October 12, 2009

Some words on the ‘understaff’ by Walter Roberts

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The Hothouse, like all of Pinter’s plays, consists of broad plot events that act as a framework for a myriad of isolated events. Through these smaller events the characters show their brutality and manipulation of each other and their sinister, cruel and comic colors of physical and psychological behavior.

The Hothouse is a political statement of Pinter’s stance against formal institutions.

The understaff, consisting of the kitchen staff, the portering staff, and the cleaning staff, are symbolic of a concentrated working class rebellion within the plot of the Hothouse.

We do not see any of the understaff except for their leader, Tubb, who is the link from them to the executive personnel.

The understaff brutally murder all of the members of the executive branch of the institution.

This bloody revolution is symbolic of Pinter’s rebellious view of formalized institutions and corrupt government.

 

October 9, 2009

‘Oh, no, no, not phytotomy’ by Tim Harris

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Phytotomy is the dissection of plants – vegetable anatomy, if you like – and there is even a family of South American birds called phytotomidae, who nip off the young buds and shoots of plants with their serrated bills…

Not that there are any of these birds in the institution so sadistically mismanaged by Archibald Roote – although Miss Cutts, who likes getting her hands round people’s necks, might be thought of as resembling one, as might some of the other employees, including the brutal and alcoholic Roote himself; patient 6457 has been cut down in his prime, and there is a new-born baby whose life will probably be nipped in the bud.

Any bureaucratic institution is a sort of hothouse, filled with strange and often disgusting growths, and  Roote’s ‘rest home’, whose patients are ostensibly mental cases but seem really to be people who fallen foul of the mysterious ‘Ministry’, is no exception. There is Roote himself, whose senses seem to run through the building (he can ‘hear a whisper in the basement’). There is the aptly named Lush, spreading himself everywhere, Gibbs padding about like a cat (‘gib’ is a name for a tom-cat), and Tubb, who uses the Christmas raffle to amass stuff for himself. And then there is the poor little pet Lamb, whose innocence is savagely abused…

 

June 26, 2008

Playing Joey by Chris Parham

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My journey in portraying Joey is similar to Ruth’s journey through the play. Ruth degenerates after returning to the brutal birthplace she escaped from by marrying an intellectual, becoming a respectable housewife and mothering three kids, whereas my journey has involved revisiting parts of my own youth in Croydon–the nights-out, the drink, the fights and the implicit code of loyalty–to create this walking id: a part-time ‘boxer’ who’s in ‘demolition’. I’ve explored the physical side by joining a boxing gym to learn a few basic moves and find out about his passion; admittedly, I haven’t learnt much, but Joey is far from world champion material. Also, I have tried to be quiet and distance myself from others in rehearsal as Joey is not very talkative–he’s always in his own sphere.  Joey’s a nice, sensitive lad, really, who has no intentional bad feelings towards anyone. Like his mother, who died 6 years ago, he ‘has a heart of gold’, although, sadly, Joey lacks the ‘mind’. And if rubbed up the wrong way, he is quite capable of fulfilling the horrors of Pinter’s violent society.

 

June 22, 2008

Playing Max by Tim Harris

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Yeats’s words ‘the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor’ sum up for me Pinter’s The Homecoming. Max and two of his sons (Lenny and Joey) are all bestial, but it is perhaps Max who is the most bestial. I think of him as a Cyclops, as a shambling bear, as limping, cuckolded Hephaestos busy at his forge. In Max’s case, his forge used to be the butcher’s shop, where he used ‘the chopper and the slab’, but now it is the kitchen, where he cooks and which he finds ‘nice’ and ‘cosy’. Traditionally, the kitchen is the woman’s room, but Max seems fairly willing to take on the role of mother, even to the extent of declaring that he has given birth to three grown men, ‘All on my own bat!’, and that he has suffered the pains of giving birth and still feels the pangs.

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May 28, 2008

Walter Roberts Director’s Note (The Homecoming, July 4th-6th)

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“I don’t know how music can influence writing, but it has been very important for me, both jazz and classical music. I feel a sense of music continually in writing, which is a different matter from having been influenced by it.” (Harold Pinter in Playwrights at Work, ed. by George Plimpton 2000.

Director’s note:

I first became aware of Harold Pinter’s work back in my University days over 20 years ago when I saw a video of the definitive production of The Homecoming directed by Peter Hall. I have been hooked ever since. Pinter writes dialogue like no one else and had influenced many–David Mamet and Quentin Tarantino to name two. What I love about his dialogue is what lies underneath what is said or in the case of the famous “Pinter pause,” what is not said but very loudly implied. To quote a line from the play, “You’ve never heard such silence”. The Homecoming is not a pleasant play to watch and it can be very difficult to follow. The characters are, without exception, extremely dislikeable, bitter, vicious and violent. It seems like Pinter has taken the worst characteristics of human nature and pushed them ever so slightly into caricature, making the development of the plot and the actions of the characters slide into savage absurdity. If that were so, the play would just be an interesting surrealist experiment but in actuality it is firmly moored in realism. The difference is that the characters in The Homecoming vocalise and act out the worst attitudes and characteristics of human nature that are normally suppressed or not communicated. There is nothing in the play, no matter how vile and extreme, that is not true to how people think and behave–or at least how Pinter believes they would behave if they gave vent to their baser impulses. Does any of this sound familiar?

 

February 18, 2008

Mishal Samman’s Thoughts on Playing the Role of “Baylen”

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When first starting out doing live acting, it took me a while to finally get some of the finer points of what makes this art so difficult. Unlike TV or commercials where you can cut and take a look at what it is you may have actually done wrong, theater is such a different ballgame, especially with a role as small as Baylen.

Why I found this role difficult is because it is a semi-important part that stresses the severity of the situation these salesmen are in. Someone robbed the office, and they are all suspects, and not only are they suspects of a crime, but they still have to perform so they don’t get fired. What does that have to do with me? Well, I don’t have a monologue or speeches. I just have a handful of sentences, and all I do is call people’s names.

Baylen is required to be directing the actors on stage, and successfully interject and diffuse the situations that are running off on tangents, while standing his ground and bringing a sense of respect to the characters involved. In my point of view that’s hard to do when you don’t have that monologue to beat someone down with, or express yourself. Yelling all your lines to get the respect is definitely not the option for this role. So the director came up with an interrogation exercise to help me sound more like he imagined this cop to be, instead of just the guy walking in and out saying his lines.

The Interrogation

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January 30, 2008

Director’s Note

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Director’s note: We have used a practical approach in rehearsal based on Stanislavski’s system.

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January 25, 2008

Black Stripe Theater

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