Rehearsing Plays of Love and War

This Flesh is Mine - Gerrard McArthur and Iman Aoun

After more than two years, we are back in the extraordinary mythic world of Brian Woolland's Homeric plays.  This Flesh is Mine, which we co-produced with Palestine's ASHTAR Theatre in 2014, was one of the finest pieces we have ever done - acclaimed by the press and by its audiences in both Ramallah and London.  Now we're bringing it back, together with a fantastic new companion piece called When Nobody Returns.   It's an Odyssey to go with the Iliad of This Flesh is Mine.

If anything, the new play is even more complex, unstable, politically engaged and emotionally charged than This Flesh is Mine.  It's benefitted from the company - including Brian - being able to spend time in the West Bank when we rehearsed the first piece there, and from the opportunity to develop the script in dialogue with other theatre-makers from the Middle East, as well as the military families we encountered at Salisbury Playhouse last year.  Brian's written very eloquently about the writing process on the dedicated blog.  

I never used to like The Odyssey.  It seemed to me a fairytale, rather silly after the great themes of The Iliad.  It was nice to be proved wrong.  As Brian worked on the script, it became more and more clear that the famous bits of the epic are actually the bits about spin - stories at one remove from the real story.  At the heart of Homer's poem is a hero's long-delayed return to free a land that is under occupation.  It is this aspect of the Odyssey - so resonant with the Palestinian situation - that has inspired When Nobody Returns.

We've been incredibly lucky to get almost all the original cast back - and they will be performing in both plays, on the same set.  Andrew French, who was so compelling and passionate as Achilles, will also play Odysseus in the new play.  Iman Aoun, the Artistic Director of ASHTAR, returns as Hecuba, and plays Odysseus' wife Penelope - weaving her tapestry as she awaits his return, in what Iman has called an act of cultural resistance.  Gerrard McArthur is Priam and Antinous, the leader of the suitors for Penelope's hand;while David Broughton-Davies plays two brothers - Agamemnon in the first play and Menelaus in the second.  Tariq Jordan, who was so exciting as Hector and Patroclus in This Flesh is Mine, has the key role of Telemakhos - the son of Odysseus and Penelope, who has never known his father, and is now the age Odysseus was when he set sail for Troy.  

The one new cast member is another actress from ASHTAR.  Bayan Shbib has been seen in London before - she played the Queen when ASHTAR brought Richard II  to the Globe to Globe Festival.  She also has an extraordinary personal history: born in Syria, she now lives in Austria, where she has been working in theatre for refugees.  And, of course, this is another theme that resonates powerfully through the new play: after the war, there are displaced people on the seas.  

It's going to be an exciting few weeks.  We open October 21st. And here's a booking link!

Salisbury Odysseys

At the beginning of this year, Brian Woolland and I led some workshops with members of the Youth Theatre at Salisbury Playhouse, as a way of kickstarting some ideas for a new play.  The play will be a sequel to This Flesh is Mine: after our Iliad will come our Odyssey.  You read it here first!  On October 24th, we were back there, accompanied by some of the actors from This Flesh is Mine, to give a reading of some scenes from the new piece, again involving the young people.

A youth theatre attached to a provincial rep may seem an odd place to start work on a play based on Greek myth and engaging with current issues in the Middle East - But Salisbury Playhouse is no ordinary provincial rep.  For one thing, since Gareth Machin arrived as Artistic Director, it has become very focussed on new writing, and exciting, engaged, experimental new writing at that.  And, even more importantly for us, Salisbury is a city surrounded by the military - so many of the young people in the youth theatre are from services families.  This meant that they were ideally placed to respond to one of the key figures in The Odyssey - Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, who dominates the first four books of Homer's poem, and remains central throughout.  Most people think that The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus' voyage home: in fact, the stories of the voyage are all told indirectly within the wider story of his family and his land - Penelope and Telemachus are waiting for his return to a space that is increasingly dominated by suitors for Penelope's hand.  Occupiers, if you like.  Why does Odysseus not come back?  When he does come back, what sort of man will he be?  How will he related to a son who he has never known - a son who is now an adult?

These sort of questions were very immediate for young people from military families - and many of them responded in fascinating and productive ways during our workshops early in the year.  Their presence in the reading was extraordinary too - it made us realise how much The Odyssey is about a drama between generations - how very young characters engage with, or turn their backs on, the middle aged.

Brian's new play is going to be extraordinary - a really worthy successor to This Flesh is Mine.  Now all we have to do is make it happen.