ISTA/Scene March 07

“My tree of knowledge expanded by several branches during those four wonderful days.”
Trine Kolbjornsen, St Johns International School, Belgium
Having been involved in an Auckland
University production of THE DOG
BENEATH THE SKIN, I knew staging it
was possible. A sprawling, episodic
and incisively satirical play, it involves
elements of epic and surrealist theatre,
revue and music hall, as well as a
chorus who speak some of the best
modernist poetry ever written. With a
large, keen group of high school actors
and drawing the main cast from IB
Theatre Arts students, we rehearsed
42 actors (a third of the high school),
most of whom were busy for the entire
show. The chorus work became the
challenge for first year IB students,
who also took cameo parts and
support roles. Second Year IB
students, busy with coursework and
Individual Projects, took on other
cameos while drama elective members
clocked up CAS hours by the score in
yet more cameos and ensemble work.
Mounting this play in our small studio
theatre, creating space for audience
and 40-something actors seemed
impossible at first. The solution came
by staging the piece in line, with
audience in four rows on each side,
close to the action. Which proved yet
again the adage: “Good ideas solve
problems.” Scene changes were drilled
over and over and thus an entire
generation of students learned to do
this properly. Design was simple and
we did not come close to realising the
design possibilities this play could
provide. The original music, by
Benjamin Britten, proved impossible to
get hold of. In any case (I’ve been told)
it’s well beyond the range of most
school voices. Just as well that a singable
and memorable score by Mike
Peake, a London based musician, was
available and perfect for the play. The
music pastiches and parodies’ styles
move from the maudlin sentimental to
Kurt Weill, via Wagner and others.
Likewise, the performance rights are
held in New York and took some
tracking down (“Dog beneath the
what Never heard of it!”), but we were
compensated for our efforts by getting
the rights for nothing.
HIGHLIGHTS: a quintessential English
village with the nastiest of
undercurrents; an ensemble madhouse
scene; an audience in tears of laughter
at cabaret artiste Dirty Desmond, who
destroys an original Rembrandt in front
of a genuine art critic; shortly followed
by transfixing poetry and a
denouement that draws the battle lines
for the conflict with fascism. This is a
play that will challenge any production
team (I recommend doing OH! WHAT
A LOVELY WAR a year or two earlier,
as we did, as practice and also as a
thematic, musical and historical leadup).
THE DOG BENEATH THE SKIN
will also challenge preconceptions of
theatre and history. Most of all, it will
please, shock and captivate an
audience, while giving them insights
about where our society has come
from and where it might still go.
Pam Slawson – American
International School Dhaka-
Bangladesh
A COMPANY OF WAYWARD
SAINTS by George Herman,
published by Samuel French Inc
This is a contemporary play about a
modern Commedia dell’Arte theatre
troupe. I had a class of mixed first-year
IB students and younger high-school
students and wanted to do an in-class
production that would serve all of their
needs. The nine Commedia characters
were played by the eighteen actors in
my class - sharing the roles made
perfect sense since a Commedia
troupe could have more than one actor
playing a masque. The topic of the
play served as a springboard for IB
Theatre Arts students’ study of
Commedia conventions. They were
also able to practice applied research
of characters, Commedia performance
techniques, masks, costumes, and
history. The research was presented to
all of the students who used it in
designing masks, costumes and
developing characterizations. The
episodic nature of the text gave each
student their time in the spotlight and
made simultaneous rehearsing of all of
the various scenes possible. The
scene design was quite simple, and the
theme of the show – the importance of
working as an ensemble - was certainly
relevant to my own class as the diverse
group of students learned to work
together as an ensemble.
MANKIND & CO published by
Thomas Hischak Pioneer Drama
Service Inc, Denver, Colorado
I’ve always liked using this play with
Middle School students because the
subject of the play is usually relevant to
their studies (classical mythology), the
performance style is lively and leaves
room for a great deal of creativity, and I
can cast an infinite number of
students and spread the parts out fairly
equally among students, giving all
students a featured role. There are
narrators, which can be divided into as
many parts and played by as many
actors as one desires, and the
anachronisms, and opportunities for
clowning, dance, mime, and music
make it attractive to this age group. A
clowning concept was used and
Middle School students loved being
able to help pull together their own
mismatched costumes from our
existing wardrobe. They also were
allowed to design their own makeup,
basically painting their faces with stars,
hearts, lightning bolts, etc.
A COMEDY OF ERRORS by William
Shakespeare: Bollywood style
Shakespeare’s plays make great
material for understanding how a
production concept can be applied to a
play. I asked a class of Advanced
Theatre students to help me make
Shakespeare more relevant to their
audience. The result was a production
set in India and produced by borrowing
some conventions from the popular
Bollywood film industry. The characters,
conflicts, and situations in A COMEDY
OF ERRORS are familiar to the
Bollywood film genre. Already the
shortest of Shakespeare’s comedies,
we cut the script so it would play in one
hour without intermission. This was
easy to do by accessing on-line text
and deleting selectively. Music, Indian
dancing, 19th century costumes, and a
few selective name changes were all
that was needed to make Shakespeare
familiar in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
Sam Stone – Southbank
International School, UK
THE FORMAL by Sue Murray, an
Australian play approximately one
our duration
Overview – Grade 12 girls are getting
ready for their school Formal, (or Prom
as it’s also known.) Three fairies are
helping them get ready and comment
on the action throughout. There are
issues of body image, popularity,
Scene | 2006-7 March Issue 3 | 23