Posts tagged Jo Clifford
Traverse Theatre
Scotland's New Writing Theatre
From Jo Clifford’s blog: Audience reactions to The Tree of Knowledge
From Ewan Aitken:
Jo, I loved your play - it was just so brilliant. it was hard to hear the mocking of my faith but I realised that there was a purpose - to challenge, in the end, those doing the mocking but not in vindictively as is so often the way in our “got to be right all the time” culture, but in a rediscovery from experience. Hilary and I talked about the play for ages - and now I am off to read it again to grapple with the bits I missed.
Thank you
From Anonymous:
Hi Jo. I am the person whose partner asked you if you had anything to do with the play, and I was glad to shake your hand last night. We talked and talked about the play all evening, and sitting next to you meant such a lot to Merlin, he was very moved by your reaction to seeing the play realised, and has talked all weekend about what a privilege that was. He studied philosophy at university, so was fascinated by the re-imagined Hume and Smith, and I work for a violence against women charity, so Eve’s story really resonated with me. We’re so so glad we were able to see this fantastic play and so glad you were happy with the first night. Wishing you all the best for the rest of the run and all else that lies ahead!
From Jane Carnall:
I went to see Tree of Knowledge last night, a packed house. As I got up the stranger next to me turned to me and asked me spontaneously if I had enjoyed it, and I told her yes (I had been sitting between her and her teenage daughter and teenage daughter’s friends, who had started restless and ended enthralled), and we shared mutual appreciation of how wonderful it had been - she said “It gives you hope, doesn’t it?” and I said yes, but more than that - I hadn’t seen a play in years that made me think as I watched it - think, laugh, feel sad - it’s brilliant. In the middle of a fairly miserable week, it made me not forget my problems, but reconsider them. I bought three copies of the script as I left, quelling a slightly mad inpulse to buy 50 and give a copy to everyone I know.
More information and reviews for The Tree of Knowledge, here.
“Not ashamed to be a theatre”. Jo Clifford at Tree of Knowledge script read-through
“The great thing about the first day of rehearsal is that I meet up with the people who somehow have to make all this happen.”
Writing plays, as I’ve always tended to do it, is a solitary kind of thing to do.
Once the theatre’s commissioned me, I’m generally on my own. (I’m starting to find this quite an oppressive and unhealthy state of affairs, and I’m trying to change it. But that’s another story…)
That’s how it was for this play, at least. I read the books I could understand, about Hume and Adam Smith and Edinburgh and the Enlightenment, and I heard the stories about domestic abuse… But after that it was up to me to try to feel and imagine it all.
Try to imagine the set, too. Which, as usual, I couldn’t. I tend just to hear the words in my imagination, and feel the feelings that go with the words. But I never have any vision of how they’ll be staged.
This time, I didn’t pretend otherwise. So the first stage directions just says:
“ALL I ASK OF THIS PERFORMANCE SPACE IS THAT IT BE INTERESTING.
AND PREFERABLY UNUSUAL.”
And then I added, even more unhelpfully:
“THAT IT IS NOT ASHAMED TO BE A THEATRE.”
- just because I get cross with all the plays that look as if they really might as well be on televisions.
Then it gets worse. The dialogue makes it clear that sometimes we’re in David Hume’s new town house, that he was so proud of, and sometimes in Eve’s Glenrothes new town house, that she was so proud of too.
And then sometimes there’s a stage direction that says:
“WE HEAR THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES”.
The great thing about the first day of rehearsal is that I meet up with the people who somehow have to make all this happen.
So there’s the designer, Ali Maclaurin, with her beautiful model, and Tim Reid, who’s doing the projections - and there’s suddenly back projections to think of, and front projections, and where they’re all going to go, and I’m face to face, yet again, with all the difficulties i cause other people.
With the fact that a stage direction, that can only take half a minte to write, can cause hours and hours of serious head scratching.
But I generally know the stage direction is right. And collective the head scratching is just part of a wider creative effort.
I also get the strong sense that what’s going to emerge from all this will be something very special.
The Tree of Knowledge is at the Traverse Theatre from 8 - 24 December.
The Tree of Knowledge Goes into Rehearsals
It’s a solemn kind of occasion, going into rehearsal. The Tree of Knowledge is at the Traverse Theatre from 8 - 24 December.
I never quite know what’s going to happen. I want my contributions to be supportive and helpful, if they can be. Because life is so short and there’s quite enough suffering in it without adding more.
It makes me blush to think how terrible I was when I first began. I didn’t know what to do. But then no-one had told me. There was really no information about it at all. So I sat in the rehearsal room - which actually was the stage of the old Traverse, on the set of Chris Hannan’s “Elizabeth Gordon Quinn” - sat there not knowing what to do and feeling miserable.
I hated the sound of my play, and consequently spent a lot of time with my head in my hands. Which the actors took to mean that I hated what they were doing.
Which I didn’t.
And then if they ever asked me what such a such a line was for, I’d say “I don’t know”.
Because I didn’t.
None of this was very helpful. Afterwards I learnt to glue a smile onto my face, even if it was false, and even when I didn’t know what a line was doing somewhere, I’d always make something up.
Because that made everyone feel better. Including me.
But generally there’s no need to fake a smile these days. I love working with actors; and I learn so much.
And directors, too, I add hastily, and designers and stage managers and musicians and lighting designers and everyone involved.
My words are about to transform. Can’t wait to see what happens.
The Tree of Knowledge Cast Announced: Gerry Mulgrew as David Hume, Joanna Tope as Eve and Neil McKinven as Adam Smith.
From Jo Clifford’s blog.
There’s always this amazing moment when the play, that has really only had a kind of imaginary existence until this moment, starts to take on flesh and blood.
I love it. It makes me so excited: because I can never “see” characters in my imagination.
I can only hear them. And hear them speaking in very definite tones of voice, to be sure: but I never want these tones of voice to be duplicated by the actors.
Because the mainly wonderful part of theatre making is that I create a script, using all my sensibility and skill, and give it to the actors, and the director, and the lighting designer, the set designer, the costume designer, the sound designer, the stage manager - all these amazing gifted people. And they apply all their sensibilities and all their skills and if we manage to work well together they just enrich the script immeasurably.
And always in ways I never anticipated.
And then the audience come along and do the same…
The actors are:
Gerry Mulgrew, as Hume, who is so alive and full of life’s joys in his presence and who I wanted to work with for years and years.
Joanna Tope, as Eve, who was in one of my radio plays, and I can’t remember which, or who she played, or anything about it except she was wonderful. When she came for the audition what she did was so beautiful she made me cry. The part is incredibly difficult and makes great demands. She was equal to all of them.
Neil McKinven, as Adam Smith, is someone I have worked with before, in Celestina I think. That was certainly, for all kinds of reasons, one of the unhappiest rehearsal processes I have ever been involved in. Mainly, it has to be said, because my wonderful partner Susie had suffered a stroke just before it started; and then was diagnosed with a brain tumour just before the show opened. In the midst of all this, it was lovely to work with Neil.
I know they are three incredibly gifted artists. I can’t wait to work with them.
The Tree of Knowledge is at the Traverse Theatre from 8 - 24 December.
