So the rehearsal draft of BIG BUILDINGS is now trundling towards the doormats of the actors, and I'm quite pleased with the way the play has moved on in the past few weeks. Spurred on by the meeting with Jo and Sarah a few weeks ago, there has been an intermediate draft (which was quite a significant rewrite), and then a 'final' draft of the play (which tidied things up and tried to solve a few problems). The aim of these drafts - to put it esoterically - was to rethink the energy-points of the play - to let the story flow without being stressed and blocked by dense exposition. At the same time I think there's now a lot more between RUKHSANA and DANNY.
There are also a few completely new scenes, which seemed to emerge naturally enough from scene-sized holes... I was worried that the sudden appearance of these (both of which are quite WEIRD) might have quite been alarming so close to rehearsals - which start next week. But talking to Jo and Sarah, it seems that the play has turned a corner now - that it has found something that it had lost in previous drafts. It's been a sign of the brilliance of their stewardship of the development process that a) they've never appeared to be worried about the play's future; that b) they've asked questions rather than issue statements about what 'needs to happen', so I've always come to my own conclusions; and c) that they've encouraged me to be inventive right down to the wire.
I should mention - as I haven't yet - that the play is now fully, and wonderfully, cast (and has been for a while I just never got round to mentioning it). Here's a list of the cast, and the very very accomplished production team:
DANNY: Sacha Dhawan
LEON: Jonathan Bailey
RUKHSANA: Shobna Gulati
ROB: Steve North
KAREN: Tanya Franks
STEVEN: Billy Seymour
ANNIE: Susan Twist
DIRECTORS: Sarah Frankcom and Jo Combes
DESIGNER: Jaimie Todd
LIGHTING: David Holmes
SOUND: Ian Dickinson
COMPANY MANAGER: Nick Chesterfield
STAGE MANAGER: Lee Drinkwater
DEPUTY STAGE MANAGER: Tamara Albachari
ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER: Julie Davis.
On Thursday I went to see Steve King's brilliant play Yellow Lines, a play which 'tackles head on the risks we take the dreams we nurture and panic on London's crowded streets'. The play is also about Urban Planning. The hero, COLIN, has a brilliant, if manipulative idea for the management of individuals in public space, and takes it to FRANK, the CEO of BayesBernstein, a company that sells peace of mind (from networked burglar alarms to high-concept software that determines the location of emergency exits in shopping centres). Together, they struggle with the implications and challenges of taking Colin's frighteningly 'Total' application onto the market.
The professional language, imagery and paraphernalia of ANY occupation can most likely be intoxicating and transporting, (though lawyers, cops, and doctors seem to get all the airtime), but Steve King finds something incredible in the universe of PLANNING. The characters access an elegant pure world, a world of airport terminals and emergency exits, of carefully angled bollards exerting subliminal control on panicking crowds. I could get lost here for hours. I've seen and read the play at various stages of its development, and I always get a fix from it. Partly, it's the pleasure of enjoying the furniture and diction of a detailed universe. The image of a white architect's model glowing like a platonic idea.
As I mentioned in another post, there's something unnerving and poignant about architect's models - these objects that reduce humanity to anonymous plastic figures facelessly describing a functional (if idealized) trajectory. What's fascinating in Yellow Lines is the way the human position is found, the human negotiations (struggle, love, power) as humans navigate the cold-compassed, contemporary grid.
I want to see more drama about PLANNERS - there being as much at stake for humanity in an engagement with the built environment (in terms of politics, identity, sex) as in an engagement with the Law, or the Underworld or with the failings of the Human Body.
