Post by Redwine on Mar 16, 2008 22:26:40 GMT -5
You've heard of the idea, right? A group of playwrights and actors have just 24 hours to write, prepare and stage an original play.
The idea may have begun at the Old Vic as a way to showcase "New Voices" (new, young writing talent). Tom was an emcee in 2005, for that event -- but it's really taken off and there are versions of the concept going on all over.
The Old Vic "New Voices" version, however, is still going strong. New Voices is the original version that puts young writers and actors to the test to produce miracles...and then....
...there's the GALA version. That's the version that involves some of the best and most-respected talent in England, meant to promote the other event and raise funds for it; it's a very hot ticket.
Tom has taken part in this li'l Trial by Fire at least twice now (which either means he owes somebody big-time... or that he loves it). It's got to be anything but dull!
So here's a thread to speculate on whether he'll do it a third time. The main event ("New Voices") takes place this year on March 29. Here's an article by one of the writers of last year's Gala event, just to give you an idea of the world he's thrown into when he does these amazing shows!
Take a look over on Thomagination if you're interested in finding out more about Tom's participation in other years...
--------------------------------------------------------
Time Out
March 12, 2008
Theatre - A night to remember;
Every year, the Old Vic holds two adrenalin-fuelled events where playwrights have 24 hours to write a play, their deadline a performance that evening. Award-winning playwright Nina Raine took up the challenge ..
BYLINE: Nina Raine
SECTION: Pg. 146
LENGTH: 1057 words
11pm: Seven writers are sitting in a circle, listening intently. We're about to be sent to a hotel to write a ten-minute play, between 12midnight and 6am, for 24 actors and the props they have brought. It will be performed for an audience of 900, the very next day.
So we listen - fearfully. Rob Brydon has brought a smoking jacket, worn when he starred in the BBC's 'Kenneth Tynan: In Praise of Hardcore' ('"Mesmerising" - Radio Times,' Brydon parenthetically boasts, then adds, '"The worst performance of his career" - AA Gill'). Steve Mangan of 'Green Wing'/Barclaycard fame can do Irish dancing - up to a point: he had one lesson when he was ten, but was sent home for using his arms. Sharon Maughan has bought a pair of Spanx tights 'with a hole in the crotch - I haven't used that, yet', and Ronni Ancona, who is heavily pregnant, 'got myself impregnated specially for tonight - dedication!'
I don't write quickly; I don't write well under pressure; I don't write well at night. I've accepted on one condition: that my brother Moses and I write the play together. It's the same way I tricked myself onto a spinning Frisbee-like ride at our local fair. Take along a tearful younger brother. But still, I'm feeling queasy. I've seen the 24-hour plays once before. I know what can happen.
Firstly: The mood is carnival. The audience wants to laugh. In ten minutes, you can do this. But don't try to make people cry. There was one serious, well written piece, out of the six. It was met with resentful, silent incomprehension.
Secondly: It's obvious when the play is pre-prepared. The writing may be fantastic, brilliant and polished, but something jars.
Moses and I have two thoughts. A play about a brother and sister writing a play in a hotel room. We could have fun with the situation. Or a play about a boxer who wants to give up boxing. I'm quite keen on the idea of Tom Hollander as a tiny disillusioned featherweight.
12 midnight: The actors have left. We stare at a table covered with their headshots. The tension in the room is palpable. Each writer round the table silently takes it in turn to pick. Each winces as first choices are taken by others. It rapidly becomes clear that everyone has to have at least four actors; some unlucky sod will have to have five. A horrible feeling seeps through me: the same you get when you open an exam paper and don't see a question you can answer. With every moment, options close down. And Moses and I feel unable to confer since everyone else is silent. I choose Kwame Kwei-Armah as our boxer. Ralf Little I could imagine in our boxer scenario and he's a marvellous comic. I grab Sam West because he's brilliant, and Elizabeth McGovern as a potential love interest.
12.30pm: We go upstairs and now the panic hits. Impotently, we shuffle the actors' faces around. I look out of the window (locked) at the neon-lit deserted hotel corridors opposite: a vista of barren, alienated despair.
1am: Like good exam students, we decide not to start writing immediately. To use our fear. The boxer is having a panic attack before a weigh-in. He wants to pull out (sound familiar?). He's being bullied by his manager - Sam West. Ralf will be stooge and water-boy, turned on by both boxer's girlfriend (Elizabeth), and manager. Maybe Ralf has panic too ... so he is the only one sympathetic to the boxer's plight. We listen to relaxation albums on Moses' iPod, selecting choice phrases - 'Imagine there is a cork, floating above your navel.' This is helping us, too. We watch YouTube clips of Amir Khan and Mike Tyson. We write the boxer's weigh-in rhetoric. My computer decides to crash. Then Moses' arrow key jams. It's a blessed relief to escape the laptop for the loo. I gaze down at the logo on my knickers: 'Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.' I've never liked those knickers. They seem singularly inapposite now.
2am: We're sweating: our hotel room's beginning to smell of it. We give that to the boxer. People keep coming into our room: film crew, producers, writers going for a smoke. At first we welcome the interruptions.
4.45am: Our ending is still eluding us. We begin to resent the disruptions.
6am: Typing right up to the wire, we desperately go back and forth, trying to leaven functional a-to-b sections with wit. But you need time and calm to be witty. Moses lies on the bed. 'My heart feels like it's broken,' he moans. Funny - that's exactly how I feel. I think it's all the Diet Coke. Despairingly, we hand in the play.
4pm: Rehearsals, and I'm amazed: the actors are all practically off-book. Their talent and professionalism is phenomenal. Ralf, a natural comedian, has scented comedy business in places we didn't write it, while Kwame, our boxer, is brilliantly plaintive - 'He's a biter, baby ... You know I hate getting bit' - and Elizabeth makes a great obnoxious girlfriend. Meanwhile Josie Rourke, the director, radiates calm.
7.20pm: Our play is first up in the running order. A good sign. All this competitiveness is taking me back to school. When we hear our play-in music - 'Eye of the Tiger' - we start to get excited.
7.30pm: Curtain up. Spacey makes a speech, host Ronnie Corbett does his routine, and then - our play. We get some big laughs - other laughs don't happen. Nearly all of the other plays are about sex. Amy Rosenthal's newlyweds get laughs on every line. Aschlin Ditta has written about a husband who agrees to impregnate his wife's sister. My favourite moment is non-verbal: when Doon Mackichan, in a sterile attempt at seductiveness, gingerly strokes Tom Hollander's man-boobs in small symmetrical circles. I also particularly like Laura Wade's play, a thwarted threesome orchestrated by a frustrated husband (Spacey) for his repressed wife (Katherine Parkinson). Fiona Shaw in Simon Vinnicombe's piece as an airheaded wannabe is deliciously left-field. The evening ends with Bryony Lavery's fittingly anarchic piece. Lots of the pieces get bigger and more frequent laughs than ours, which - I can't help it - depresses me.
11.30pm: We get on the bus to go to the after-party. The experience is so accelerated, you're left with heartburn. Why didn't that line get a laugh? Why did that one? And on, and on. Twenty four-hour play, yes: but to get over it, much longer than that.
'New Voices' plays at the Old Vic on March 29.
The idea may have begun at the Old Vic as a way to showcase "New Voices" (new, young writing talent). Tom was an emcee in 2005, for that event -- but it's really taken off and there are versions of the concept going on all over.
The Old Vic "New Voices" version, however, is still going strong. New Voices is the original version that puts young writers and actors to the test to produce miracles...and then....
...there's the GALA version. That's the version that involves some of the best and most-respected talent in England, meant to promote the other event and raise funds for it; it's a very hot ticket.
Tom has taken part in this li'l Trial by Fire at least twice now (which either means he owes somebody big-time... or that he loves it). It's got to be anything but dull!
So here's a thread to speculate on whether he'll do it a third time. The main event ("New Voices") takes place this year on March 29. Here's an article by one of the writers of last year's Gala event, just to give you an idea of the world he's thrown into when he does these amazing shows!
Take a look over on Thomagination if you're interested in finding out more about Tom's participation in other years...
--------------------------------------------------------
Time Out
March 12, 2008
Theatre - A night to remember;
Every year, the Old Vic holds two adrenalin-fuelled events where playwrights have 24 hours to write a play, their deadline a performance that evening. Award-winning playwright Nina Raine took up the challenge ..
BYLINE: Nina Raine
SECTION: Pg. 146
LENGTH: 1057 words
11pm: Seven writers are sitting in a circle, listening intently. We're about to be sent to a hotel to write a ten-minute play, between 12midnight and 6am, for 24 actors and the props they have brought. It will be performed for an audience of 900, the very next day.
So we listen - fearfully. Rob Brydon has brought a smoking jacket, worn when he starred in the BBC's 'Kenneth Tynan: In Praise of Hardcore' ('"Mesmerising" - Radio Times,' Brydon parenthetically boasts, then adds, '"The worst performance of his career" - AA Gill'). Steve Mangan of 'Green Wing'/Barclaycard fame can do Irish dancing - up to a point: he had one lesson when he was ten, but was sent home for using his arms. Sharon Maughan has bought a pair of Spanx tights 'with a hole in the crotch - I haven't used that, yet', and Ronni Ancona, who is heavily pregnant, 'got myself impregnated specially for tonight - dedication!'
I don't write quickly; I don't write well under pressure; I don't write well at night. I've accepted on one condition: that my brother Moses and I write the play together. It's the same way I tricked myself onto a spinning Frisbee-like ride at our local fair. Take along a tearful younger brother. But still, I'm feeling queasy. I've seen the 24-hour plays once before. I know what can happen.
Firstly: The mood is carnival. The audience wants to laugh. In ten minutes, you can do this. But don't try to make people cry. There was one serious, well written piece, out of the six. It was met with resentful, silent incomprehension.
Secondly: It's obvious when the play is pre-prepared. The writing may be fantastic, brilliant and polished, but something jars.
Moses and I have two thoughts. A play about a brother and sister writing a play in a hotel room. We could have fun with the situation. Or a play about a boxer who wants to give up boxing. I'm quite keen on the idea of Tom Hollander as a tiny disillusioned featherweight.
12 midnight: The actors have left. We stare at a table covered with their headshots. The tension in the room is palpable. Each writer round the table silently takes it in turn to pick. Each winces as first choices are taken by others. It rapidly becomes clear that everyone has to have at least four actors; some unlucky sod will have to have five. A horrible feeling seeps through me: the same you get when you open an exam paper and don't see a question you can answer. With every moment, options close down. And Moses and I feel unable to confer since everyone else is silent. I choose Kwame Kwei-Armah as our boxer. Ralf Little I could imagine in our boxer scenario and he's a marvellous comic. I grab Sam West because he's brilliant, and Elizabeth McGovern as a potential love interest.
12.30pm: We go upstairs and now the panic hits. Impotently, we shuffle the actors' faces around. I look out of the window (locked) at the neon-lit deserted hotel corridors opposite: a vista of barren, alienated despair.
1am: Like good exam students, we decide not to start writing immediately. To use our fear. The boxer is having a panic attack before a weigh-in. He wants to pull out (sound familiar?). He's being bullied by his manager - Sam West. Ralf will be stooge and water-boy, turned on by both boxer's girlfriend (Elizabeth), and manager. Maybe Ralf has panic too ... so he is the only one sympathetic to the boxer's plight. We listen to relaxation albums on Moses' iPod, selecting choice phrases - 'Imagine there is a cork, floating above your navel.' This is helping us, too. We watch YouTube clips of Amir Khan and Mike Tyson. We write the boxer's weigh-in rhetoric. My computer decides to crash. Then Moses' arrow key jams. It's a blessed relief to escape the laptop for the loo. I gaze down at the logo on my knickers: 'Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough.' I've never liked those knickers. They seem singularly inapposite now.
2am: We're sweating: our hotel room's beginning to smell of it. We give that to the boxer. People keep coming into our room: film crew, producers, writers going for a smoke. At first we welcome the interruptions.
4.45am: Our ending is still eluding us. We begin to resent the disruptions.
6am: Typing right up to the wire, we desperately go back and forth, trying to leaven functional a-to-b sections with wit. But you need time and calm to be witty. Moses lies on the bed. 'My heart feels like it's broken,' he moans. Funny - that's exactly how I feel. I think it's all the Diet Coke. Despairingly, we hand in the play.
4pm: Rehearsals, and I'm amazed: the actors are all practically off-book. Their talent and professionalism is phenomenal. Ralf, a natural comedian, has scented comedy business in places we didn't write it, while Kwame, our boxer, is brilliantly plaintive - 'He's a biter, baby ... You know I hate getting bit' - and Elizabeth makes a great obnoxious girlfriend. Meanwhile Josie Rourke, the director, radiates calm.
7.20pm: Our play is first up in the running order. A good sign. All this competitiveness is taking me back to school. When we hear our play-in music - 'Eye of the Tiger' - we start to get excited.
7.30pm: Curtain up. Spacey makes a speech, host Ronnie Corbett does his routine, and then - our play. We get some big laughs - other laughs don't happen. Nearly all of the other plays are about sex. Amy Rosenthal's newlyweds get laughs on every line. Aschlin Ditta has written about a husband who agrees to impregnate his wife's sister. My favourite moment is non-verbal: when Doon Mackichan, in a sterile attempt at seductiveness, gingerly strokes Tom Hollander's man-boobs in small symmetrical circles. I also particularly like Laura Wade's play, a thwarted threesome orchestrated by a frustrated husband (Spacey) for his repressed wife (Katherine Parkinson). Fiona Shaw in Simon Vinnicombe's piece as an airheaded wannabe is deliciously left-field. The evening ends with Bryony Lavery's fittingly anarchic piece. Lots of the pieces get bigger and more frequent laughs than ours, which - I can't help it - depresses me.
11.30pm: We get on the bus to go to the after-party. The experience is so accelerated, you're left with heartburn. Why didn't that line get a laugh? Why did that one? And on, and on. Twenty four-hour play, yes: but to get over it, much longer than that.
'New Voices' plays at the Old Vic on March 29.