Bush Chris Bush Plays: One

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-78850-750-9
Verlag: Nick Hern Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 320 Seiten

Reihe: NHB Modern Plays

Since her play Steel opened in her native Sheffield in 2018, Chris Bush has rapidly become one of the UK's most successful and widely staged playwrights, with her plays on stage at the National Theatre, in the West End, and across Europe. Celebrated for her spirited dissections of power, female agency and northern identity, her work is infused with wit, empathy, and a powerful sense of place and belonging. Included here are five of her plays, all first performed between 2018 and 2021, together with a revealing introduction in which she reflects on the tumultuous period from which they emerged. Steel (Sheffield Theatres, 2018) is a political epic constructed from minimal resources, a two-hander spanning three decades of women in politics. 'Sharp, witty and uncannily topical' The Stage Faustus: That Damned Woman (Headlong, 2020) is a radical reimagining of the classic tale, asking what women must sacrifice to achieve greatness. 'Original, ambitious and fantastically revisionist' Guardian Nine Lessons and Carols(Almeida Theatre, 2020) is a play, with songs by Maimuna Memon, about connection and isolation, forged during the Covid pandemic, exploring what we hold on to in troubled times. 'A reminder of the power of theatre and our need for it' Telegraph Hungry (Paines Plough, 2021) is a pithy two-hander about food, love, class and grief in a world where there's little left to savour. 'Reconfirms Chris Bush as one of our greatest, most relevant contemporary playwrights' Broadway World  Not  the End of the World (Schaubühne, Berlin, 2021) is a daringly theatrical investigation of the climate crisis through the perspectives of class, patriarchy and colonialism. 'Staggering... Bush's remarkable text melds a ruthless structural concept with exquisite lyricism' Guardian 'One of our most prolific and arresting writers'Evening Standard 'A writer of great wit and empathy'The Times

Chris Bush is a playwright, lyricist and theatre-maker. Her plays include: Otherland (Almeida Theatre, London, 2025); Robin Hood and the Christmas Heist written with Matt Winkworth (Rose Theatre, Kingston, 2024); an adaptation of Ibsen's A Doll's House (Sheffield Theatres, 2024); Rock/Paper/Scissors (Sheffield Theatres, 2022); an adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, and New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, 2022); (Not) the End of the World (Schaubühne, Berlin, 2021); Hungry (Paines Plough, 2021); Nine Lessons and Carols (Almeida Theatre, London, 2020); Faustus: That Damned Woman (Headlong, Lyric Hammersmith & Birmingham Rep, 2020); The Last Noël (Old Fire Station, Oxford, 2019); Standing at the Sky's Edge, a musical with music and lyrics by Richard Hawley (Sheffield Theatres, 2019, revived 2022 and at the National Theatre in 2023, West End 2024); The Changing Room (National Theatre Connections, 2018); Steel (Sheffield Theatres, 2018); an adaptation of Pericles (National Theatre, London, 2018); The Assassination of Katie Hopkins, written with Matt Winkworth (Theatr Clwyd, 2018); What We Wished For and A Dream.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bush, Chris

Leseproben

Introduction

These plays were first performed in the three-year period between autumn 2018 and autumn 2021, a period which, I think we can all agree, was generally fairly quiet and uneventful on a global scale. They don’t represent the beginning of my writing career, but do mark the point where I was increasingly able to make the work I wanted to, pursue the ideas I found most interesting, and stretch my theatrical muscles in new and exciting directions.

I wrote my first play when I was thirteen. It is not included in this volume. I sincerely hope that no one will ever have to read it again. Even so, I knew pretty much from that point that I wanted to write theatre for a living, and started to plan accordingly. Growing up in Sheffield, theatre was never presented to me as something rarefied or inaccessible. The Crucible remains the best theatre anywhere on the planet, and there was nowhere better to fall in love with the form. I studied at the University of York, primarily because of the reputation of its drama society, and took my first show to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2006 (which spectacularly sank without a trace). I fared far better the following year with the none-too-subtle , and graduated in 2007 fully convinced I was skyrocketing towards a glittering career. Then nothing happened for about five years.

Actually, that’s not quite true. I was writing lots, and continually sending scripts off into the void (occasionally trying to stage them myself, which was never the best idea), while working whatever minimum-wage/zero-hour/low-commitment jobs would pay my rent. Towards the end of 2012 I received a year-long attachment to the Crucible through the Pearson Playwrights’ Scheme (now the Peggy Ramsay/Film4 Awards), and a two-month residency at the National Theatre Studio. It was while on attachment in Sheffield that I was commissioned to write my first piece of large-scale community theatre ( in 2014, directed by Daniel Evans), something that has formed a huge part of my practice over the last decade. It’s complete madness that big community plays are often entrusted to less-experienced, emerging writers, seeing as they’re just about the most technically challenging work there is, but I’m not complaining. These vast logistical undertakings taught me a huge amount about storytelling and practical theatre-making, as well as about community and purpose and audiences and collective ownership of work, and this grounding has informed just about everything I’ve written since.

So, by the time we reach , the first play in this volume, I’d been writing theatre on and off for eighteen years. I think this is worth mentioning as a useful counter-narrative to all the overnight successes who get their debuts staged at the Royal Court before they can legally drink, and fame and fortune seems to follow immediately. 2018 was a real breakthrough year for me, and felt like it had been a long time coming. I made for National Theatre Connections, for Theatr Clwyd, my adaptation of in the Olivier (my first NT Public Acts project), and for the Crucible Theatre Studio (now the Tanya Moiseiwitsch Playhouse). By this point I’d written three large-scale community shows for the Crucible, and was looking for a new challenge. Somehow, I managed to corner incoming Artistic Director Robert Hastie within his first couple of weeks on the job, and pitched him an ambitious political epic spanning several decades. He agreed to commission it just so long as I could make it work with two actors, and was the result. I knew Rebecca Frecknall from some shared time together at the National Theatre Studio, and was delighted when she agreed to direct. Having made so many big and complex shows in the run-up to , I found the whole process a joy, and a fairly straightforward prospect, although I remember at the time Rebecca saying it was the most stressful thing she’d ever done. In a two-hander there really is nowhere to hide, no bells and whistles or theatrical dazzle camouflage to distract an audience from anything that doesn’t quite work. Fortunately we were blessed with a superb cast and phenomenal team, and of course now everybody knows what a genius Frecks is. The themes contained within – those of power, female agency, northern identity, a sense of place and belonging, and good people fighting a flawed system – can be found throughout much of my work.

2019 was another full year, with the inaugural production of in Sheffield and for Attic Theatre. I was also busy working on a string of other projects, including for Headlong, which was commissioned in late 2018. I had been wanting to put my own spin on the Faust myth for years, but initially struggled to get going. I got it into my head that I wasn’t just writing a play this time, but proper this was to be big, serious, grown-up work for an internationally renowned company, and it had to be just right. The self-imposed pressure to create something great – or even worse, is a terrible thing for a first draft. But I persevered, first developing the script with the brilliant Amy Hodge, and later with Caroline Byrne once she was attached to direct. We opened at the Lyric Hammersmith in January 2020, before embarking on a small UK tour. Far beyond anything else I’d written, I was convinced this was the show that would make my career.

Then the world fell apart.

was playing at the Bristol Old Vic in March 2020 when theatres across the country closed. By chance, I ended up catching what would be the penultimate performance of the run, and I’m so glad I did. wasn’t an easy make and took some critical flak along the way, never quite making the splash in London that I’d hoped for. Still, by this point in the tour it felt like it had really found its feet. Jodie McNee and Danny Lee Wynter were firing on all cylinders, and the whole production had gained the confidence and propulsion it always needed. The Bristol Old Vic is an exceptionally beautiful theatre, which wears the scars of its history for all to see. Sometimes plays reveal their true nature to you very late in the day. My is about morality, religion, patriarchy, ambition, gender, vengeance, and many other things besides, but sitting in that ancient auditorium that afternoon, it fully struck me how much the piece is about disease – not just the great plague of 1665 in which the action starts, but sickness and medicine and mortality are at its core. Because theatre is a live art form, our understanding of a text will always be influenced by the circumstances under which we experience it. At a recent student revival I attended, themes of AI and technology felt particularly prevalent. In future productions, should I be fortunate enough to have them, who knows what will leap to the fore? Still, on that strange day in March, this was a show about plague. On the train back to London I got a call from one of the producers – the theatres were closing, but this was just a temporary measure. With a bit of luck we’d be off for no longer than a fortnight, and able to finish the run in Leeds as planned. It turns out everything took a little longer.

I’m not sure I’ve made a ‘normal’ show since Covid, by which I mean a show not in some way impacted, curtailed, postponed, reimagined or somehow interfered with as a result of the pandemic. Maybe that just is what ‘normal’ looks like now. In October 2020, while everything was still extraordinarily uncertain, I got a call from Rebecca Frecknall to make a show with her for the Almeida. A week later we met actors, and a week after that we were in rehearsals for what became . The idea wasn’t to make a show about the pandemic as such, but to make something of a response piece to the year we’d all been through, fully aware of the fact that we were still in the eye of the storm, with no clear end in sight. Everyone involved had experienced their own unique lockdown, but common themes soon emerged. We wanted something that touched on ideas of isolation and loneliness, of loss and resilience, of gathering together in the darkest part of the winter in some sort of collective act of defiance, at a time when any collective act felt nigh-on impossible. It is the most truly collaborative piece in this collection. While the words are mine, they came from conversation, reflection, improvisation, devising exercises and writing prompts with our brilliant and brave company (augmented with the beautiful songs of Maimuna Memon). We ran a socially distanced rehearsal room, where infrared scanners checked our temperatures on the door and health professionals regularly visited to stick swabs up our noses (this was before the days of self-testing). We were all, I think, immensely grateful to be given the chance to make anything, but it was a deeply surreal process. The resulting piece was strange and fragmentary, funny, sad, dreamlike, born of courage and vulnerability and holding our nerves through eleventh-hour rewrites and ever-changing government policy. What we ended up with was remarkable, and contains some of my very favourite writing. After a monumental effort, we were closed the day after press night, when London was bumped up into a different tier...