Anne Chmelewsky on Through the Looking Screen @ RADAR2012

In Through the Looking Screen we meet Annabel Clarke, a shy young woman who creates a much more confident, 'popular' persona online, and stalks the man she likes on Facebook rather than talking to him in real life. It's a story that will surely be very familiar to many people today, but what makes Anne Chmelewsky's production stand out is that this thoroughly modern tale is the basis of a comic opera. The juxtaposition of new and old is striking, adding an extra layer of laughs as Clare Presland lends her stunning opera voice to phrases like 'Angry Birds, Words With Friends...'. 

Clare Presland as Annabel Clarke, with Elizabeth Challenger on piano

Anne is no stranger to experimenting with opera, having written The Office: The Opera for Comic Relief in 2009, but she admits that it is still a challenge to convince audiences that opera isn't old-fashioned and boring. I spoke with her about those issues, her inspiration and advice for fellow creatives before the show.

Firstly, I asked Anne how she came up with the idea to mix the very new and modern concept of social networking with the traditional form of comic opera. She explained that while at college she wrote The Office: The Opera not aiming to make opera accessible, but just to make it funny. "Talking about staplers and photocopying is just funny if it's sung". As that show was a success, Anne thought she would write another one. "I have a friend who was an amazing opera singer [Presland], who I knew would be really funny in a one-woman show", she explains, adding that the subject of online dating and social networks came from her part-time job in recruitment, where many people in the office spend all day attached to their online profiles. 

"People who are creatives use Facebook, Twitter etc for our work but we forget - not to generalise - how much people in offices use that stuff, to the point where I've seen people - without naming any names! - who meet people on nights out and then Google them the next day and are like 'Ooo, I don't know...', and really trust what they see on the web. The idea was to come up with a character who was totally larger than life, totally into all that stuff, and who trusted what was on the internet more than her own instincts".

When it comes to herself though, Anne isn't a social media addict - unless she has a show to promote of course, like most people in today's theatre industry. The show illustrates how social media is changing the way we interact, and Anne notices this not only in the dating world, but in the arts. She admits it is very easy to become jealous or insecure as people constantly tweet all of their successes and positive reviews, while censuring anything bad. It's important for creatives to remember that Twitter doesn't present the whole truth and not judge themselves accordingly.

Surprisingly, Anne was never a fan of opera, or even musicals, until she began studying opera at music college. Instead, her background is in writing film scores, which is a completely different process, with much less creative freedom. It wasn't until she lived with Clare Presland and began attending her performances, that she really got into opera.

"When I wrote The Office: The Opera, it was as a slight rejection of opera that was too elitist, but that actually got me to watch a lot more opera, and I realised that actually opera is really cool. It's just that sadly sometimes it is performed in places where the seats are too expensive and people can't afford to go, so people have got this view of it as really horrible, and a really unnatural way of singing. But actually, if you go to watch an opera, even if you don't like the story, the singing is always incredible".

Anne explains that her inspiration comes from the masters of operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan, while the score contains a lot of pastiche of classic works. "Musically, it's very traditional", but it is that juxtaposition with the subject material which makes the show work.

While Anne had never had any problems convincing musically-minded friends to attend the show in London, she was shocked by the resistance to her work at Edinburgh Festival. "I'd go and give out flyers to people saying 'It's a one woman comedy about online dating', and they'd say 'Yeah, cool!', until they'd see that it was an opera and be like 'Take your flyer back!'". She had to make a real statement, dressing up in a wedding dress as a desperate dater, to convince potential audiences that her show would be funny and worth seeing. She explains that often people would say they didn't like opera but when asked which operas they didn't like it would transpire that they had never seen any. However, she is positive about the future, with moves like ENO and the Royal Opera House selling cheaper tickets or posting online trailers encouraging new audiences to discover opera for the first time. "People still think you have to wear a ball gown and your seat will cost £150, but it's not true any more". 

Anne did everything herself for this show: story, libretto, music, direction, even stage managing and lighting. Writing modern comic operas seems to be quite a lonely experience at the moment, and Anne wishes that there were more people doing it so they could have "a little collective" who battle against the opera stereotypes together. She has more ideas up her sleeves for future shows though, even if she has to do them alone. However, she is very conscious of falling into the trap of thinking "This is funny because people are singing it in opera voice"; it is essential that her material is funny on its own and not just because of the juxtaposition between opera and real life. While she'd love to find a more experienced librettist to collaborate with, to create a really tight, funny libretto, she realises that in the current climate of limited budgets and  scarce funding, you have to take on every role yourself to just get your show out there, until you can afford more professionals. 

"Sometimes people say 'I really want to be a writer but I'm not sure if I'd find a director, a designer, a stage manager...', that kind of thing. Well, you know what, why don't you do all that stuff yourself to start with, to show your work off. You might even discover a new talent. I've discovered I'm quite good at stage managing - that could be a second career!"

Through Anne's dedication and willingness to all the work herself, as well as a heap of talent, Through the Looking Screen was eventually a success in Edinburgh and drew rapturous applause at the Bush Theatre. Anne says she hopes the show will have a run in the new year, but it depends whether she can convince  more people that a modern comic opera is worth seeing. The audience at RADAR definitely believe that it is.

British Tea Party + Round'ere @ RADAR2012

My favourite part of what I saw of RADAR2012 was Thursday's sneak peek, bringing two of the highlights of the last Bush Bounce, Hollie McNish and Katherine Pearce, back to the Bush stage to astound us with the power and beauty of words.

British Tea Party

Hollie McNish is more used to performing in pubs, clubs or tea-rooms, where she serves up poems with tea and cake, than theatres. However, her dramatic poems seem perfectly at home on the stage. I'm not usually a big fan of poetry readings, but Hollie gives a real performance, bringing every word to life and reading with all the force and emotion that went into writing them.

This selection of poems are all related to tea in some way, but they are by no means sweet and fluffy. Addressing British mores, fears and loves, Hollie's poems have a particular focus on questions of immigration and colonial history, urging us to be welcoming and accepting, and reminding us that nothing is pure. Hollie also condones the desire to sexualise children by making grown women dress up in school uniforms and eat cupcakes. "I'm proud to be a woman", Hollie affirms, and we all cheer. In all of her poems, Hollie speaks so much sense, and the fact that she does it with such artful words and rhymes is all the more impressive.

You can listen to Hollie's poetry here.

Round'ere

Katherine Pearce is a familiar face to me from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Ever since I first saw her in O Go My Man I knew she was a talented actress, with an incredible warmth, but I wasn't prepared for the force of her writing. 

Round'ere is a touching, personal, portrait of North West England: prejudice, lack of opportunities, and hatred of Thatcher, contrasted with the creative wealth of the region. Katherine fired words out like a slap in the face but with such hypnotising rhythm that it was easy to get lost in them. The aesthetic quality of Katherine's poetry is in striking juxtaposition to the sorry state of a vulnerable young woman alone on a park bench. Just beautiful.

Katherine is busy filming with the BBC and will be at the National Theatre in January for Simon Stephen's Port. I look forward to seeing a lot more from her soon.

MONEY the Game Show Sneak Peek @ RADAR2012

There are cups of Quality Street lining the sides of the Bush Theatre stage as we enter. Murmurs of excitement and sideways glances at the chocolatey treats. This is going to be interesting...

MONEY the Game Show is the latest co-production between the Bush Theatre and Unlimited Theatre, written and directed by Clare Duffy. The project began life in April this year as part of the Platform 18: New Directions Award, through which Clare won £6,000 - enough to pay for three weeks of rehearsal and two weeks of performances. The whole process made Clare think about the value of money, which fed into her preoccupation with the financial crisis that began in 2008. Now, a redeveloped, rewritten - and more expensive! - version will hit the Bush stage from 31 January to 2 March 2013.

As part of the Bush Theatre's aim to 'demystify the theatre', the audience at RADAR2012 were invited to take part in a game that captures the 'spirit of the show', giving us the chance to directly influence the development of the final piece. We got to learn about hedge-fund managing in what turned out to be the most fun economics lesson imaginable. Split into two teams, we 'went long' on our volunteer blowing up a balloon quicker than our opponents, 'went short' on our balloon bursting first (betting on failure) and 'hedged' choosing between success for small rewards or failure for large rewards. With chocolate at stake, we quickly became greedy. We swapped edible wealth for moral bankruptcy, happily betting on the failure of the Euro leading to massive death and destruction while planning how we would enjoy our riches in Brazil. The final show will have a similar structure: the audience will become contestants, split into two teams led by ex-hedgefund managers turned performance artists. Only this time, there will be more at stake, because the losing manager will kill himself at the end of the show. How will greed and and ethics mix then?

After the sneak peek, Unlimited Theatre launched their 'See Your Pound On Stage' programme. The stage will contain 10,000 real pound coins and they need to start collecting them somewhere! In exchange for our shiny coins, we got to become shareholders and once the production has finished a Extraordinary General Meeting will be held to vote on what to do with the money. Judging by the preliminary suggestions at the event, this will surely be a fascinating social experiment. Will we be greedy - holding a lottery giving one shareholder the chance to keep everything? Charitable - donating the money to a good cause? Arty -investing the money in a new play? Or sadists - gluing the money on the pavement and laughing at people trying to get at it? We'll find out in March!

Chapel Street @ RADAR2012

Fresh from summer success at Edinburgh, Chapel Street burst on to the Bush stage in a frenzy of bubbles, neon wigs, squirty foam and mini-scooters. Luke Barnes new play is pure storytelling, bringing to life two engrossing characters, Joe and Kirsty, who collide on one extreme night out. It is a high octane piece, which made me feel as drunk as the young protagonists who rush about the stage recreating their respective sides of the story. It demands concentration to follow the two separate but converging strands, told in tandem and at high-speed, but the effort is worth the rewards. After initial confusion, I quickly became drawn in to their tale, eager to know where it was all rushing towards.

Ria Zmitrowicz (Kirsty) does a drunk 16 year old really well: arms waving furiously, chest stuck out and a voice between sing-song and whine. Young, naive and optimistic, she will do whatever it takes to go to university and get a better life, no matter what her teachers say. Joe (Theo Barklem-Biggs) is more laid-back, warm and sympathetic. He would be labelled as lazy scum by the Daily Mail and he knows it, but he is totally disillusioned. While he recognises that he should probably take a boring service job, he thinks that would be soul destroying and wishes he could really achieve something with his life.

While Chapel Street is commendable for these wholly convincing and honest young characters, what makes it so powerful is that key issues of contemporary society aren’t shoved in your face but emerge between the lines and bubble away in your subconscious. The protagonists' lives are bounded by enduring class prejudice, the shadow of war, paedophilia and teenage pregnancy, the true weight of which can’t be felt in their drunken state but lurks in the background. Weirdly, the result is a strange sense of optimism – no matter the obstacles, Kirsty and Joe’s energy cannot, will not, falter.

Chewing Gum Dreams @ RADAR2012

Michaela Coel already has an extremely impressive CV. First known as a poet, then a singer and musician, she graduated from Guildhall School of Music and Drama just a few months ago, the recipient of a 2011 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Student Actress and heralded as a future star. It's no surprise then that her new monologue, Chewing Gum Dreams, was chosen to open RADAR2012.

Written by Coel and directed by Che Walker, Chewing Gum Dreams takes us into the life and thoughts of 14 year old Tracey. Stories of maths lessons, the number 67 bus and school-yard crushes are told in the same breath as domestic violence, threats of rape, and racial prejudice, reminding us that all of these are part of everyday life for Tracey. She is such a warm, fun and naively innocent character that it hurts to see her go through what she does, to suffer and then to carry on with a smile. Coel imbues Tracey with such energy and humour that sudden silence and stillness is intimidating and reinforces the gravity of the situations affecting Tracey.

Chewing Gum Dreams is an involving, intimate piece, which proves that theatre doesn't need epic drama, or expensive sets and costumes. With nothing but a chair, some UK garage, a handful of real life, every day experiences and a lot of heart, Coel thoroughly captivates the audience, makes us laugh, moves us, and challenges race and class preconceptions. In a recent blog post for the Bush Theatre (How do we imagine a more diverse and accessible theatrical landscape?), Coel argues that it is up to writers to create characters that people who don't usually go to the theatre can relate to. Through bringing under-represented characters and locations to the stage, Coel proves that this is not the threat to traditional theatre that some reactionaries would have us believe, but rather a source of absorbing characters and affecting situations, the key ingredients of any successful play.

Chewing Gum Dreams will be performed again on 12th Nov @ 9.15pm and 13th Nov @ 7.30pm, at The Bush Theatre. Click here for tickets and more information.

Welcome to RADAR 2012

It was with great excitement that I arrived at the Bush Theatre today for the launch of RADAR2012: Signals from the New Writing World, three weeks of new productions, sneak peeks of works in progress and discussion panels by industry experts. While I will be writing a 500 word round-up of the first few days for Ideas Mag, I'll also be covering everything in more detail here over the next few weeks.

Having never been to the Bush Theatre before (my only prior experience of Shepherd's Bush at all was the Cooper Temple Clause gig at the Empire in 2007), I was immediately struck by the feel of the space. Just over a year ago, the Bush Theatre moved to this beautiful brick building which had previously been the public library, whose easy, unpolished architecture seems the perfect setting for new writing. For the first time since I left Cardiff, I've found somewhere which makes me feel like Sherman Cymru and Chapter did; a place where theatre is relaxed and open, not something you go to see but a space to be part of a community, to take part in something.

It was very apt, then, that the evening began with a welcome from Madani Younis, Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre, which focused on the community around the theatre. Uxbridge Road is one of the longest in London, he told us, and along it you find just about every nationality, coming together in a vibrant multicultural community. At the heart of this community, was always the Old Library, located next to the large market. Built in 1895, the library was an integral part of community life, a democratic space, a place not just to discover the magic of reading, but to meet, to see and be seen. When the Bush Theatre took over the building last year (moving from an 80-seater room above a pub where they were founded over 40 years ago), they inherited this commitment to the community and promised to make the theatre a place where local life and culture would be reflected.

Madani's presentation then went on to explain the desire to redefine the theatrical landscape which is at the heart of all the Bush Theatre's work, and the impetus behind RADAR. The festival is an occasion to share and discuss ideas with the public, to open up a debate on questions like how to develop a meaningful relationship with playwrights. This has been the topic of much consideration at the Bush Theatre recently. Previously, the theatre received around 2000 unsolicited plays ever year. Each of these was read and reviewed, but the conversion rate was just 0.1%. Surely there must be a better way to develop new talent? After consulting with many admired playwrights, directors and other theatre makers, Madani was very pleased to announce tonight that the unsolicited writing policy has been completely redesigned. The new policy aims to stimulate ideas, embrace talent and ultimately produce plays. In future, twice a year there will be three week windows for writers or companies to submit works. A selection of these will then benefit from expert mentoring and workshops, the best of which will then be offered seed commissions. At least one of these works per year will then be professionally staged at the Bush Theatre. At the heart of the new policy is a desire to develop, nurture, and create lasting links with a new generation of creatives. Full details will be released on 18 January 2013 and the first window will open in March.

As Madani looked forward to the exciting prospects of this new policy, he officially opened RADAR, beginning three weeks which will surely prove the power and possibilities of new writing, as well as questioning the way theatre is made and received. 

PS: I was also a little too impressed by the use of scripts as wallpaper in the bathrooms:

On My Way To RADAR 2012

Regular readers will know that I'm a huge fan of new writing. While I love a classic musical or a bit of Ibsen as much as the next person, nothing beats the excitement of seeing a work in gestation or witnessing for the first time pieces that challenge our preconceptions of what theatre is meant to be. So, when I saw IdeasTap where running a competition for a reporter for RADAR 2012 at The Bush Theatre, I jumped at the chance, and am very happy to say I won.

RADAR 2012: Signals from the new writing world, runs at The Bush Theatre in Shepherd's Bush from November 7-22, combining performances of new writing, sneak peeks of works in progress and provocative debates lead by theatre makers from across the industry. For the first week, I will be attending performances and talks, culminating in a 500 word round-up for IdeasMag. I can't wait! 

I'm very grateful to IdeasTap for this opportunity. IdeasTap is an arts charity set up to help 16 to 30 year olds across the UK get a start in the creative industries. They frequently offer funding and creative briefs, often working with top names like Sky Arts, The Barbican or the BBC, as well as maintaining a list of arts jobs currently recruiting. Whether you want to be a performer, an artist, a curator, a journalist, a technician, or a PR guru, if it's arts related, they'll help you find it. On top of that they run a magazine full of arts news, comment and advice for jobseekers, and provide space for the community of over 75,000 members to meet and collaborate. Find out more in this video:

Stay tuned for my RADAR reviews!