MAPS is the acronym for the Master of Arts Playwriting course. Each year, a
dozen or so playwrights take this prestigious course, the centre of which is the
writing and performance of a new play. The plays are rehearsed for a three weeks
and then fully staged over a three day period, usually a long weekend.
Steve has now directed four of these exciting new dramas. He is
highly regarded in the Drama Department and is seen as an invaluable
asset in this unique process. His work invariably involves working
closely with the writer, offering advice about editing or staging,
and further script development. As a very experienced writer himself,
Steve is very much aware of the important boundaries between the
writer and the director. The rehearsal and staging process is sometimes
a sharp learning curve for the new writers, especially dealing with
the demands of actors. Again though, as an actor himself, Steve
knows the difficulties often presented to actors when working on
new plays with developing and evolving scripts. As the director
of these new plays, Steve has to steer both the writer and the cast
through the sometimes complex staging process. However, he finds
working on these new scripts becomes especially invigorating and
it is always very fulfilling to see a new play work for the first
time.
2000
The Assassination of Tony Blair
By Andrew Taylor
The Assassination of Tony Blair is an absurdist situation
comedy populated by a strange and rather obsessive group of characters,
all set in a modern urban house. The plot is very simple: it is announced
by one character that the Prime Minister Tony Blair is coming to tea,
causing a response from the other characters ranging from jubilant
excitement to downright apathy. Once the premise or plot of “the
expected arrival” is established the play very much becomes character-led.
Steve spent a great deal of the rehearsal period helping the actors create
and explore their comic obsessions, yet at the same time keep these characteristics
within the realm of credibility. Also, much of the play operated in part like
a farce with a series of finely timed entrances and exits, all of which needed
precision rehearsal. At the MAPS weekend The Assassination of Tony Blair
proved especially popular with the audience, with the writer Mark Ravenhill noting
how well the piece played.
Dark of the Moon
By Vanessa Dodd
Dark of the Moon is a rich and multi-layered play concerning the unbalancing
triangular relationship of an overly possessive and protective mother and
her son with the son’s wife almost living as an outsider in her own home.
The arrival of a sort of travelling angel or shaman figure further disrupts
the balance resulting in the exposure of false memory and past guilt. Equilibrium
is only finally restored by the most extreme and primitive of rituals.
The play wedded the poetic language and metaphorical setting of the work of
Tennessee Williams with the menace and black comedy of Harold Pinter. A deeply
psychological drama, the play proved to be both challenging and rewarding for
the actors and it went on to become one of the highlights of the weekend.
1999
Spunk
By Cate Sweeney
Spunk is a new comedy in which the old values of the country
meet the modern aspirations of the town. The premise of Spunk is
very simple: the first member of the Pearmain family to produce
a baby boy inherits the considerable family estate. Problems arise
though because the Pearmain family includes those who are gay, adulterous
and infertile.
Spunk had five different locations, all of which were on view
to the audience at the same time. Further more, many sections of the
play involved several actions at each of these locations happening
simultaneously, which meant a constant change of focus for the audience,
a challenge for both director and actors. Many of these scenes, though
separate actions, had their own way of working together so that a
question in one scene was seemingly answered in a totally independent
scene. The play was highly theatrical, operating like a clockwork
mechanism where each little cog or spoken line was dependant on a
separate yet integral cog or speech elsewhere. The play required and
received the strong disciplined attitude of farce from the actors.
Spunk was a big hit with the audience and ended the weekend
in 1999 on a very high note.
Human Resources
By Angela McNab
Human Resources is a modern comedy of manners about friendship where
the contrast is between the close bonding people sometimes find in the work environment
compared to the unfulfilled human relationships the same people sadly experience
in their home lives. Essentially Human Resources was a two-hander about
the special relationship that developed between two women working in personnel
department of a large hospital. Neither had a happy time in their home life. One
was boringly married while the other had a series of disastrous boyfriends and
so their work life took on a sort of mutual support marriage status.
Much of the rehearsal period was taken up in discovering the rhythms and ebbs
and flows of this kind of modern relationship. The writing was sometimes reminiscent
of the work of writers such as Alan Bennett in that Angela McNab took two ordinary
people and invited us into their everyday world and showed us how special that
sort of so-called ordinary life can sometimes be. Angela McNab has gone on to
have several plays commissioned and broadcast on BBC Radio Four.
