Episode II 1/2 Send in the Clones
EDITED BY MARK WAKEMAN
HTML coding by Robin Hall
Mark Wakeman, BenchPress Editor
Yes it is that time again when you are rewarded for your patience and your eagerness to be first to reach the post in the morning, for once again I am here with words for you.
This month the words are Bracken, Slip and Wangle. (Once again you are to be reminded that the contents of your BenchPress are secret and are not to be passed outside of the membership. It is therefore suggested that you memorise the contents and then eat it. Benchpress contains 14% of the recommended daily intake of fibre for a healthy balanced diet. And ink.)
It’s been an interesting time at the Bench, There have been highs and lows, we’ve had the AGM, we’ve had a theatre trip to Twelfth Night and you know the best is to come, because this month we’ve also got Oleanna. But you don’t want to hear from me, (In fact I expect you stopped reading round about Wangle) so get reading and see what the more interesting members of the company have to say!
| DATE | EVENT |
|---|---|
| 3rd October 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
Club Night: rehearsed reading of Jasper's play |
| 17th October 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
Club Night : Second stage of Play selection; decisions for February and April slots must be made by this meeting |
| 7th November 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
Club night |
| 16th November | Get in for Romeo & Juliet; details to be given later |
| 21st-30 November 7:30 HAC |
Romeo & Juliet, the performances |
| 1st December | Set down |
| 5th December 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
Club Night |
| 12th December 12 midday to 12 midnight |
Fund-raising day for the Arts Centre |
| 19th December 7:30 for 8pm, HAC |
Club night: poems, songs, readings and performances with mince pies. Start looking out your contributions |
| 23rd Feb - 2nd Mar 2003 | Performance to be decided |
| 20th April - 3rd May | Performance to be decided (get in on April 18th) |
| 13th July - 27th July | Performance to be decided |
At the AGM the existing three offices were re-elected and Jasper Utley was elected to the committee vacancy arising from Sam Emery standing down.
The members agreed to the proposed Artistic Committee which was set up with an initial membership of 6 (David Penrose, Nathan Chapman, Nicola Scadding, Richard Le Moignan and Damon Wakelin).
Thanks to all who turned out on September 8th to help with the decoration day; the overall user-group turnout was a bit disappointing, but the Bench was well represented, so we done good! The next event is 12th December, a 12-hour marathon fund raising which it would be nice to have some bits for, and also to have some sponsorship for it if you think you can raise some. Any offers of things to do, questions etc to Tim Taylor (023 9248 4730).
The Arts Centre has confirmed that there are no plans to reduce our slots as had been threatened a few years ago, so this will be our home for the foreseeable future and when we raise money, it means we are on stronger ground to ask for improvements and repairs/alterations. First move is air-conditioning and better soundproofing (I want to have a go at the SM's desk area and those dreadful back doors), then perhaps a revamp for the lighting control room. Any other requests, suggestions proposals?
John Batstone, director
Very enjoyable couple of months on this play with excellent cast and super crew. Then good review, good audiences - who made nice comments. They enjoyed the play and those who had reservations about it - as a play - found the content important, absorbing, challenging etc. and the level of acting as high as anything they had seen us do. Many said they were arguing about what the play was saying on the way home, and some said still over breakfast the next morning.
Those two weekends prior to the performances when a goodly number of people came in to help with set-build and construction showed the Bench at its best. People working together for a worthwhile outcome.
My hearty
thanks to all those who contributed.
John
P.S. Thanks and love too to all those Bench friends who came to visit while I was in hospital or who sent cards. Much, much appreciated.
Those of you who remember our Supernova one-act play festival in 2000 may be interested to know that Neil Pugmire's contribution - Unto Us A Child Is Born - has been included in a collection of his sketches that has just been published.
50 Seasonal Sketches was published by Kingsway on September 6, and, as the name suggests, contains sketches for performance in churches and elsewhere throughout the Christian year. So there is material for Christmas and Easter, Valentine's Day and Remembrance Sunday, as well as sketches for special occasions such as weddings, baptisms and school assemblies.
To celebrate the publication of his first book, Neil would like to invite all Bench members to a book launch on Friday 27 September (sorry for those involved with Oleanna, it's right in the middle of your run!), at 7.30pm at St Jude's Church, Kent Road, Southsea. Several of the sketches will be performed by Top Cat Theatre Company, and there should be wine and nibbles.
The book is available, at the very reasonable price of £8.99, from New Road Christian Book Centre, New Road, Portsmouth (023-9266 4647) or The Well, 116-118 West Street, Fareham (01329-318731). For a sneak preview, have a look at www.topcattheatre.com
Paul Millington, Secretary
Robin Hall, Treasurer
Over the last twelve months the Bench has maintained a stable financial position :
Our membership income increased by approx. £300 to £1799.40 over the 12 months. This increase resulted from a growing membership and two effects of running our own membership – firstly that we no longer pay the arts centre a commission for administration and secondly that renewals have generally been made much more promptly.
However our membership income is not sufficient to cover our fixed operating costs, which include our insurance, the costs of Bench Press, the rent on our props storage space and our membership fee (as an organisation) of Havant Arts Active.
Considering all expenses relating to the four full productions staged this year (some of these fall outside the period of our financial year) we made an overall loss:
Caucasian Chalk Circle : nett profit of £339
Wyrd Sisters : nett profit of £152
Female Parts : nett loss of £547
Handyman : nett loss of £208
None of these productions was particularly expensive, and in fact the most costly was Wyrd Sisters which made money. The 'fixed' costs of putting on a play – hire of the theatre, advertising in the Arts Centre brochure, printing flyers and rights – often amount to a thousand pounds.
I would suggest we try to increase our income rather than reduce our expenditure, which is rarely excessive. Increasing our audience figures would make a significant difference to our production income and a number of ideas were put forward to try and bring in more people. Female Parts was particularly hit by the very short 'run-in' which made publicity very difficult and led to reduced audience numbers.
At the AGM a decision was taken to increase our ticket prices from January 2003 with a corresponding increase in Membership rates. This will help us during the next year, and it is probably fair to say that we have been undercharging relative to other local companies and leisure activities. I am also appealing to directors to contact me early on in the lifetime of a production for help drawing up a budget to help plan our expenditure.
Generally I feel that the year has gone well and the position of the company is still strong.
If anybody would like more information or has any questions please feel free to contact me.
Shakespeare's Globe, London
Saturday 7th December 2002
Nathan Chapman
So, William Shakespeare. A brummy bloke who died 400 years ago who wrote a few plays. 37 of them by himself, a couple more with help from his mates and there may be others that we don't know about, which the man himself might consider a good thing, if the regrettably "rediscovered" Edmund Ironside is anything to go by.
The fact is, these 37 plays have been performed continuously around the world for the last 4 centuries. Even his considerable genius aside, we must be running out of ideas by now
Therefore, it never ceases to amaze me that, every time, we come to a performance of a Shakespeare play afresh, and discover new angles, depths and nuances that have escaped us previously.
Twelfth Night is a play I have seen several times, on stage and on tape, I’ve studied it, taught it and been in it, and this production by the White Company at Shakespeare’s Globe is new-fangled on practically every level
In the astonishing setting of the authentic reconstruction of an Elizabethan Theatre, Tim Carroll’s staging extends authenticity to the nth degree. Performed by an all male cast, in traditional Elizabethan costume and accompanied by music in the period style, the humour and energy of Elizabethan playgoing comes to the fore. There is little, if anything, to fault in this production, but if I had to be pinned down I would say that Liam Brennan’s performance as Orsino does little to elevate the role from being a two-dimensional cipher for the chaos that ensues in the play. He has his moments of comedy, and the agonisingly confused relationship between himself and Viola/Cesario (Michael Brown) is at times genuinely touching.
Viola is the acid test that the cross-gender casting must pass, and Brown and the rest of the cast wisely stay away from a pantomimic portrayal of women with simple, constrained and well-observed movement, although as Brown struggles to remain in a higher vocal register, our ears struggle to ignore the occasional cracks that are the only failing is this venture.
Running away with the thing, though, is Mark Rylance as Olivia. He transforms yet another potentially thankless character into the one to watch, and the one you wish was in every scene, as he lifts the whole production. Gliding across the stage as if on a conveyor belt, the eerie and striking white face against an elaborate mourning dress and veil denote a powerful and self-assured noblewoman, until she opens her mouth. Then Olivia becomes an hilariously hapless woman, stuttering, dithering and completely out of her depth, and subsequently a joy to watch, an addictive and captivating performance. The juxtaposition of her appearance and personality succinctly echoed a prevalent theme in the play, of confused identity and being denied the opportunity to fulfil yourself because of the expectation of your social position
This is not necessarily to say that Mark Rylance puts everyone else in the shade, far from it. Timothy Walker does just what is required of the crowd-pleasing Malvolio, painfully affected in both speech and movement. The audience knows what to expect of Malvolio, and they get it in cartloads
But we never seem to know what to make of the ostensible clowns of the piece. Feste, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew in the production are given plenty of scope for slapstick comedy, but their characters and situations are made so much more interesting when the darkness is apparent. Their constant drinking and revelling are an opiate for pain, regret and bitterness, most clearly demonstrated by Bill Stewart’s choleric and violent Toby Belch and Peter Hamilton Dyer’s Feste, who seems to wince inwardly with every attempt to regain the humour that has escaped him
This is an exhausting, exhilarating and elating Twelfth Night, with all the stops pulled out, and thought behind every gesture and syllable. It makes me wish theatre came with a pause and rewind facility, just so that I could take it all in
At this point I would like to say a big thank you to Tricia for organising the event, all those who went found the show exciting and entertaining and there was also large amounts of beer to be had, so thank you and here’s to the next one!
"Oh my god what have I done...?!" That was my first thought when I got home after the AGM. "Why oh why did I volunteer for the 'Artistic Committee' ?"
Conceptually, the committee is intended to be a focal point for members who wish to promote a play to be performed by the Bench. It is not necessary for that member to want to direct or perform in the play themselves, but purely to have a desire to see the Bench put it to an audience. It is then the job of the committee to conduct a feasibility study of sorts and then forward it to the voting system. Additionally, it was suggested that we should support the director in the production process.
There were many of us who liked this concept when it was first suggested at the beginning of March, so I was a little surprised with how many of us volunteered on Thursday. Six volunteered. Six strong are the committee. It did look to be an all male cast until John Scadding's lovely wife Nicola decided, quite rightly, that that just would not do!
Therefore the members you have to bribe are:
We decided that we would each read a play and meet a week later to discuss what we had chosen.
It is Saturday night, two days since the AGM. Mark and I went to Portsmouth Library yesterday afternoon (and the pub!) to pick out some plays to peruse. As I don’t know many playwrights or plays, I picked several. I have read one and tried to read two others but stopped as they were boring me. I have four more to read before the first meeting of the committee this coming Thursday.......what was my first thought....?
As you can see there was a lot to get through this month but there is also some sad news. Paul Sadler who many of you who use the arts centre regularly will surely know passed away of a heart attack on 30th August. He had retired from the Arts Centre where he had been Director for many years only a few weeks previously and so this was not only very sad news but a shock to us all. He will be missed.
The Editor of the Bench Press and I’m sure the entire Bench Theatre company would like to offer their congratulations to Zoe and Nathan who were married on August 4th at Botley Grange. A large number of the company attended and a great time was had by all. The best man especially was a handsome, witty and rather sexy brute I understand? So Congratulations and may your happiness be forever!
Tim Taylor (Chair): 023 92 484730 or email timbotee@cix.co.uk
Paul Millington (Secretary): 023 92 423 452 / pmillington@btinternet.com
Robin Hall (Treasurer): 023 92 423 452 / rhall@btinternet.com
Mark Wakeman (Bench Press Editor): 023 92 713169 / MAWakeman@aol.com
Zoe Corrigan (Director "Romeo&Juliet"): 023 92 472 500
Main postal address: Bench Theatre, PO Box 144, HAVANT, PO9 1XB
Box Office: For tickets and information on performances please contact Havant Arts Center box office on 023 92 47 2700.
Bench Theatre
Registered Charity No. 291935
Bench Theatre, PO Box 144, HAVANT, PO9 1XB