The Compton Players' NEWSLETTER MARCH 2003

Contents

Editorial - Ch-ch-ch-changes
It's Spring, Spring, Spring
Pyramus and Thisbe through the ages
A dream production
Indian influence
Autumn production
News of members
Money matters - update
Spreading the net wider -update
CP Calendar
Next newsletter

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Ch-ch-ch-changes

No sooner had our Spring production of Arms and the Man got under way, than Dave's leading lady dropped out. He wasn't able to fill the gap so reluctantly we have had to go for Plan B, hoping that Dave will be able to re-cast it for a future production. Meanwhile, if you really want to see it, Newbury Dramatic Society are doing it in July.

So on to Plan B: we are going to do three one-act plays, and as you'll see below, they are a very varied set.

And to round off this newsletter, I've been looking into the background of Pyramus and Thisbe, and Rob has an article on the Indian influence on theatre. Thanks also to Rob for all the quotes in this edition.
 

It's Spring, Spring, Spring

We're giving our Compton audience the chance to see our last year's Wallingford production (Green Favours by Frank Vickery), this year's Wallingford production (Bill and Bob by H Connolly), and we're throwing in Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night's Dream to round the evening off.

Green Favours is a gentle comedy about love in a potting shed. It's directed by Tracey and has Brenda and Mark as the two characters. Bill and Bob is a brand new play from H (yet another world première for Compton Players) in which there's more going on than meets the eye. The cast are Mike Long, Dave Hawkins, Mary Warrington and Tracey Pearce. We are also hoping to enter it for the Henley Festival. Pyramus and Thisbe is directed by Eric and is played for laughs, with a cast of as many as are available. Nick is heroically stage managing the whole evening, as well as playing Bottom.

Rehearsals present an interesting logistical problem, and we're making full use of the hall and the Scout hut.

Note that the production dates are now Tuesday 29th, Wednesday 30th April, Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd May, leaving out the Thursday when the hall is being used for local council elections.

His brain is a half-inch layer of Champagne poured over a bucket of Methodist near-beer.

Benjamin de Casseres of George Bernard Shaw.

Pyramus and Thisbe through the ages

Pyramus and Thisbe is well known to us all thanks to Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, but its origins go back a long way. The myth of Pyramus and Thisbe is attributed to the ancient Greeks, although the couple lived in Babylon, in adjacent houses. Their parents didn't let them meet, but they could talk to each other through a hole in the connecting wall. They decided to run off one night and elope, meeting at the first Mulberry bush outside the city. As Thisbe was waiting, a lioness walked by with her jaws covered in blood from a previous kill that day. Thisbe was frightened and ran to the nearest cave. Soon after, Pyramus came by and found the cloak that he had given to her covered in blood and torn to pieces, with the footprints of the lioness left behind. Thinking that his love had been killed by a hungry lion, he unsheathed his sword and stabbed himself in the heart. Thisbe returned and found her love lying on the ground next to the blood-covered Mulberry bush with his sword impaling his chest. The dying Pyramus told her what had happened; she took the sword and stabbed herself, and the couple died together. This is why the berries on the Mulberry bush are red, instead of their original white, in commemoration of the two young lovers and their great sacrifice.

The story was recorded by the Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses written about 1AD. The 14th century saw a revival in its popularity: Petrarch recorded the story in 1340, Boccaccio in 1342, and Chaucer wrote The Legend of Thisbe in 1386. Shakespeare, of course, is the most famous teller of the story (1596), and about 1630 John Donne wrote this Epigram. PYRAMUS AND THISBE Two, by themselves, each other, love and fear, Slain, cruel friends, by parting have join'd here. Inspired by the taking down of the Berlin wall, Susan Sontag wrote The Very Comical Lament of Pyramus and Thisbe - a very short piece, described as "an Interlude", which starts like this:

Pyramus & Thisbe, an etching by Augustus John, c1906

THISBE: It's not here anymore.
PYRAMUS: It separated us. We yearned for each other. We grew apart.
THISBE: I was always thinking about it.
PYRAMUS: I thought you were thinking about me.
THISBE: Ninny! (Gives him a kiss.) How often have I reassured you. But I'm talking about what I didn't say. With every sentence I uttered, there was another, unspoken half sentence: "And the wall..." Example: I'm going to the Paris Bar.
PYRAMUS: "And the wall..."
THISBE: Example: What's playing at the Arsenal tonight?
PYRAMUS: "And the wall..."
THISBE: Example: It's terrible for the Turks in Kreuzberg.
PYRAMUS: "And the wall..."
THISBE: Exactly.
PYRAMUS: It was a tragedy. Will it be a comedy now?
THISBE: We won't become normal, will we?
PYRAMUS: Does this mean we can do whatever we want?
THISBE: I'm starting to feel a little nostalgic. Oh, the human heart is a fickle thing.
PYRAMUS: Thisbe!

After watching an unfortunate actor called Guido Nadzo, the Broadway critic George Kaufman wrote:
Guido Nadzo is nadzo guido.

A dream production

If you haven't been to see the Watermill's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, you're too late, because it's sold out. The reason it's sold out is almost certainly because of the rave reviews it got from the national dailies. The Times said: "Occasionally a production comes along that is so brimful of delights that I long to be able to parcel it up at the end and carry it home, ready to unwrap and play again when times are glum. Edward Hall's latest Shakespeare staging has me feeling this way, so inventive are its ideas and so brightly inspired is the company's playing." The Guardian: "It really is magic". The Telegraph: "enchanting production". The Sunday Times: "This is one of the best and most exciting productions of this great play I have seen, ever." You get the picture. I have to say that, although I enjoyed it, I didn't think it was as great as they did. I wouldn't go as far as The Independent, though; the lone dissenting voice: "This production subjects us to too many sour notes." Anyway, I guess the other critics know more about it than I do, so this is a production that you should have gone to see. It's going on tour, so you can still see it at the Hexagon from the 20th to the 24th May, or the Oxford Playhouse from the 10th to the 14th June.

JM Synge's play The Playboy of the Western World provoked riots when it was first performed in Ireland in 1907. One newspaper described it as containing 'the foulest language we ever listened to on a public platform'. The word 'shift' (a petticoat) caused particular offence.

Indian influence

The society of ancient India was strongly hierarchical. Brahmin theology believed that a divine being had decreed that mankind was divided into four castes: the poet-priests, the warrior chiefs, the ordinary people - which included artisans, farmers and soldiers - and, finally, the slaves. Dancers, musicians and actors were in this lowest category.

The position of the poet-priests at the top of this hierarchy shows that this was a society in which religion was of supreme importance. Hindu religious festivals occupied much of the year - there were, after all, many gods - and temple rituals were elaborate and costly displays involving many people. Indian civilisation dated from at least the beginning of the second millennium BC and was highly developed. There were elaborate temples, opulent palaces, large cities and a leisured and literate upper class with time and wealth to spend on lengthy and impressive religious ceremonies. These ceremonies were devised and directed by the poet-priests and were intended to overwhelm the onlookers by the use of colour, music, dance and drama so that they would be transported to a state of other-worldliness.

The ceremonies were enacted by dancers, actors and musicians; performers who were dedicated to the service of the different temples and their priests. These performers were rigorously trained from an early age to attain complete mastery of their particular craft, whichever it was. We know this because it was in India that the first attempts were made to set down in writing a theory of drama, with practical guidance as to how it should be done. Two texts, in Sanskrit, have survived; they are the Artha Sastra from the fourth century BC and the Natya Sastra from the second century AD. Despite the dates both are clearly the work of several different hands over several preceding centuries.

For those whose Sanskrit isn't up to speed, Artha Sastra translates as The Doctrine of Prosperity, and Natya Sastra as The Doctrine of Dramatic Art. The first deals with some aspects of drama, particularly with regard to religious ceremonies, but the second does exactly as it says: there are thirty-six sections covering matters such as the architecture of theatres, the use of music, speech, dance and gesture. There is evidence that the influence of these ideas spread beyond the boundaries of India.

Within India a process seems to have taken place over time by which some of the dancers, musicians and actors moved away from the temples into the wider society, firstly into the palaces of some of the noblemen and princes and then as wandering groups of players. With these wandering groups, going from place to place and performing in town squares and market places, an important development came about when they allied themselves with professional storytellers. The storytellers were a feature of Indian life and in a largely illiterate society were always welcome. As an ancient civilisation India had a wealth of myths and legends and other stories so the storyteller always had a large repertoire on which to call. In alliance with the storyteller a company of actors would enact the story in front of their audience and so there would be a dialogue and a plot and something which was recognisably a play. In the temple the spectacle had been more important than any dialogue and so the dancers had been of more importance than the actors. Now the position was reversed yet, at the same time, dance and music continued to have a larger place in the entertainment than would be usual in a European play and that is still true to this day. Think Bollywood musical.

Another development in early Indian drama was the appearance of the clown, a figure who came to play a larger and larger role in many plays. It's interesting to note also that in Indian drama there have not been the distinctions made between tragedy, comedy and farce which have been made in the west since the time of Greek drama.

Indian civilisation, and thus Indian drama, is very ancient. Much of it was old before the Roman empire was born. As a vigorous art-form Indian drama spread beyond the borders of India, northwards to China and Korea and then strange, isolated Japan in the twelfth century AD where it gave rise to the Noh and Kabuki plays. It spread southwards into Burma and Indonesia with a recognisably Hindu influence. Some scholars believe that its influence spread even further afield into the Middle East and Egypt where it would be encountered and absorbed by Alexander the Great and his armies of Greeks in the sixth century BC as they marched eastwards through Turkey, Persia, Iraq and into Afghanistan.

Interesting to note, in that connection, that theatre and drama blossomed surprisingly suddenly in the Athens of the fifth century BC from relatively obscure origins which have never been completely explained. Perhaps there is more to the birth of Western drama than we know.

Most of the above is taken from A History of the Theatre by Glynne Wickham. Second edition, 1992, published by Phaidon. ISBN 0 7148 2736 3

Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne were a famous husband and wife team in the world of acting. In At Mrs Beam's, produced in 1926 - and then later by the Compton Players - Fontanne was required to slap her husband but found in rehearsal that she could not. After she had tried several times and failed, Lunt shouted: "For God's sake, Lynn, you're the lousiest actress I've ever played opposite". She immediately gave him a good whack and during each subsequent performance he had to whisper, "Don't be lousy, dear", before the blow.

Autumn production

Tracey was lined up as the director for the Autumn production, and rumour had it that it was going to be a pantomime, but she got roped into the Spring production as director of Green Favours and then also took over from Cathy as one of the cast of Bill and Bob, so understandably she's not now going to do the Autumn production.

Which leaves us with a problem. Which you can solve by volunteering to direct it. If you've ever thought about directing, please think some more. In fact, give it some very serious thought, and let the committee know as soon as possible, even if you're only considering it as a remote possibility. There will be play readings in the summer, and we can read any plays you would like to consider.

We don't want another year when we only do one play. Compton Players needs you.

Money matters - update

We have now had details of the new charges for using the hall from the Village Hall Committee. The charges are significantly higher, but the Compton Players Committee believes that we can accommodate these within our budget. We will go through the details at the AGM.

Spreading the net wider - update

The AmDram proposal for taking credit card bookings has not got off the ground, due to lack of interest.

When Gladys Cooper was playing Peter Pan she squabbled with the stagehands. Their revenge came during the next performance when she was flying from a wire. Instead of dropping her down gently into the Darlings' nursery they bounced her off the walls, according to one witness, 'like a wrecking ball on a building site'.

CP Calendar

Next newsletter

All offerings to me, by email to , or by post to Paul Shave, Windrush, The Ridge, Cold Ash, Thatcham, RG18 9HX, 01635 866800. By 10th May please.

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