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The aularian
'Who's heard of the pillowman?'
Alternating between the natural and the surreal
It was the first time that Teddy Hall’s drama society, the John Oldham Society, had ever taken a production to the Oxford Playhouse.
The script switches between the interrogation scenes and sections where Katurian is narrating his fictional stories to the audience.
And it was Emma D’Arcy (2011, Fine Art) and Thomas Bailey (2011, English & French) who made it happen.
“This alternation was reflected in our production style,” Thomas said. “The interrogation scenes were much closer to naturalism, the story worlds much more surreal. Normally the audience is left to imagine them, but we had the Oxford Playhouse stage – so we created a huge, imaginative realm using oversized prop pieces and big reveals of the set.”
“It seemed very unlikely that we would get the Playhouse,” said Thomas, who directed the production. “They have to be quite conservative in their choices otherwise tickets are hard to sell. Who’s heard of The Pillowman?” Written in 2003 by playwright Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman follows Katurian, a writer in a totalitarian state who is arrested and interrogated by two policemen over a series of murders that mimic the content of his stories. “We read the script ages ago, and it had a huge effect on us. It was stunning: devastating, funny and clever, and unlike anything else we’d read. But the idea of putting it on terrified us.”
“We were a cast of only four, therefore we worked through all of the characters collaboratively, in terms of their physicality and emotional understanding." Katurian’s brother Michal, played by Emma, is disabled as a result of childhood trauma. “Michal is such a brilliant character,” she said. “He’s so funny, so amazingly charming – a light at the heart of a really dark play.”
Thomas also spoke of the theatre practitioner and director Mike Alfreds, who influenced how he directed the naturalistic style of the interrogation scenes: “You build a world and shape the characters within; but you don’t make any decisions in the rehearsal room. The resulting performance is more like real life, rather than something that’s just been reproduced. Every night was genuinely very different. I’m not sure it would have worked with every play or with a big cast, but I had four great actors and they responded really well to that approach.” And it seemed to work. Reviews were commendatory, often citing a ‘West End level of professionalism’. And each night the audience gave a standing ovation. “Six months compressed into a few seconds where people are standing and clapping. I left and cried,” Emma said. “It’s a scary one – Michal’s lines are hugely witty but an audience needs to feel comfortable enough to laugh with a character with a disability. But they actually laughed way more than I expected.”
Not only this, but Emma and Thomas decided not to restrict the cast to men, as per the original script. Katurian and Michal were played by female actors, the two police officers by male actors. The pronouns, however, were not to be changed. “The point at which we found out we weren’t allowed to change the pronouns we thought about scrapping the idea, because we didn’t really know how it would come off. But we took the risk,” Emma said. “In rehearsal, I knew that Michal was a ‘he’, but I didn’t think that I wasn’t him and I knew that I was sisters with my brother… It made sense but I could no longer differentiate how weird that could have been for an audience! "And yet it worked.”
‘Romeo is a woman’ “Shakespeare is dead, so this time we are allowed to change the pronouns,” said Thomas in relation to the pair’s next venture, the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) International Tour. “It’s going to be a Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is a woman, so it’s an explicitly gay relationship.” Each summer OUDS take a Shakespeare play on tour throughout the UK and to Japan. This year’s – taking place during June, July and August – will be directed by Thomas and will star Emma as Romeo. Emma, whom Thomas describes as ‘one of the most talented actors in Oxford’, is excited at the prospect of playing what is conventionally a male lead. “As probably all female actors are, I’m a huge
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Thomas and the cast will reimagine the well-known love story, telling the tale of how the female protagonists fall in love and marry amidst the violent setting of a near future Verona, where "gay marriage is legal – for now". Thomas said: "When I was bidding with this idea I had to demonstrate that I could adjust the script without ruining the iambic pentameter. "We’re going to change Romeo and Benvolio’s pronouns to feminine. We think that we can do it in a way that will bring something rather than take something away. I’m really looking forward to another chance to create a world that the play exists in. To make a Verona that makes sense, but that isn’t one that we’ve seen before.”
Support from the Hall Thomas recently completed a coaching course in directing funded by Teddy Hall’s Masterclass Fund, which supports students who wish to hone their skills in an extra-curricular activity in which they have already shown great promise. “I was applying for the OUDS International Tour at the time and I thought it’d be really useful,” he said. “I wouldn’t have been able to afford it without the Masterclass award. I’ve got lots of notes to use for rehearsals when we start doing Romeo and Juliet.” Emma and Thomas have also been recipients of the Hall’s George Barner Prize for Contribution to Theatre, and Emma was supported by Amalgamated Clubs funds – which covers certain expenses for College clubs and societies – to go on last year’s OUDS International Tour.
But given the physical and emotional impairment of the character, how did Emma prepare for such a role? “The most challenging aspect was the fear of offending anyone,” she said. “We were a cast of only four, therefore we worked through all of the characters collaboratively, in terms of their physicality and emotional understanding. Michal was born healthy, and then has to relearn to be in the world. So for me, thinking about rehabilitation was the most useful thing, reading accounts of how people make systems for living following trauma. It was productive, rather than just mimicry.”
advocate of better parts for women,” she said. “Lots of us don’t want to just play someone who’s stuck or trapped or upset because some man has done something bad. It’s hugely liberating to play a role where certain things are not off bounds because I’m a woman, such as having an altercation and killing someone. So I hope I can do it really well. This is what we should all be fighting for. Better parts for female actors.”
Emma D’Arcy (left) with her co-star Claire Bowman (right) in The Pillowman
They applaud the College for its unbiased approach to allocating funds, regarding all extra-curricular activities as equal, and also the John Oldham Society for being guided by merit, rather than profit. "The John Oldham Society has been great to us the whole time we’ve been here. It’s allowed us to do drama in so many different guises. We’ve gone to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, put on shows like The Pillowman, and have done other projects such as Act for Change, an initiative that works with communities across the globe addressing issues through drama.” The Society was also instrumental in introducing the pair. “We met on the very first play we did,” Thomas said. “We then had a conversation about wanting to direct a show together, which we did in our second year at Oxford’s O’Reilly Theatre. Then we went to Cameroon as part of the Act for Change project.
Scene from The Pillowman
Everything up to the OUDS International Tour has been the John Oldham Society, which was our brand for a while. So we have to make our own one after university.”
Ambitions for a theatre company And this is exactly what they intend on doing. Next year Emma and Thomas will embark on setting up their own theatre company in London. But without the support of Oxford and benefiting from cheap theatre venues, they appreciate it will initially be an exercise in how to exist financially. “I dream of having a conversation where we say, ‘oh it’s been really hard but I think our luck might be changing’,” Emma said. So what is the appeal of their own theatre company? “…to have ultimate creative control! Through our joint endeavours supported and facilitated by Teddy Hall we have started to find a language of creative theatre in which we operate. Now we want to mature that into something that exists on the world stage.”
Reimagining Shakespeare’s classic: the play goes on tour Summer 2015
“The John Oldham Society has been great to us the whole time we’ve been here. It’s allowed us to do drama in so many different guises.” 13