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drinks Monday 2 June 08
DUBLIN ... Colman Higgins describes the scope and history of Dublin Gay Theatre Festival ... and reviews two of its shows ... Down Dangerous Passes Road ... Confessions of A Mormon Boy /// LONDON ... film on now ... La Question Humaine / Heartbeat Detector /// BRIGHTON ... It's on till 26 May and here's at least 20 Things you might want to know about Brighton Fringe /// PEOPLE ... Who was there at Fringe Report's First Monday 5 May - photographs & article /// CULTURE ... One Culture ... film screening 30 May booking now ... details
Hi I’m Tracy - This Is My Story
by Tracy Keeling
My hair’s gone bright red (with blonde highlights). At last I’m a scarlet woman (but just for 3 weeks, mind). And the Americans are coming. There are towels to wash and pillowcases and sheets to iron. And last-minute props to buy. And the story of how our show Lilita got to Edinburgh 2005. Hi, I’m Tracy, and this is my story too – how a girl from the middle of nowhere goes somewhere.
It’s summer and I’m in Edinburgh, whoopee! I live in London and work at a historic theatre. I write plays and act, hence Edinburgh. If you’re a performer, or theatre-goer, you’ll know that taking a show on the road is risky, precarious – and fun. It’s not something that any background prepares you for. I don’t think as a small child I’d have guessed it would happen. Certainly not with a company that exists in two halves united by the Atlantic Ocean.
I was born in the Black Country. It’s not quite Birmingham or The Potteries. I grew up in Cannock, Staffordshire, and went to school there. Like a lot of families, we didn’t have much money – my father was a coalman and labourer, and mother was at home bringing up me and my sisters Karen and Claire. So being an actress and writer wouldn’t have seemed likely at the beginning. But the adventure towards Edinburgh started just as I finished school, with a scholarship to study for a year in America.
Ashley Hall is a high school in Charleston, South Carolina, USA (Barbara Bush studied there, oops). It was a glorious place to be, and I met Mary Cimino who owned and ran Charleston Theatreworks. And now, a few years later, we’ve taken a play to Edinburgh together. But first I needed to train.
I went to Bretton Hall, an 18th Century mansion in Yorkshire, to study theatre, a BA in Devised Performance. And learnt by gratuitous violence that the show must go on.
The nearest village was West Bretton, too small to have its own pub. So we all used to go to the nearest big town. It was Wakefield, 10 miles away. And the locals hated actors. There wasn’t much point pulling rank about having more working-class roots than them. So, no cue for the eating-gravel-for-breakfast conversation. They were more, knife first, and don’t bother asking questions afterwards.
One Wakefield ambassador stabbed one of our lads in the stomach. Another broke the neck of one of the students. Stoic? Oh yes. He wore a neck-brace till it mended. So now there has to be a pretty good excuse not to perform.
Our company is Anglo-American. Partly that came-about because going to America again after college seemed a great idea. I studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of Theatre (http://www.the-neiplay.org/) at East 54th Street, between 3rd and Lexington Avenue in New York. Sanford Meisner founded the school - it focuses mainly on his technique which is similar to ‘method’. It’s produced actors such as Paul Newman and Sydney Pollack.
Straight after, I teamed up with Mary Cimino who I’d met while in high school. We wrote the play we’re now doing in Edinburgh – Lilita – in 1999. We staged it in FringeNYC in 2000, in Alphabet City, Lower East Side. But Edinburgh was still a few years off (this may sound familiar to other writers - and not just writers). There was the need, meantime, to eat. I started working in London.
The Rose Theatre was the first purpose-built theatre in Southwark during the Elizabethan era. It launched Marlowe’s career. Shakespeare’s plays were performed there. It’s now an archaeological site (at Bankside in London), two-thirds excavated. I wrote and acted in a play called BeLIEve there – in 2003, and again in 2004, to help raise funds to complete the exposure of the theatre. It was the first new play to be performed at the Rose since around 1603, and the first work written by a woman ever to be shown there.
I joined the Daylight Players in 2003. We toured Romeo & Juliet all over Sweden from the south up, as far north as Uppsala. I was playing Benvolio, Paris, the Apothecary – and a watchman. All lads, but I didn’t take it personally! We toured again the following year, this time to Ireland, England, Denmark, and Sweden – including a Swedish swamp.
Our own company performed Lilita at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this year. And now we’re taking it to Edinburgh for its European premiere. The American half of us has arrived – to clean towels and very beautifully-ironed (if I say so myself) sheets and pillowcases. We’ve shopped for last-minute props on Princes Street, Edinburgh. And now, we’ve opened.
And in an apt location. Lilith was the legendary first wife of Adam, who refused to lie beneath him. Lilita borrows from her story, intercut with Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita. It looks at why we encourage young girls to be seductive, then recoil from the consequences.
Lilith lived in a cave. Exploring the Underbelly, pitch dark and dank, alone by torchlight in February this year, I knew that we were bringing her to the right place.
END
(c) Tracy Keeling 6 August 05
Lilita runs 4-28 August 05 (not 22nd). Venue – Big Belly, Underbelly. Time 21:15, lasts one hour. Tickets £8.50/£9.50. Underbelly Box Office 0870 745 3083. Festival Fringe office 0131 226 0000. Further information www.thealliestheatre.com.
Fringe Report's review of Lilita is here
Fringe Report (c) Fringe Report 2002-2008
