Produced
for the University of Aberdeen's 2003 One Act Play Festival,
A Woman of Character formed the opening segment of a bill
of four plays, and my first effort as a director. Vivika McKie
Woods' play was an excellent piece, mixing whimsy, horror, madness
and pathos, with a line of jet black wit running throughout.
Based
behind the scenes of a yesteryear US soap, the play deals with
intrigue and recrimination in the wake of the show's cancellation,
as the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur. With only
three weeks from casting sessions to opening night, there was
very little time for reflection, but thankfully the piece was
well received, running for two performances on consecutive nights
in February 2003.
My
main contribution was to relocate the action a little further
back than originally envisaged, to a 1950s Hollywood Neverland
more rooted in cinema folklore and a Hedda Hopper gossip column
than the real world. The piece was written to be played on a broad
canvas, and so we had fun stretching those set pieces and playing
them big. Quite what the audience made of an opening scene of
mourners chinking cocktails amidst gravestones is anyone's guess,
but hopefully they immediately knew that we were leaving the real
world behind.
For
one sequence, we had to pre-record a section of the soap, to be
heard on a television set, for a character to watch and disapprove
of, with scenery chewing and daft melodrama aplenty. On the day,
we let the actors ad-lib over the scripted gaps, inserting as
many daft soap cliches as we could muster... Click on the links
to download some thrilling installments of Stairway to Passion!
Photographs
| Click on the thumbnails to view a full-sized image
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Cast:
Rachel Tucker (Josette), Joseph Adensoye (Louis), Caroline Ransom
(Sue), Jim Nolan (Lorenzo/Isaac), Ariana Marcantio (Diane/Alice).
Written and Produced by Vivika McKie-Woods. Produced and Directed
by Stuart Manning
Based
behind the scenes of a yesteryear US soap, the play deals with
intrigue and recrimination in the wake of the show's cancellation,
as the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur. With only
three weeks from casting sessions to opening night, there was
very little time for reflection, but thankfully the piece was
well received, running for two performances on consecutive nights
in February 2003.
