Although the preview performances are modified versions of the play as it was designed at and for The Rag Factory, they are a distinct version of the play in their own right. I don’t think I realised quite how much impact the set, with it’s black and white banners, and white outlines of jars against the dark, would have at the blackbox Camden Peoples’ Theatre. It works.

I always find this point in the run a very strange experience – suddenly this microcosmic version of a world which you have seen developing for weeks and weeks is opened up to an audience, and becomes tangibly whole and total for the first time, with lighting, set, stage make up, and of course an audience – the final factor which can so completely change the shape of a performance. I think tonight’s audience was a good one because all of the first night energy was there, and all performances were without exception engaging. Louisa and Luke convince me so totally of the reality of Libby and Paul and their odd and unexpected games, fantasies, paranoias and fears; and the relationship between the brothers Paul and Simon, with its peculiar blend of animosity and protectiveness, is something which Luke and Steve have definitely captured.

Paul McCartney is Dead is intended to be uncannily familiar, unsettling but complete. Under Alex’s direction, every element from the staging to the physicality of the scenes embraces the play’s surrealism, creating a world which is disordered and disorientating but is also someone’s home – where times collide and overlap, spaces intrude into each other, and memories of the past press against the margins of every game and every joke, but where the past still matters and nothing and no one can ever be entirely forgotten. It is a strange world, and one I am glad we have made.

An original piece, and 9 months in development, the play tells the story of two brothers Simon and Paul, through two interweaving narrative strands across two separate times. In the midst of violent revolution, Simon’s girlfriend Amber is lost. In the period which follows, the brothers await the coming of the grey men, the merciless agents of progress, and their world abounds in conspiracy theories and ghosts of the past.

Told from the perspective of Libby, the sole survivor of the tale, as she pieces together the brothers’ stories from recorded conversations, the boundary between fact and fiction, memory and spectacle, is uncertain.

Performances will be at the Camden Peoples’ Theatre at 9.15pm on 22nd-25th August as part of the 2010 Camden Fringe, and site-specific performances 27th-30th August, over the bank holiday week end.

To keep up to date with developments in the site-specific production and for advance booking add your name to our mailing list at the bottom of the home page on the main site.

Hope to see lots of you there!

Review by Tom.

Good things all around. The only thing I can think to add is a big thank you to the acts from the rest of the day – Marcus Orlandi, Lisa Turner-Wells, ShortsAmorpha, Thom Ashworth, The Peryls and Robin James – and everyone who came along. We genuinely had one of the most engaged and responsive audiences you could get, which was also a credit to all of the performers involved! Thanks also to Nat from Musos’s Guide and her skills.

In terms of Scenes from the City, we are excited to announce that the project is growing, and we have an exhibition at Nolias Gallery from 6th-10th August – Scenes from the City August Exhibition.

The private view is scheduled for the evening of 5th August – if you’d like to come along send me an email at vicky@brokenglassplay.co.uk.

In the meantime, to see where the online Scenes from the City is at, click here for the most recent chapter and back-story . The brand new iMan is, I think, one of our most unsettling and also magnificent creations, brought excellently to life alongside the rest of our strange and wonderful characters in the extended version of the Scenes radio-play, which we will be bringing to the exhibition this August.

This also seems like a good point to express my huge admiration for the surreal imagination of Ben Lambert, who brings the much-need visual half to the whole literary-visual experience. Very good.

We are open to submissions of complete pieces from theatre companies and individual performers working with fresh approaches to live theatre, with a maximum running time of 25 minutes. Please email a short CV of previous work and proposals of no more than 300 words to alex@brokenglassplay.co.uk or vicky@brokenglassplay.co.uk by Monday 1st March.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Vicky & Alex

Short Fuse facebook group

&

Short Fuse II on flickr

The one thing we’ve realised over and over again during the last couple of years, is that sometimes the biggest surprises can produce the most exciting theatre. It’s the unexpected set-restrictions, necessary re-writes, and all such things, which have created some of the work we’ve done that I’m the most proud of. I know this was the case for some of the acts at Short Fuse yesterday – and I suspect it might be the case for Broken Glass in terms of where we go next: the problems we have to think around.

We’ve realised firstly that Short Fuse needs a change of venue: next time we’re aiming for a larger stage, with a more comfortable audience capacity. The original point of the performance platform, however, remains unchanged: we still believe it is possible to create good theatre without all of the strings – without a high budget, without all of the expensive trappings – simply by virtue of the performances of talented people in works of theatre which matter – we’ve been very lucky to realise this with our own cast. But the one thing we have discovered to be a non-negotiable factor is space – both in terms of the performance platform and in our own performances as a company.

Rachel makes a very true point in her post below: to create the dystopian vision we want for ‘Paul’, space – in terms of staging and I think also the time-frame in which we are working (performance-duration, subsequent narrative development, and the rehearsal process itself) – is essential. As with every new production we are trying to create a new world; this one is more difficult than most, and we need a certain amount of space in which to realise it. In many ways it is a very naturalistic piece: movement, particularly in the first portion of the play, is considerably less stylised than in our previous production; dialogue – although admittedly intentionally odd in places – for the most part is intended to mimic the rhythm of normal speech patterns, rather than beats and musical lines. But this is the essential point about ‘Paul’, and something I hope we can develop for the full production in the summer – it is itself a mimicry: a world in which all looks at first, though perhaps a bit eccentric, a bit hazy around the edges, for the most part fine, familiar, bureaucratically functioning even, but in which all is not fine. It is a world full of absence – a dystopia. But dystopias can be hard to create because these come closer, indeed the closest Broken Glass has ever come, to the real. The world of ‘Paul’ is only a partial fiction, and so it’s comedy is not straight-forward, it is jarring.

Like every play – at least every one I think it’s worth us doing – we are starting out in a new direction. I’m looking forward to working this one out, and creating some space, whereever we can find it. We’ll put a large sign on the door saying ‘Shh now, I’m acting’.

For one, the play lacks the ready-made atmospheric possibilities of ‘The Golem’ that were provided by the music, highly choreographed movement and stylised voice work. Aside from one residual bin bag, the puppets were gone too, including the human shadow. Now, all the focus falls on the actors to create a world for the audience.

Furthermore, last Short Fuse, the scene from ‘The Golem’ which was presented (entitled ‘Salon Loisitscheck’), was a stand alone entity. Without telling the full story that the extended play went on to tell over the summer, the piece was coherent within itself. It also involved all the actors, all of whom were on stage all of the time. The offering from ‘Paul’ was instead the opening six scenes of a play, and the company have not begun work on any of the subsequent scenes (much to Daniel’s surprise!). This meant that the play had to gain a momentum, made possible physically by the culminating fight in scene six. Did the plot gain enough weight to leave the audience wondering ‘What happens next?’ ? If you were at the Camden Head last night, let us know!

Many of the actors have now left Cambridge, meaning that rehearsals were few and far between, and trains did their utmost to stop them happening altogether! And having Steve King living in the far far away land of Brummie cannot be good for the mental stability of the directors. There was also a quick actor swap two days ago, and director Alex was given a brief moment centre stage.

Reading over the above paragraphs I detect in my own writing a note of pessimism or negativity that was not intended. However, to list all the things I think we did brilliantly seems a little arrogant in a blog for the company website! Assuming we go on to finish work on the play (as I believe we plan to?) I look forward to upping the contrast between the scenes based in Paul’s formalin-filled home, and those in the clothes-strewn offices. The dystopian tinge to the play was not given much space in the opening scenes, but may have more space to breathe in the full play.

Credit to Miss Flood for another great script, and to the other actors for braving the train, rain and pain (?) to make it yesterday. Do let us know what you thought of last night as a whole, and of ‘Paul’… if you have yet recovered from the shocking Truth of the PMID!