ENSEMBLE is a t
heatrical experiment about theatre. About theatre as something we make together and the reasons why a society does that. It’s also about the social experiment that took place in East Germany between 1945 and 1990 – the attempt to make a new kind of country and what became of it. How did theatre practitioners feel about living in a society made of lies, a society built on fear, a society under total surveillance? And what do we think about the past now, when that past was all about the idea and the promise of the future?
Join us for a rehearsed reading of Peter’s draft script at Òran Mór (top of Byres Road, Glasgow) on Wednesday 15 April 2015 at 7.30 pm. This reading is itself very much an experiment, as it will follow on directly from a two-day script development workshop. So although we have a draft script ready and waiting to be printed now, it’s bound to change before the reading in ways that we can’t predict. And it will change further in response to audience reactions, so we are keen to have a lively and opinionated audience!
To book free tickets, visit https://ensemblebypeterarnott.eventbrite.co.uk. The ticket includes a glass of wine/soft drink.
Please send any queries to whoiswatchingwhoenquiries@gmail.com.
Director: Peter Arnott
Dramaturge: Nicola McCartney
Cast: George Docherty, Rebecca Elise, Janette Foggo, and Mark McDonnell
This event will be filmed for a documentary on the process of developing the script and taking it to an audience.
Rona Munro, author of the history cycle The James Plays, has sent us her feedback on the reading at Oran Mor, which she has kindly agreed that we can publish:
From: Rona Munro
Date: 11 June 2015 at 15:05
Subject: Your play
To: Peter Arnott
Hi Peter, great to see you the other night and it has prompted me to write a long overdue fan letter in response to your reading of ‘Ensemble’. Leaving aside my respect at your raw courage in putting a work in progress in front of a live audience of punters I thought it was an incredibly timely and thought provoking piece of theatre, one that simply HAS to have a future life. If I had a note it was one big whopper, nothing to do with the structure and content you had, which I thought worked very well, I just felt it needed more explanation for a broad audience. Outside academia and below the age of forty I’m not sure how much anyone remembers about East Germany, a film like ‘The Lives of Others’ works with only the most sketchy knowledge of that regime but I think your work needs and deserves more context and explanation. Even someone like myself who OUGHT to know was struggling to absorb the significance of that theatre ensemble and those theatre practitioners, I sort of knew what the nature of that company was and who those people were but not enough to appreciate how electrifying their testimony was until my creaky brain gradually started to piece it together very late in the play. When I did the ending was hair on the back of the neck exciting.
Not going to annoy you further with concrete suggestions but honestly if someone had just baldly said ‘On this date East Germany had this kind of government’, ‘This theatre group operated in this way’ it would not have distracted me and would only have increased my enjoyment.
Keep me posted about what happens next, keen to see it again,
Rona x
For Peter’s response to the reading at Oran Mor, see his blog page on this site.