Director Ameera Conrad Brings New Production Towers to Guildhall School of Music & Drama
TOWERS OPENS 11 FEBRUARY AT MILTON COURT STUDIO THEATRE
Towers looks at the conflicting views of developers, architects, researchers and residents over the development of a South London estate
WEBSITE: www.gsmd.ac.uk
Directed by Conrad, the play deals with the humanity (or inhumanity) of moving in and moving out. It aims to respond to the housing crisis in London, and the phenomenon of the regeneration projects in areas that used to be social housing. Ameera discussed the production with Guildhall School of Music & Drama and I can share these with you today
“When I was first approached to workshop a new production for the third-year students I dove right into the deep end. I wanted, more than anything else, to get the opportunity to speak to an issue that was very specific to London, to inspire both the students and audiences to take a keen interest in some unseen problems that may exist within this society.
For me, theatre and politics are two sides of the same coin. Theatre should reflect society back onto itself, and whether the stories are of families, love, pain, or politics, they’re all aspects of the human condition. The theatre that I love to watch, and love to make, always has something to say about humanity. Which is what we were trying to do with Towers.
The initial inspiration for the piece came out of dreams I had had while on tour. I started dreaming about running on the canopies of forests. Suddenly the trees underneath me would turn into rooftops and then I’d start struggling to keep running because the incline would just get higher and higher and my knees would give in. I wouldn’t be able to breathe. I would wake up out of breath; panting and sweating. I think in some weird way that’s what I wanted to make the play about, that suffocation of having your natural habitat (whatever that may be) being removed. This is an issue which hits close to home for me as a South African, as my grandparents were forcibly removed from their homes in the 1960s by the Apartheid government.
It was also around the one-year commemoration of Grenfell that I started thinking about this project in very specific terms. I wanted to create something that was in response to the housing crisis in London and the phenomenon of regeneration projects that are cropping up throughout the city in areas that used to be social housing. I read the most incredible article in the Guardian about regeneration projects basically hiking up prices that essentially make it impossible for the original tenants of the social housing units to continue to live in the area. Again, something that resonates closely with what’s happening in Cape Town right now. This pushed me to look into what the costs are of building high, cheap and fast. And let’s be honest, the human costs are higher than the towers themselves.
Of course, this isn’t and won’t be the first play to tackle issues of homes and houses. For this particular project we’re drawing inspiration from plays like A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, which explores the effect of gentrification on an African-American family, and Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet, which shows the lives of the men who are tasked with selling homes on a new development. These plays, while very different in style, show the humanity (or inhumanity) of moving in and moving out.
For a project like this, we’re also drawing a lot on a method of working that was used by Brecht: creating a rehearsal process which encourages trying more than succeeding. Brecht’s companies of actors would try many different ways of doing the same thing until they found that which they thought was most interesting and most effective in portraying the message of the moment. And that’s really what the workshopping and rehearsal process should be like.
On a personal level, I am constantly inspired by theatre folks who are in all phases of their development. My personal inspiration list is very long winded and includes names such as Paapa Essiedu, Noma Dumezweni, Tobi Kyeremateng, Nikesh Patel, Danai Gurira – I could go on. But loads of different folks from all around the world whom I’ve either encountered through their work or on a personal level have impacted positively on my view of what theatre is and what it could be.
This can be very challenging in the sense that it’s time consuming. With a pre-written text you can do a lot of work beforehand to prep for it, actors can come in having studied their characters, designers can know exactly what might be needed in terms of set or costume. But with a workshopped production you’re asking the entire company (actors, designers, and technical management) to be on their toes. We’re constantly changing and editing and adding and subtracting: it’s tumultuous. But the trick with creating a new play is to have a team which implicitly trusts one another and believes that they can do it. I think that’s exactly what we’ve got with this team.
Of course the benefits of this kind of project is that you have a play that is tailor made for the actors and the director – something which everyone can feel a sense of ownership about. I’ve worked on productions where the actors have felt absolutely nothing for the show: they’re just there to do their jobs, and with a workshopped production you want to create something that the actors are excited about contributing towards, and creating with you as the director.
We were already off to a good start when, at the farewell for Christian Burgess in July 2017, two different students leapt out at me and expressed their excitement about taking on the challenge of this production. The first saw me sitting alone outside the school, and the second spotted me while washing my hands in the bathroom! It’s little things like that which put you at ease before the rehearsals start, before you’ve even managed to have your first cast meeting. And I think that’s indicative of the ethos that Guildhall wants to instil in its students: this excitement about theatre, about their craft and about the process of creating new works to empower themselves as theatre makers, not only as actors. It’s part of the reason that I believe that all theatre makers who are established or establishing themselves should work with students at any level – especially as mentors.
At some point in everyone’s career they are the new hot thing on the block, the edgiest voice, the ingénue, the young energy that everyone’s itching to work with, but that doesn’t last forever. Working with students is like drinking from the fountain of youth. You remember what it means to be hungry to work, you remember the desire that you felt to leave your mark on this industry, you feel reignited. Or at least, I do. It’s why I love working in open processes like these where there are no right or wrong answers, only bold choices. Working collaboratively with people who are discovering their individual voices not only serves each person individually, but it also serves the group. If we can harness those individual voices then frankly we end up with something quite magical.
Because we’re working with individuals in this kind of group setting, it’s obvious that each person will want to gain something different from the process. For some it will be more technical in the sense that they’ll want to gain some knowledge of how to compile a script or lead warm ups or create a piece from the concept to the curtain rising. For others it may be less tangible: wanting to gain confidence, wanting to find a voice they didn’t know they had, wanting to learn how to be better listeners. It’s entirely possible for everyone to leave having gained what they wanted, without the process being about their personal journey.
This is what happens in an ideal devising process: each person has their personal goals, the group has group goals and all of these can be achieved to the benefit of the production, not to its detriment. That’s part of my approach to devising. Ideally everyone wins, but that’s not always the case. At the end of the day every decision that needs to be made, every choice that you see on stage, has been made to serve the story first. Through serving the story we serve everyone involved in the process – and I feel that should be true for all storytelling forms.
I am honoured and humbled and thrilled to have been able to contribute in some way to the legacy of this class of incredibly talented theatre makers. And on behalf of the cast and crew, we hope that the show will leave you with something that you did not have when you arrived.”
