PFT's EDUCATION PACK
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PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 1 PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 2 TRAVESTIES by Tom Stoppard CONTENTS 3 Cast & Creatives 4 Introduction to Pitlochry Festival Theatre 5 Introduction to the Play 6 Introduction to the Author 7 Characters in the Play 8 Play Synopsis (+ videos) 9 Real People behind the Characters: Tristan Tzara 10 Real People behind the Characters: James Joyce 11 Real People behind the Characters: Lenin 12, 13 Real People behind the Characters: Henry Carr 14 - 16 History & Background to the Play 17, 18 Parallels between Travesties & The Importance of being Earnest (+ videos) 19 - 22 Five Questions with the Designer 23 Resource articles and reviews PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 3 CAST & CREATIVES Henry Carr Mark Elstob Tristan Tzara Graham Mackay Bruce James Joyce Alex Scott Fairley Lenin Alan Steele Bennett Carl Patrick Gwendolen Camrie Palmer Cecily Lucie-Mae Sumner Nadya Helen Logan Director: Richard Baron Set & Costume Designer: Adrian Rees Lighting Designer: Wayne Dowdeswell Choreographer: Chris Stuart Wilson Sound Designer: Jon Beales Assistant Director (Dialect): Helen Logan Stage Manager: Kate Schofield Assistant Stage Manager (Book): Helen Ashman Assistant Stage Manager (Floor): Lily Howarth Production Photographer: Douglas McBride Please note that all copy, content and images in this education pack are copyrighted and all the designs featured are the intellectual property of the designers. PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 4 Introduction to PFT A unique repertory theatre in the heart of Highland Perthshire. We produce six plays in a summer season. This year we have presented: Chicago by Fred Ebb, Bob Fosse and John Kander The Rise and Fall of Little Voice by Jim Cartwright Travesties by Tom Stoppard Quality Street by J M Barrie Before the Party by Rodney Ackland (based on a short story by Somerset Maughan) The Last Witch by Rona Munro We have an ensemble of 17 actors who we auditioned around the UK back in December 2017. They each act in 3-4 productions during the season and many of them need to sing, dance and act. They live up in Pitlochry from the last week of March to the middle of October. In late October the cast of The Last Witch will tour to the Tron in Glasgow and the Traverse in Edinburgh. There are 3 directors, 5 set & costume designers, 1 lighting designer, 3 sound designers and 1 choreographer across the season, not to mention fight director, voice coach, assistant director and physio. We have a full production team who create all our productions in-house, from our carpenters and scenic artists to our wardrobe department, stage management, technical and stage crew. We also have a finance department, marketing, catering, front of house, box office and executive team. It takes hundreds of people to put our productions onstage but here are a few facts about the work we create: PFT generates more mid to large scale in-house productions than any other theatre in Scotland. We generate 85% of our own income through ticket, catering and retail sales. We employ nearly 200 people during the summer making us the largest employer in Highland Perthshire. PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 5 PLAY INTRODUCTION Travesties was written in 1974. The play focuses on the life of Henry Carr, a British consular official in Switzerland during the First World War (1914 – 1918). In the play he starts as an elderly man, reminiscing about being at the centre of political and artistic revolution in Zürich in 1917 with communist revolutionary Lenin, Dada Founder Tristan Tzara and modernist author James Joyce. Carr was a real British consular official and is also mentioned in Joyce’s novel Ulysses BUT his memories, and the play as a whole, prove not to be reliable. The structure and characters of Travesties are heavily influenced by Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest. The real Carr did actually play Algernon in a production directed by James Joyce, and in this fictionalization of his life in Zurich he mixes up the plot of the play with his own misremembered experiences and highly exaggerated version of events. As part of this conceit, Carr in the play hates Joyce but inadvertently uses his literary style of a form of stream of consciousness while relating his own story. So the play becomes a meditation on Ulysses as well as an argument about modern art and the effects of war. DATE: 1917 and many years later SETTING: The Zurich Public Library and the drawing room of Henry Carr’s apartment PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 6 AUTHOR INTRODUCTION: TOM STOPPARD Tom Stoppard is a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for TV, radio, film and stage, finding success with plays such as: Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and Shakespeare in Love, and has received an Academy Award and four Tony Awards. His work covers the themes of: human rights, censorship and political freedom, often delving into philosophy. His first play produced on the stage was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1966. This play riffs off two minor characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the play that originally inspired Stoppard to write for the theatre. The National Theatre decided to produce the play, which then made its way to Broadway the following year. Stoppard has gone on to become one of the most prolific playwrights of his generation. To date he has written 36 plays, 21 of which have been produced on Broadway. PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 7 CHARACTERS IN THE PLAY Henry Carr appears as a ‘shabby and very old man’ and also as his youthful ‘elegant’ self. A minor British government official obsessed with the proper cut of trousers. Tristan Tzara the poet who created Dada-ism. He is a dark-haired, very boyish-looking young man, and “charming”. James Joyce the author, in 1917/1918, aged 36. He wears a jacket and trousers from two different suits and appears as a leprechaun. Bennett is Carr’s manservant, with radical sympathies and a taste for champagne. Gwendolen is Carr’s younger sister; working for Joyce, researching and transcribing his manuscript of Ulysses. (on the right) Cecily is a librarian in Zurich library. Working with Lenin on his book on imperialism, speaks Russian. Also appears as her old self. (on the left) Lenin The Russian revolutionary in 1917: aged 47 Nadya Nadezhda Krupskaya, Lenin’s wife: aged 48. PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 8 PLAY SYNOPSIS In his slightly shabby Zurich apartment, a minor British diplomat, old Henry Carr, looks back to his youth, and the summer of 1917, when the city of clocks was awash with spies, artists and subversives, and the First World War raged all around... This was also the year in which, according to Henry, he appeared in a rather successful amateur production of The Importance of Being Earnest directed by James Joyce. The high point was being able to choose his own trousers (such a pleasure!) and wear two complete changes of costume. And weren't Tristan Tzara, the founder of Dadaism, and Lenin, the godfather of the Russian revolution, involved too? They most certainly were. According to Henry... The problem is that Henry’s memory, like an unregulated clock, is a touch unreliable. And his memories have a habit of changing, even as he recounts them. Did Joyce really have a secretary called Gwendolyn? Was the Zurich Public Library really overseen by - wait for it - Cecily? When did the mad, charming Tzara become Jack to Henry’s Algernon? And who turned the dour Joyce into Lady Bracknell? In this mis-remembered world, Henry gives himself a starring role in the political, artistic and literary revolutions that were to shape the 20th Century, whilst madcap, Dadaist mischief erupts all around, inspired by the spirit of Oscar Wilde. Travesties Trailer Video Audience reactions to Travesties Director Richard Baron talking about Travesties PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 9 THE REAL PEOPLE BEHIND THE CHARACTERS TRISTAN TZARA (1896-1963) (born Samuel Rosenstock) • Romanian free thinker and radical • Helped found artistic movement called Dada in Zurich’s Cabaret Voltaire • Dadaism was purposefully chaotic and shocking and was called “anti-art” Born in Romania as Samuel Rosenstock, Tristan Tzara was introduced to the Symbolist art movement by poet Adrian Maniu. Symbolism stood in opposition to realistic art, emphasizing emotions, feelings, and ideas, and often featuring mystic or religious imagery. Tzara founded the magazine Simbolul with poet Ion Vinea and painter Marcel Janco, shortly prior to the First World War. It was during the War that he moved to Zurich, co- founding the Cabaret Voltaire, which became known as the “cradle of Dada.” Featuring experimental forms of performance, poetry, art, and more, the Cabaret Voltaire was where early Dadaist manifestos were read, many of which were written by Tzara, who could often be spotted sporting a monocle and suit, and with “DADA” written on his forehead. In 1919, after the War and the closing of Cabaret Voltaire, Tzara moved to Paris, where he joined the staff of Littérature magazine. Tzara and one of the magazine’s editors, André Breton, often fought over the editorial leadership. In 1923, a production of Tzara’s play Gas Heart provoked fights among those in support of and those against Dadaism. Meanwhile, Breton had begun to write manifestos about a new artistic movement: Surrealism. An evolution of Dada that focused on the power of the subconscious mind and dreams, Surrealism grew in popularity, overtaking Dada and eventually winning over Tzara.