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LONDON ASSURANCE Education Pack (The Watermill Theatre 2008) 2 BOUCICAULT - the ‘VICTORIAN ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’

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LONDON ASSURANCE Education Pack (The Watermill Theatre 2008) 2 BOUCICAULT - the ‘VICTORIAN ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’ Education Pack to accompany The Watermill Theatre’s 2008 touring production of LONDON ASSURANCE by Dion Boucicault CONTENTS Resources 2 Introduction 3 Dion Boucicault (Writer) 6 Interview – Clare Corbett (Actor) Activities 7 What’s in a name? 9 Costume Design 10 Everyone’s a critic! 11 The Director’s Approach 12 The ‘Aside’ – theatrical convention INTRODUCTION This education pack is designed to complement your trip to see our 2008 production of LONDON ASSURANCE , either at The Watermill or on tour. The text is designed to be easily photocopied. You will find information and exercises for use in the classroom, feel free to use them as written or adapt them to suit your class and situation. If you have any comments on either the show or the education pack please email them to me at [email protected] Robin Belfield Deputy Outreach Director The Watermill Theatre Bagnor Newbury Berkshire RG20 8AE LONDON ASSURANCE Education Pack (The Watermill Theatre 2008) 2 BOUCICAULT - THE ‘VICTORIAN ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER’ HIS LIFE… 1820 Dionysius Lardner Boucicault (pronounced BOO-see-coe) is born in Dublin on 26 th December. 1837/8 Boucicault runs away from his apprenticeship as a civil engineer to become an actor. It was not long before he began to write plays, and his first, A Legend of the Devil’s Dyke, opens in Brighton. 1841 London Assurance , originally titled “Out of Town”, opens at Covent Garden on 4 th March. Despite having written it in a hurry and apologising for it’s “out of breath style”, Boucicault’s play was a hit. 1842-3 Boucicault followed this with a quick succession of new work including An Irish Heiress , A Lover by Proxy , The Bastile [sic], Alma Mater; or, A Cure for Coquettes and The Old Guard , all of which are produced in London 1844 His next big hit is Old Heads and Young Hearts , which opened at The Haymarket Theatre on 18 th November. 1845 Boucicault visits Paris with the intention of searching for a French play to adapt into English. 1850 Becomes house dramatist for Princess’s Theatre in London which was managed by Charles Kean, son of the great actor Edmund Kean. 1852 One of the most successful of his French finds was The Corsican Brothers , which was based on Alexander Dumas’ Les Frères Corses . Boucicault proved himself to be not only a successful playwright, but actor too when he took the title role of his play The Vampire . 1853 Elopes to the United States of America with a young actress, Agnes Robertson, who was in Charles Kean’s care. Unsurprisingly this brought Kean and Boucicault’s professional relationship to an end. 1853-1860 This husband and wife team took America by storm managing theatres across the country including New Orleans, Washington and New York. LONDON ASSURANCE Education Pack (The Watermill Theatre 2008) 3 Boucicault had by now perfected his craft. But now with plays like The Poor of New York (1857) and The Octoroon (1859), he had developed his trademark popular melodrama to tackle the present day issues of urban poverty and slavery. 1860 Boucicault becomes the first Irish playwright to write about Ireland with one of his most successful plays The Colleen Bawn . Despite it earning the Boucicault’s a fortune, the money was soon lost and they were declared bankrupt. 1863 Proving his commercial prowess, on his return to England, Boucicault re- staged his American hit, turning The Poor of New York into The Poor of Liverpool and then of Leeds, Manchester, London (Islington) and Dublin! 1864 His next Irish success came in the form of Arrah-na-Pogue which was produced in November at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. 1865-1885 Over these twenty years Boucicault continued to write, including the notable successes of Rip Van Winkle (1865) and a third Irish drama The Shaughraun (1875) which is arguably one of the greatest plays of its genre. Despite continuing to churn out new work and enjoying these occasional successes, Boucicault earnt his living through revivals of his earlier plays. 1885 Now aged 64, Boucicault enters a bigamous marriage with Louise Thorndyke, claiming that his common-law wedding to Anges was never legal. Louise Thorndyke, like Agnes was a young actress in Boucicault’s company and was only 21 years old. The new Mr and Mrs Boucicault moved back to the United States. Although still writing, Boucicault’s main source of income was gained through teaching at an acting school in New York where he lived. 1890 Dionysius Boucicault dies, penniless. LONDON ASSURANCE Education Pack (The Watermill Theatre 2008) 4 HIS WORK… “Like a Victorian Andrew Lloyd Webber, he devoted his life to creating spectacular long runners aimed at playing across the world, so their basis in day-to-day reality was necessarily thin.” 1 In their book Changing Stages , Richard Eyre and Nicholas Wright identify Boucicault’s gift – he was a crowd pleaser. His plays were bold and popular, many of them playing across the world enjoying many revivals. Boucicault knew he wasn’t writing for critical or literary renown and was self- deprecating about his own work. He once said “I can spin out these rough- and-tumble dramas as a hen lays eggs. It’s a degrading occupation, but more money has been made out of guano than out of poetry.” He was undoubtedly a business man knowing full well that he would earn more from popular rubbish (or ‘guano’ meaning manure) than trying to create fine art. London Assurance was no exception; in his preface to the play Boucicault apologises saying: “London Assurance was made to order, on the shortest possible notice. I could have wished that my first appearance before the public had not been in the out-of- breath style; but I saw my opportunity at hand: I knew how important it was not to neglect the chance of production; the door was open – I had a run for it, and here I am.” Had he not taken the chance and hurried out this debut, the world may have never seen the sheer volume of work that Boucicault produced. Although often criticised for plagiarism, he is credited to have written or ‘adapted’ nearly 200 plays, many of which were based on French originals. Boucicault was more than a playwright; he was also a popular actor at the time, known for his own flamboyant style of performing, but he didn’t only work on the artistic side of the theatre. Boucicault was also a very successful theatre manager, running several theatres throughout the USA and made significant contributions to the industry as a whole; he contributed to the establishing of copyright laws in the US and the introduction of a profit-share system for writers which led to them receiving royalties. Boucicault also helped establish training for actors in America and was significant in the development of fire-proofed scenery, a crucial stepping-stone in theatre history made at a time when fires in theatres were common. He was, in both his professional and private life, a melodramatic pioneer dancing between scandal and delight, riches and ruin. His contribution to British, American and most importantly Irish theatre was great, paving the way for the likes of Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats. 1 Richard Eyre & Nicholas Wright; Changing Stages , Bloomsbury (2000) LONDON ASSURANCE Education Pack (The Watermill Theatre 2008) 5 INTERVIEW – CLARE CORBETT (Actor) What part do you play? Grace Harkaway. Tell us a bit about her? Grace is a complicated character. She is carefree yet complicated. She is feisty and intuitive, cheeky and amusing, serious but fun. The play was written over 160 years ago, what relevance does it have to an audience today? It has great relevance – it talks of love and honour and mistaken identity and the country versus the city – all themes that ring true today. Sir Harcourt Courtly talks about being a fool and dupe to his own vanity – we all know someone who concentrates on the material side of life. What research did you have to do to help you in rehearsals? Research about the year - 1841. We researched the clothes, behaviour, attitudes of the age and language of the time. Throughout the play characters often speak directly to the audience. What are the advantages and challenges with such a convention? The advantages are that you can make a connection with the audience directly and they get to feel part of the play. Do you find it interrupts the play? Well the challenge for us actors is to keep the action on stage flowing smoothly. The relationship between Grace Harkaway and Charles Courtly is, for want of a better word, complicated. What challenges do you face when rehearsing & performing these scenes and how have you overcome them? We had to make sure that the progression of the relationship was clear and that we know how exactly we reach the right pitch for the love scenes at the end. In rehearsals we worked slowly through the language in each scene, with the director and looked at the characters objectives [what they want] and actions [what they do] , which allowed us to connect strongly with the characters and each other. What have you enjoyed most about working on LONDON ASSURANCE? The cast are superb and are a delight to work with. The director Nikolai Foster is inspiring and really supports each actor through their process. And finally, what has been most challenging? Most challenging has been working on such a complicated character and also very complicated language. Some of the words used are not used today and a lot of time had to be spent finding the true meanings.
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