effectively making the show so much more than the sum of its parts.

I so appreciate the huge amount of work involved, the attention to detail – and the resilience to rain!

I hope both audience and cast have a huge sense of satisfaction in making this, and in reflecting on and enjoying the memory of it – for years to come.

Review by Jennie Ingram

Author: richardhare
Post: Word Reviews of The Bacchae
Blog: in situ: theatre

The source poem for the production is a collection of mysterious stories about ‘transformation’. But this show is much more than an attempt at story-telling – it’s a full journey and sensorial experience which the audience unexpectedly embarks on.

Richard Spaul, with a surprising use of voice and body-expression, is able to create a stunning kaleidoscope of images quickly appearing and dissolving, sometimes lingering for a prolonged period of time.

The fast-paced narration smoothly moves from one register to another and includes snippets of popular songs. The protagonists of the stories become real in flesh and bone – they speak through their own fears, desires, obsessions. The landscape changes constantly, offering the audience different angles and takes. One can hear many voices from the same story almost overlapping.

The final result is much closer to cinematography – the art of visual storytelling – than to an audio podcast. The jaw-dropping montage of theatre ‘clips’ and extremely accessible and lively language used in this in situ: version bring Metamorphoses back to life from more than two millennia ago, adding new keys of interpretation and chances for reflection. The underlying themes of the show are incredibly modern and poignant: love, morality, transgression, freedom, repression, abuse, identity crisis…

In a way, the spectator too feels changed, even once such an absorbing, fascinating and disconcerting experience is over.
Silvano Squizzato

Author: richardhare
Post: Review of Metamorphoses by Silvano Squizzato
Blog: in situ: theatre

Richard, your solo performances in the medieval Leper Chapel are now an established part of the Cambridge summer arts landscape. But Latin poetry is a new direction for you. Why have you chosen to perform it?

Metamorphoses is one of the most influential works from the ancient classical period of literature. In particular, the poem had an enormous influence on the work of Shakespeare, who references Ovid’s work throughout his plays. That’s why so many of the stories have become well-known to audiences down through the centuries, and why people discovering those tales today for the first time may find them much more familiar than expected. 

Metamorphoses is famous for its stories of transformation – people changing into animals, birds, rocks, waterfalls and so on, usually under the stress of extreme emotion, violence or fear. The work arose out of the bewildering psychological and societal shifts at the intersection of the Roman and Christian eras, a time of violence, religious cults, pleasure-seeking excess and decadence – reflected in the stories of miraculous, weird, frightening changes. 

The poem also anticipates our own very similar times, when old securities are crumbling, new threats of all kinds are emerging, and radical uncertainties about personal identity are all-consuming. There are stories of gender transition, sexual fetishism, ‘toxic masculinity’, abuse, incest, and supernatural phenomena. Ovid’s poetry addresses issues that are on everybody’s mind today – the work is written as if yesterday rather than millennia ago. 

Richard, you yourself have actually translated Ovid’s work for the show. So what the audience experiences is not only your presentation but your personal interpretation of the original. Can you say more about this.

Translation has been an interest of mine for many years and is my favourite type of creative writing at the moment. 

I’m generalising here, but I find most existing translations terribly safe, terribly boring and terribly timid. I appreciate that there are issues of scholarship and accuracy, but most translations are not done by creative writers but by those who don’t engage creatively with the process of writing. Therefore the translations don’t usually succeed in measuring up at all to the acknowledged greatness of the originals. 

When I work, I often go back to the earliest translations and find huge inspiration there. In the case of Ovid, that’s Arthur Golding’s translation from the late 16^th century. I also like John Dryden’s work of a century or so later, and Ted Hughes’s rendition of 1997. These people were all true poets, whether they understood Latin or not. I’ve stolen from all of them.

When I translate a text, I’m trying for something more ambitious than most existing versions. I am willing to add, subtract, change, distort and even ‘damage’ earlier works, in the hope that something will emerge which is not just a worthy boring shadow of some absent original, but a modern, challenging, exciting, disruptive, hard-hitting work in its own right. 

Others will have to say if I succeed or not, but that is my intention.

How have you transformed Ovid’s long work into an enjoyable and accessible solo performance lasting just under 90 minutes?

Metamorphoses is a very long poem and would fuel a dozen or more performances. My performance this coming summer is, I hope, the first phase of a much longer project where I perform other parts of the work based on my translations. 

For this upcoming run, I have chosen only a small sample of the poem, and I’ve settled on three very impactful stories. 

I’ve chosen Ceyx and Alcyone – one of the longest tales, already translated by John Dryden and others. It is a tragic story of a loving couple, a dreadful shipwreck, a ghostly night visit and a miraculous transformation under the pressure of unbearable grief. One of Ovid’s greatest stories.

I’ve also chosen Myrrha, a shocking tale which deals with a young woman’s incestuous desire for her father. It explores frightening and powerful issues which few modern writers would dare address, but which Ovid deals with directly and comprehensively – two thousand years ago. It’s an extraordinary episode.

Pygmalion is my third choice. The story is already famous as the basis for the play of the same name by George Bernard Shaw, later produced as the musical My Fair Lady. The original tale which I tell – about a male misogynist who makes an artificial woman and falls in love with it – is much more troubling than either of these later reworks. Male fantasy, objectification of women; these themes preoccupied those living in ancient times, and continue to preoccupy people today.

Ovid is in urgent need of a revival. That’s why I’m doing it.

in situ: has presented Metamorphoses before, back in 2006, as a company show. But this is a very different retelling.

The original in situ: production of 18 years ago was a very exciting project amongst the trees and meadows of Wandlebury Country Park, with a talented ensemble many of whom I am lucky enough to be still working with.

This Metamorphoses is different. This is just me. The emphasis in my current performance is on a much narrower range of longer stories, explored in more detail and using a more radical and ambitious translation.

Also, the production showcases individual performance skills, especially Voice. I’ve been doing ‘vocal metamorphoses’ for many years, exploring how a single actor’s voice can morph and change, including shifts of vocal gender and sexuality. In that way I have in fact been unknowingly preparing for this current project for many years.

Finally, Richard, what would you say to someone reading this interview and wondering whether to come to our production of Metamorphoses?

Why should people come along at all? in situ: is one of the most exciting and ambitious experimental theatre groups around at the moment – there aren’t many others, unfortunately. So if you want to see exciting, ambitious experimental work, you should come to see us. 

Why should you come to Metamorphoses in particular? Exciting new writing; an intimate setting; a memorably atmospheric space; all presenting themes and issues of the utmost urgency in our frightening, weird and transitional times. 

Author: richardhare
Post: Coming to Cambridge: Metamorphoses
Blog: in situ: theatre

Ghost Stories III comprises The Signal Man by Charles Dickens and a retelling of Demon Lover by Elizabeth Bowen, the two interwoven with excerpts of The Dead from Homer’s Odyssey. 

Artistic Director Richard Spaul here tells us more about what to expect from another of his bewitching evenings.

Richard, this summer marks the eleventh year of your Ghost Stories series. Why do you think the series is so popular and compelling?

People like ghost stories. I liked them very much when I was a teenager and my interest has continued into later life. The genre has attracted some of the greatest writers in different eras. 

It’s also attracted mediocre writers – and one aspect of my development of this series of ghost stories over the years has been my trawling through a lot of average, predictable stuff in search of the real jewels. 

I think the ‘showcasing’ of ghost story treasures is one of the things that has made this series of tales very popular with my audiences. I only ever perform really good writing from really good writers and I take a lot of care over that – no ghostly wolfhounds or headless coachmen! The works I present use the ghost story format to talk about marginalised people and repressed feelings and needs. I think audiences quite rightly find that approach very compelling. 

Something that many people comment on is that the solo performance format I use is theatre in its simplest form. It’s just me on a chair with the audience very close. There aren’t ‘effects’, there’s no spectacle, it’s not ‘streamed’, it involves no additional resources. It’s really happening now, at very close quarters. 

The performance is the performer and the listening audience. We ‘make’ the performance together. I do so by my performance energy and the audience does so by the quality of their attention. It’s a rare thing and it has a lot of power.

Ghost Stories III includes complete tales and linking extracts from three important authors, woven together as a complete work. What’s behind your using this particular combination of texts? 

Dickens is one of the greatest writers of any country or age. But I’ve never done his work until now and it’s very exciting to have the opportunity to perform it. The Signal Man is one of his best short works – far better than the much-loved and over-performed Christmas Carol. The tale has the economy and clarity of myth as it tells of the troubles of a humble signalman, who sees a ghost which prefigures dreadful calamities on the railway line, but who does not know what to do to prevent disaster. That speaks loudly to many of us now.

I’ve performed a couple of Elizabeth Bowen’s works already and I do think that Demon Lover is her best tale ever. She is a great writer, whose ghost stories set in the London Blitz provide a fascinating twist to the genre. Demon Lover reworks an old legend: a woman swears she will be true to her lover for all eternity, but her lover is really a demon and bears her off to Hell. Bowen reimagines the old tale in 1943 bombed-out London, with terrifying consequences. 

The Dead, from Homer’s Odyssey, is the first ghost story in ancient western literature. Odysseus visits the entrance to Hades where he needs to speak to the ghost of Tiresias to learn his future. To this end he sacrifices sheep, but then the Dead are attracted by the smell of blood and start pouring out of Hades in their thousands. It’s Night of the Living Dead a few thousand years avant la lettre. Homer’s work recurs repeatedly during my performance to link the two other stories together. 

It’s very exciting to combine the incredibly ancient and the modern and to see how connected they all are. 

Finally, Richard, do you feel that being ‘safely frightened’ is a human need? If so, why?

M.R. James, the most famous ghost story writer of all, describes the genre as a ‘pleasing terror’, which is very true. 

And in this way, witnessing a performance of ghost stories is a rehearsal for life. We the audience can encounter tragedy, fear, difficulties, loss, moral complications and a whole range of human experiences in a safe environment, because it’s not actually happening to us. 

So we can approach and explore problematic, sad, frightening things in life, without being engulfed by them – and that prepares us for different realities. Being ‘safely frightened’ – as I hope is the effect I’ve achieved in Ghost Stories III – is a crucial part of that. 

Author: richardhare
Post: Coming to Cambridge: Ghost Stories III
Blog: in situ: theatre

Here, director Richard Spaul explains why and how he has brought the original work to life as an open-air promenade production with themes horrifyingly pertinent in today’s world.

Richard, tell us about The Bacchae. Does the play have importance for us even nowadays?

The Bacchae is one of the most powerful and shocking plays in the whole of Greek Theatre.

It’s about Dionysus – Bacchus in Roman myth – God of Wine, Revelry and Excess. The Theban state and its king Pentheus disapprove, and try to repress the god and his women followers.  On the hillside overlooking Thebes, terrible violence ensues.

The play deals with the dark side of human behaviour and with the consequences of trying to repress that. This theme – of the conflict between state/authority/order and human desire for pleasure, release, ecstasy, sexuality – has been played out endlessly through the ages. So the play is as important now as it has ever been.

Clearly the material in the performance is only occasionally the original ancient Greek! Where does the text you use come from?

I’ve done the translation from the original Greek, and and have tried to achieve something very simple.

The extant translations usually try to capture something of the original Greek ‘poetics’. I can understand that, but the result is usually stilted and inaccessible. 

I’ve instead tried to create words which real people might – under intense emotional pressure – actually say. I’m hoping that style will be helpful to the performers doing it and to the audience hearing it. I’m also hoping that the ‘translation’ won’t be noticed at all during performance!

What’s been your process of developing the performance from text-on-the-page to a living work?

The performers of the in situ: company are invited to learn the text before we even start working on it – so there is never any ‘on the page’. I’ve never liked the idea of ‘from page to stage’ and don’t understand why it is still so often assumed to be an effective process of theatre-making.

Having learned the text, we enter the rehearsal process. This extends over nine months of the performers exploring voice, movement, image-making – and psychology – during the rehearsal process. They make their own decisions, individually and collectively, as to how the material might be explored. 

In our final on-site rehearsal period, we connect up all those possibilities to create a continuous whole which is the show.

in situ: very often chooses to perform plays which are centuries – in this case millennia – old, but which reflect contemporary themes. Which themes of The Bacchae are relevant today? 

Let me focus on two linked themes – women and violence.

The followers of Dionysus, including Pentheus’s mother Agave, are all women. Some of them are his ‘groupies’ and some have been driven mad by him and are worshipping him in a state of frenzied possession. It is these women who commit the acts of barbarous violence at the play’s terrifying culmination. So the play is a very powerful exploration of women’s issues and women’s place in society. It has sometimes been seen as a proto-feminist text – women are certainly active and powerful in it. 

But it seems to me to be far more problematic and complex than that. For there are many situations and events in history in which women have been the instruments of charismatic male leaders – and this is precisely what happens in The Bacchae. One frightening point of reference for us here has been Charles Manson and ‘The Family’ – young, vulnerable women under the sway of a psychopathic male leader and committing acts of horrific violence. These women are a complex mix of perpetrator and victim. This is the world of The Bacchae.

As in much of in situ:’s work, the performers in The Bacchae mix and match roles throughout. Can you say more about that approach? 

Rather than playing single specific roles as in conventional modern theatre and television, in situ: performers play multiple roles, continually merging from one to another, sometimes representing one or other of the individual characters, sometimes an anonymous mass.

I feel this creates a more powerful spectacle and focusses the audience’s mind on the deep structures and forces at work in the play, highlighting archetypes of human experience rather than the details of individual psychologies. 

Why are you staging the production in the open air and on the steep inclines of Wormwood Hill? What do you hope this will add to the audience’s experience?

We are called in situ: because of our commitment to creating work outside ordinary theatre spaces. This allows us to offer dramatic experiences, perspectives and environments which are otherwise simply impossible.

In our performance of The Bacchae, the audience are actually amongst the trees and birds and leaves of a real hillside. Imagine the expense and trouble of trying to ‘fake’ all that in a conventional theatre space. Far more effective to take the work out into the landscape itself.

We’ve enjoyed a very long and fruitful relationship with Cambridge Past Present and Future, who take care of Wormwood Hill in the beautiful Wandlebury Country Park, where we are performing. We are very lucky to have access to such a fascinating space.

One crucial aspect of this current production is the work of professional sculptor, Melissa Pierce-Murray, who, as well as being a performer, has produced some wonderful objects which will be part of the performing environment. So we have an exciting chemistry of sculpture, natural environment, performers and a powerful text. This is not something which can in any wat be replicated in a conventional theatre – and that is one reason why people want to come and see the play.

Can we look forward to in situ:’s signature choral and choreographed work as part of the performance?

Yes. Our voice and movement work, along with the site – trees, wind, birds, leaves, possibly the rain (hope not!) and the big perspectives up and down hills and through trees – create possibilities for exciting imagery, sound and action. 

Chorus and choreography are essential parts of Greek tragedy as it was originally performed– traditionally the Chorus speak, sing, chant together as well as moving and dancing together. Nowadays this kind of show is associated with musical theatre, but we draw from the tradition to create a very different form of performance – a Tragedy with the power and grandeur to match the remarkable setting we perform in. 

Finally, Richard, The Bacchae deals with death in its most brutal form. What was your motivation for wanting to create a show which challenges the audience in this way?

What The Bacchae challenges us to face is serious stuff about the realities of life. Anyone with a head and a heart will be well of aware of that, and will be aware that there are terrible violent realities in many parts of the world, even as we speak.

I want to create theatre which acknowledges, addresses and ‘works through’ these aspects of life, and I feel this is one of the main purposes of art. Perhaps that is one distinction between entertainment and art. Entertainment cheers people up and takes our minds off our difficult lives. Art addresses difficult realities, often seeking new and experimental forms to do so. 

Both have a place. But I know which one I’m more interested in.

Author: richardhare
Post: Coming to Wandlebury this June: The Bacchae
Blog: in situ: theatre