Sam Holcroft DIRECTED by SIMON GODWIN
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THE SMASH HIT COMEDY BY Sam Holcroft DIRECTED BY SIMON GODWIN Autumn 2017 Touring to: Colchester, Harrogate, Cheltenham, Doncaster, Bristol, Exeter. Oldham, Poole, Huddersfield, Guildford ett.org.uk ett.org.uk WELCOME It is a joy to be touring this deliriously funny comedy by Sam Holcroft, with acclaimed director Simon Godwin making his English Touring Theatre debut. Rules for Living explores the coping mechanisms of one explosive family in the face of the obligatory rituals of Christmas day. The result is a virtuosic display of theatricality and raucous humour. Sam and Simon have conjured a world that is instantly recognisable, laying bare the conventions and anxieties of contemporary life. Amidst the chaos that ensues, we may be reminded of our own families at Christmas. It’s been a pleasure to partner with Royal & Derngate and Rose Theatre, Kingston once again after receiving the 2016 UK Theatre Award for Best Touring Production for The Herbal Bed. We are all proud and excited to share the regional premiere of this wonderful play with audiences across the country as it tours the UK this autumn. You can keep up to date with the tour @ETTtweet #RulesForLiving. I hope you enjoy the show. Richard Twyman Artistic Director, English Touring Theatre Rules For Living is a co-production with Royal & Derngate, Northampton and Rose Theatre Kingston, and will open at Royal & Derngate, Northampton (8 – 30 Sep) before touring to Cambridge Arts Theatre (3 – 7 Oct), Theatre Royal Windsor (10 – 14 Oct), Theatre Royal Brighton (17 – 21 Oct), New Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich (31 Oct – 4 Nov), and Rose Theatre Kingston (7 – 18 Nov). Photo: Mark Douet /English Touring Theatre @ETTtweet 1 IN CONVERSATION WITH SAM HOLCROFT AND SIMON GODWIN “I feel increasingly like a clockmaker trying to get all the cogs turning in the right direction.” Playwright Sam Holcroft and director Simon Godwin talk to Nick Smurthwaite about this revival of Rules of Living, which was first produced at the National Theatre in 2015. Nick: How does this production differ from the original production at the National? Photo: Mark Douet Simon: I didn’t see the National Theatre production so I came to it as a new play, without preconceptions, which was exciting because I always aspire to direct any play as if for the first time. We’re veering towards a more naturalistic interpretation so rather than the rules for living dictating Nick: How did you arrive at the play’s very distinctive structure? the overall aesthetic, it’s more located in a recognisable family home. We’re showing the workings of the household rather than placing it in a game show wherein sits a family. For me, one of the great Sam: I planned the characters’ core goals and story arcs without any reference to the rules at all, pleasures of the play is its universality in the sense that this is a play about a family – and we’ve all then began layering the rules in stage by stage. I wanted to make sure the characters’ behaviour got families – and it is set over Christmas. The thing about Christmas and families is that they are was rooted in real emotional impulses – rather than being pushed around by the rules. joined at the hip yet strangely adversarial. We are at our most flammable when we are trying to be Nick: Have you enjoyed working together? at our most jolly. So this is clearly a great crucible for drama. Simon: I’ve worked at the Royal Court where there was a well-established ethos of the writer being a Sam: Second time round, I have a much clearer idea of what the play is. The first time you do any primary part of the process, and I’ve also worked at the RSC and the National, where quite often the new play nobody really knows what it is until it opens. You might think you’ve written a comedy and writers were not around anymore and therefore unable to make a contribution. So it’s very nice to be it turns out to be something else, or you think you’ve written something dramatic and profound and able to talk to Sam about what she feels and what she wants. Lastly there is also something relaxing everybody laughs. There is a lot of risk involved, and risk makes everyone frightened. about not doing the first production of a new play because that can sometimes be fraught and highly Nick: What was the original inspiration for the play? charged. You don’t want to mess it up. Sam: Several things. I was in therapy myself and I wanted to investigate why I found it helpful Nick: After working on the original production with Marianne Elliott, were you happy to see through writing a play about it. One of the concepts at the heart of CBT (cognitive behavioural another director come in and reinvent it? therapy) is about tackling low esteem by inventing “rules for living” to help you cope with that. Sam: I profoundly believe that when you write a play and hand it over to the director, you give it Initially I thought it might be a serious play, but then I realised that by setting it in a family context away. If you don’t want to collaborate, go and write a novel. You have to be open to collaboration there were a lot of people with different rules and agendas, and that can produce a pressure and new choices if you’re writing drama. cooker situation in which the lid is likely to blow off. Rather unexpectedly I found I’d created the basis for a farce. 2 3 Nick: You studied to be a scientist. How come you finished up becoming a playwright? Sam: I’d always loved the theatre from an early age but I also loved working quietly in science labs so I opted to read biology at university. I was doing my dissertation at Western General Hospital in Edinburgh, spending my days in the lab pipetting cell cultures into dishes, and my evenings at the Bedlam student theatre, writing plays and painting sets. I took a year out from my studies to decide which road to take, and during that year I got my first commission from the Traverse and never looked back. Nick: Do you think drama and science have a lot in common? Sam: Science is every bit as creative as drama. You have to be very imaginative to be a good scientist. I like logic, I like structure, I like things to make sense. As a writer I feel increasingly like a clockmaker trying to get all the cogs turning in the right direction. Nick: Some of the reviews for Rules for Living compared you to Alan Ayckbourn. Did that please you? Sam: He is the master, so yes very much. I will never reach his level, but I can aspire to his mastery. Ayckbourn is a phenomenal craftsman, a great experimenter, and his plays are deeply moving, talk to you about the human condition at the same time as making you slap your thigh with laughter. That’s the holy grail – to write about things you feel are important, while at the same time entertaining your audience. Nick: What happens when you disagree? Who has the upper hand? Both: We haven’t disagreed so far. Simon: I’ve recently been working in America and American actors are much more likely to say, “I don’t agree with that,” than British actors. Initially I found it very stressful because it was totally alien to me. I’d spent years avoiding conflict. But eventually I found it to be liberating because it was a quick way to find a resolution. So if push comes to shove…. © John Good 4 Photo: Mark Douet 5 WHY WE ALL NEED RULES FOR LIVING …OR THINK WE DO by Nick Smurthwaite Rules for Living are the little subconscious props and strategies we all use to cope with everyday stuff, like how to deal with being stared at in public places, or how to manage an abusive family relationship or an awkward boss. For the most part, our rules for living are private and unspoken, thought patterns we’ve been incubating since childhood. Some are useful and necessary, others make you feel bad about yourself. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, or CBT, a talking therapy aimed at helping with a wide range of emotional, physical and psychological conditions, encourages you to face up to your personal rules for living in order to better understand how and why you react to particular situations in particular ways. You might focus on what’s going on in your life right now, or you might take a long, hard look at your childhood and adolescence and explore how it affected the way you see the world as an adult. A Negative Mind Set Negative thinking often starts in childhood. For example, if you didn’t receive a lot of praise or positive feedback at school, it is quite likely you have got into the habit of thinking you were not clever or good enough. Over time this negative frame of mind can become fixed in your adult thinking, affecting how you feel or behave at work and in the family environment, often a hothouse of pent-up resentments and frustrations. In addition to depression and anxiety disorders CBT is used to help people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), phobias, post-traumatic stress (PTSD), eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, chronic insomnia and alcoholism. It is based on the idea that your thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and actions are all inter-connected, and that negative thoughts and feelings can prevent us from moving forward with confidence and optimism.