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PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - 1

PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 2

TRAVESTIES

by

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: 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

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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.

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PLAY INTRODUCTION Travesties was written in 1974.

The play focuses on the life of Henry Carr, a British consular official in 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, 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 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 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

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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: , , Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, , , and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. He co-wrote the screenplays for Brazil, The Russia House, and , and has received an Academy Award and four . 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.

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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.

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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 as Samuel Rosenstock, Tristan Tzara was introduced to the Symbolist art movement by poet . stood in opposition to realistic art, emphasizing emotions, feelings, and ideas, and often featuring mystic or religious imagery. Tzara founded the magazine with poet 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 , 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: . 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. By the beginning of World War 2, however, Tzara had decided that being an artist was not an effective way to fight the Nazis. He joined the Communist Party, lived in hiding in for much of the War, until his death in 1963. 1 PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 0

JAMES JOYCE - James Augustine Aloysius Joyce • Early work included Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • Started The English Players, a theatre troupe, while in Zurich • Ulysses, his retelling of Homer’s Odyssey set in Dublin on a single day, the 16th of June 1904, was published in 1922 and broke new ground with its use of stream-of- consciousness and interior monologue • Ulysses is now regarded as a masterpiece; Henry Carr is mocked in it

Born in 1882 outside Dublin, Ireland. He studied language, mathematics, and philosophy at University College. Joyce began writing in 1900 at the age of eight, creating dramatic vignettes and prose poems. He was an avid reader and even learned to speak Dano-Norwegian in order to read the plays of Henrik Ibsen.

Joyce wrote a variety of novels, short stories, and one stage drama during his career. Dubliners, a series of short stories about life in Dublin, was published in 1914. The novel A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published in 1916, in the literary magazine The Egoist.

Joyce’s most famous novel, Ulysses, was published in 1922. Once began in 1914, Joyce and his family took refuge in Zurich, and he wrote Ulysses while in Zurich. The novel is known for its 700 pages of “stream-of-consciousness” narrative, which presents the character’s inner thoughts directly on the page. Here is an excerpt:

“He stood at Fleet street crossing. Luncheon interval. A sixpenny at Rowe’s? Must look up that ad in the national library. An eightpenny in the Burton. Better. On my way. He walked on past Bolton’s Westmoreland house. Tea. Tea. Tea. I forgot to tap Tom Kernan. Sss. Dth, dth, dth! Three days imagine groaning on a bed with a vinegared handkerchief round her forehead, her belly swollen out. Phew! Dreadful simply! Child’s head too big: forceps. Doubled up inside her trying to butt its way out blindly, groping for the way out. Kill me that would. Lucky Molly got over hers lightly. They ought to invent something to stop that. Life with hard labour. Twilight sleep idea: queen Victoria was given that. Nine she had. A good layer. Old woman that lived in a shoe she had so many children." 1 PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 1

Joyce co-founded The English Players, which performed plays in English in Zurich. Their first play was The Importance of Being Earnest. After the war in 1920, Joyce left Zurich and moved back to Paris to be with Ezra Pound. Joyce had met many people in France who helped propel his writing. American expat Sylvia Beach helped publish Ulysses, and another expat, Paul Léon, helped publish his final book, Finnegan’s Wake, in 1939.

After spending 20 years in France, in 1940, he fled the country to avoid the Nazi invasion and returned to Zurich. Joyce ended up dying one year later after having surgery for ulcers in his small intestine and was buried in Zurich.

VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN (1870-1924) • Married to Nadezhda “Nadya” Krupskaya • Founder of Russian Communist Party; leader of faction called Bolsheviks • Returned to Russia in 1917 and led an armed take over known as the October Revolution, which overthrew the Tsar and led to the creation of the

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as “Lenin,” was born in Simbirsk, Russia, which has since been renamed Ulyanovsk in his honor. His brother, Aleksandr, was executed in 1887 at age 21 for an attempted assassination of the Russian Emperor. It was this incident that turned Lenin towards fighting for the empowerment of the working class.

Lenin moved to St. Petersburg in 1893, where he began a relationship with his eventual wife, Nadezhda “Nadya” Krupskaya, a teacher with similar political views, who also appears as a character in Travesties.

In 1896, Lenin was arrested for inciting others to rebel against the Russian government and charged with three years’ exile to Siberia. Soon after, Nadya was also arrested, but she claimed to be engaged to Lenin so that she would also be sent to Siberia. The pair wed and eventually returned to St. Petersburg in 1905 after unrest prompted Tsar Nicholas II to sign a manifesto giving more power to elected officials along with the monarchy.

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Lenin held fast to his beliefs that the Russian working class could overthrow the monarchy, which culminated in the February and October Revolutions of 1917, putting him in control of the Russian government.

Lenin’s censorship of literature whilst in power, and the amount of people (and particularly artists) that died during his political purges, mattered greatly to Stoppard and is the reason we make the library disappear in our production while Lenin is talking in the second act.

Lenin remained in power until a series of strokes, caused by an assassination attempt, took away his ability to speak, and eventually led to his death in 1924.

HENRY CARR - Henry Wilfred Carr  The Englishman enlisted in 1914 and was sent to France  Suffered a leg injury in battle, captured by Germans, and paroled to Switzerland  Played Algernon in James Joyce’s English Players’ production of The Importance of Being Earnest  Was offended by Joyce and sued for the cost of trousers he purchased to wear in the play  Joyce counter-sued for the cost of tickets Carr sold; Joyce won

Unlike the other the major characters in Travesties, the real Henry Carr wasn’t famous. Stoppard learned about Carr and became intrigued by a real-life incident mentioned in a biography of James Joyce. Joyce worked with an English-speaking theatre troupe in Zurich to produce Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. Joyce cast a mix of professionals and amateurs, including Henry Carr, an Englishman living in exile, as the lead role of Algernon. Apparently, Carr gave an enthusiastic performance, but afterwards, a small financial dispute with Joyce escalated into lawsuits. Carr sued Joyce for reimbursement on clothes he bought as his costume; Joyce counter-sued Carr for money owed on five tickets. Carr lost his case and was further punished by Joyce when he named an unlikeable character in Ulysses after Carr. Stoppard knew little more than this about the real Henry Carr while writing Travesties; however, after its 1974 premiere, a surprise letter from Carr’s widow provided more details of the real man’s life.

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Henry Wilfred Carr (1894-1962) was born and raised in Northeast . At 17 he moved to Canada and worked for a bank, then volunteered for military service with the Royal Highland Canadian Infantry during WWI. He was wounded while fighting in France, then captured as a prisoner of war by the Germans. He was sent, along with approximately 700 British prisoners, to recover in Switzerland, in accordance with an agreement made by the International Cross allowing soldiers from all over Europe to recover in Switzerland. Carr’s infamous encounter with Joyce occurred in spring of 1918, and he left Zurich when the war ended that November. Carr’s post-war life was unexceptional.

He worked for a department store in Montreal in the 1920s then moved back to England with his second wife, Noël Bach, in 1933. He worked for a metal factory in Sheffield and commanded a Home Guard in Warwickshire during World War II. He died of a heart attack in 1962, leaving no children.

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USEFUL HISTORY and BACKGROUND WWI (1914-1918) • Started when Austro- invaded Serbia, after Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo by a gang called Black Hand. • The two sides were: Allies: Russia, Great Britain, France, Serbia, United States versus Central Powers: Germany, Austro-Hungary • 10 million soldiers & 5 million civilians were killed

DADA With its first manifestos written towards the end of the First World War, Dada is an artistic movement that is often called “anti-art.” Dada sought to defy and destroy artistic conventions by freeing itself from logic, and by using techniques such as simultaneous action and an antagonistic relationship with the audience.

A perfect example of what Dada stood for artistically and politically was the inaugural performance at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916. For the occasion, Tzara and fellow poets and Marcel Janco each read poems they had written...at the same time. The cacophony created was meant to “annihilate the language by which the war was justified,” which was key - if language structures our lives and allows us to perpetuate violence against each other, then art needs to undermine language.

Dadaists aimed to derail audience expectations and undermine the meaning of words so that the world could be looked at with fresh eyes. Chance operations, such as cutting up newspapers to create a poem (as seen in Travesties) were often used to create work, forcing creators to free themselves from their intentions and ego.

THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION OF 1917 After centuries of rule by monarchs with absolute power, Russian politics were upended in 1917. With the economy devastated by the First World War, members of the working class went on strike in February and took to the streets to demand bread. Persisting even after army troops opened fire on them, the protests led to the creation of a provisional government in March of that year, made up of upper-class citizens. 1 PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 5

This government ruled in conjunction with Tsar Nicholas II at first, enforcing rights such as freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the rights of unions, but opposing violent revolution. In October of 1917, Lenin led the uprising that overthrew the provisional government and put him and his party, the Bolsheviks, in power.

The Bolsheviks were considered a socialist party, meaning that they stood for the rights of the working class and advocated for democracy. Under Lenin, their government redistributed land to peasants, allowed for states that became Finland and Lithuania to declare their independence from Russia. The party eventually moved away from and became more extremist.

SWITZERLAND IN WORLD WAR I Modern Switzerland was founded in 1848, and its constitution declared its neutrality in international conflicts. An agreement made at the 1907 Hague Conference stated that, as a neutral country, Switzerland could:

• Export goods and arms to warring countries, but could not join any military alliance • Have diplomatic relations with all the warring countries, but had to treat all states equally • Admit and house wounded soldiers, but not allow military troops from either side to cross its borders

As a landlocked country, the Swiss economy depends on importing raw goods and exporting manufactured goods. At the time of World War I, 40% of its food supply had to be imported. When the war broke out, Switzerland was surrounded by warring countries on every border. In 1914, the Swiss made trade agreements with both France and Germany. France would supply food through its Mediterranean ports, while Germany agreed to import corn and coal.

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PRISONERS OF WAR During World War I, Switzerland played a humanitarian role by aiding prisoners of war from across Europe. The International Committee of the Red Cross, based in Geneva, negotiated an agreement with Germany, France, Britain, Russia and . Wounded and sick prisoners of war were sent from enemy camps to Switzerland, where they could recover before being sent back to their own countries. Henry Carr probably arrived as a British POW in 1916, by which time over 27,000 soldiers had been interned in Switzerland.

ZURICH: A MAGNET FOR REFUGEES • A major city in Switzerland and its financial centre. • First language of Zurich is German, but French is also widely spoken • Switzerland was and still is politically and militarily neutral • Spies, diplomats, artists, refugees and intellectuals all gathered there to work or to escape the war

In the mid-19th century, Zurich emerged as a modern industrial city. Switzerland’s first major railroad connected Zurich to Baden, Germany in 1847, opening Zurich to international visitors. During World War I, Zurich attracted political exiles, intellectuals, writers, and artists from around Europe. Many faced increased repression in their own countries, but Swiss neutrality allowed a free exchange of ideas, including artistic responses to the destruction and devastation caused by war. Writers could publish their work in the Swiss papers, magazines, and books. Zurich especially attracted many German and Austrian writers, as well as socialists like Lenin and Trotsky. Cabaret Voltaire, a short-lived venue for the Dada artists, opened in 1916.

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TRAVESTIES & THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Throughout Travesties, Stoppard uses characters, plot points, and quotations from The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde’s renowned 1899 comedy.

The two plays are described as a "Trivial Comedy for Serious People" (The Importance) and "a masterpiece of serious " (Travesties). They both revel in wit, absurdity and clever pastiches that methodically invert normal expectations.

Look at our videos comparing two short sections from Travesties and The Importance of Being Earnest.

We have taken 3 sections: 1. The ladies introduction to each other 2. Proposals of marriage 3. Cucumber sandwiches

Our Travesties actors read the scenes from The Importance of Being Earnest and then act out their equivalent scenes in Travesties – complete with the costumes.

Beloved for its witty dialogue, Earnest follows the antics of bachelors Algernon Moncrieff and Jack Worthing. Both men create alter egos named Ernest to escape their lives and pursue the hearts of Cecily and Gwendolen, who are each determined to marry a man named Ernest. Jack is unable to win the approval of Gwendolen’s imperious mother, Lady Bracknell, after revealing he was found in a handbag as a baby. A complex tangle of deception and mistaken identities ensues— including the women’s rivalry over the same “Earnest”—until misperceptions are cleared and the couples are united. Wilde satirized English society and the Victorian obsession with respectability, but the play remains popular with modern audiences.

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Here are some of the costume drawings from PFT’s 2015 production of The Importance of Being Earnest to compare to drawings and pictures of Travesties 2018:

What do the drawings and photographs tell you about who these characters are?

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5 Questions with the Designer: Adrian Rees

1. What was your inspiration for the set? There are a couple of key elements to the set.

Firstly you need to think about getting the sightlines right. PFT has a very wide auditorium so you need to follow the sightlines of the furthest seats to a central point on the stage to know how things should be designed and staged. If you go outside those sightlines then people on the edges won’t be able to see part of the action and that’s not fair.

We wanted the set to have an old time music hall theatre feel to reflect the different styles and skits within the piece, so I created a proscenium arch frame with lightbulbs in it that frames the action and that helped solve the problem of sightlines by pulling all of the action more central, within this large frame.

We also knew that the library set needed to disappear quickly to allow the ‘Earnest’ set of Carr’s imagination to take over. That set has a far more flimsy, less solid feel to enhance the idea that his memories are not solid.

So in short – its sightlines, music hall and fluidity of memory.

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2. What discussions did you have with the director? This process was very much director led. Because of the complexity of the play there are a myriad of ways to do it. This is Richard’s (the director) third time of directing the play so he was very clear on what he needed to achieve to help tell the story.

3. What is the world of Travesties? It’s the world of Zurich in 1917, envisioned by Carr with his faulty memory.

4. How did you design the costumes? I researched the period and the characters and talked a lot with the director about the difference between the more naturalistic costumes and the highly stylized fantastical ones – particularly Tsara and James Joyce.

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The library set in the model box and in performance

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5. What part of the show are you most proud of?

I think it’s the speed and fluidity of the set changes from one scene to another. It’s almost as fast as Carr’s flawed mind changes.

Camrie Palmer as the fantasy of Gwendolen from Carr’s mind

‘Fantasy’ Cecily costume 2 PFT’s EDUCATION PACK - TRAVESTIES 3

Reference Articles and Reviews:

Interview with Tom Stoppard on Travesties: http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/16334356.tom-stoppard-on-why-his-classic-travesties- still-has-its-/

The Stage Review: https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2018/travesties-review-festival-theatre-pitlochry/

The Herald Review: http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts_ents/16320855.review-travesties-pitlochry-festival-theatre- four-stars/

The Times Review: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/scotland/theatre-review-travesties-at-pitlochry-festival- theatre-hk80c968w