Mothers & Daughters:
a Tamasha Scratch at Rich Mix
28 February 2014
Sixartists bring women centre stage, followed by an Open Space discussion with the women spearheading the movement for more female roles.
Guest Artist: Comedian Sindhu Vee talks about drawing inspiration from her mother.
FRAGMENTSby Chris Savage KingActors: Ann Firbank & Suzan Sylvester
Directed by Bethan Dear
I wrote this piece to tackle generally held taboos and pieties about the Caring industries, elderly care and disability. While these issues have appeared on the political map, the realities are far from benign and the solutions far from straightforward. What happens when a former child has to look after a former parent? On the axis of guilt, duty, obligation, and righteous resentment of fading powers and incapacity, who really holds the power?Is dementia an illness looking for a cure, or the mind’s way of dealing with unacceptable realities?
About Chris Savage King:Working in the field of creative arts for over 20 years, Chris Savage King's work includes her novel Do What You Want, nominated for the Orange Fiction prize, and What/So What? a winner in the ICA Writing for Performance competition in 1996, and included in Urban Romances (2011). She has worked as an arts critic, copywriter and editor, is a published poet, held 2 Writer in Residence posts in prisons, and taught for CityUniversity, Birbeck and GoldsmithsColleges. She currently performs widely as Diabola Balsa and is working on a one woman show Viva Diaspora!
UNBROKEN by Tuyen DoPerformed by:Tuyen Do
Directed by Bethan Dear
When I saw the theme Mothers and Daughters I knew I had to write something in response. The theme is so powerful and all encompassing that I was stuck as to how to fit what I wanted to say in such a short space of time. When I saw Kate Tempest perform I knew the only form my piece could take was a poem. I wanted to get across how love, and in this case, specifically the love between a mother and a daughter, can transcend time, distance, pain and suffering. That it is somehow constant and eternal, even after times of trouble.
About Tuyen Do: Tuyen is an actor/writer. She is a graduateof the Royal Court’s studio group and is currently doing a MA in Dramatic Writing at Drama Centre London with two plays in development (Summer Rolls with Tamasha and BOY). Her short filmHealthy screened internationally and has won honourable mention for Best Short, and Best Supporting Actor at the Asians on Film Festival 2014. Her directing debut, short film Above the Waist earned her a Best Director nomination. Acting stage credits include:Golden Child (New Diorama), The Grammar of Love (Oval House);film credits includeaward winning short films Healthy, Cross Your FingersandMy Dad the Communist.
LEVIATHAN MONOLOGUES by Shobu KapoorActors: Shaheen Khan & Nyla Levy
Directed by Pia Furtado
Leviathan Monologues explores a mother-daughter relationship in the context of single parenthood. Single parents, many of them women, are all too often entirely responsible for their children’s upbringing. I know lots of women in this situation (myself included) and I want to celebrate them and their daughters while pulling no punches on how challenging life can be for all concerned, with isolation, fear and joy all mixed up in a pretty flammable cocktail. A Leviathan is ‘a thing that is very large, or powerful’ (OED). I think you’ll agree that the mother-daughter relationship is a Leviathan indeed!
About Shobu Kapoor: Shobu has an MA in English Literature (Honours) from Bombay University. She completed her first playwriting commission for Tara Arts in 2013, a stage adaptation of Moni Mohsin’s novel, Tender Hooks. Shobu is also a poet and short story writer and has read her poems at iOpen and Chill Pill events. Her short story The Clever Old Woman was performed at Omnibus in December 2013. She is a director at Roman Candle Productions, a London based film and television company, where she is developing short and feature film scripts. She is also an actress and single parent.
DEAR MAMA by Elena ProcopiuPerformed by: Elena Procopiu
Directed by Bethan Dear
When the theme ofMothers and Daughters was proposed, I was compelled in a fit of motivated anxiety to write something. The relationship can be a strange and complex one and I felt I had some stories to tell.
About Elena Procopiu: Elena is an Anglo-Romanian actress and comedian. She has been on The Bill and Blue Peter and performed stand-up up and down the UK, across Europe, in New York, in London has supported Harry Hill, and performed at The Comedy Store, Piccadilly Comedy Club and Downstairs At The Kings Head. She has been voice-over artist in English, Romanian and French for Disney, a BAFTA award-winning animation company and a foreign version of a Wallace and Gromit production. She has most recently presented a piece on The One Show on BBC attempting to dispel myths about Romanians not all being awful.
TRUNK by Caroline Loncq Actors: Ann Firbank, Kiran Sonia SawarSusan Sylvester
Directed by Pia Furtado
What do you do with the snippets of stories that run through the core of a family? That's the question that started me thinking about Trunk, a play about memory, family and the folk history of war. The plot centres on three generations of women who find a trunk in the attic filled with memories of a dead man: father, grandfather and soldier, whose sap runs through all their veins. The situation that propels this extract, the opening of the play, is highly autobiographical in that I helped my own mothermove three years ago. We have both just about recovered.
About Caroline Loncq: An actress who's appeared in theatres from Stratford East to Stratford on Avon, Caroline has played Lysistrata, Margaret Hyman in Miller's Broken Glass and Nawal in Scorched at the Old Vic Tunnels. In addition to acting, Caroline authored and photographed two books about London, has written short films including Boom Boom Clap and London Feels (which she also directed) and made three successful educational films for schools. She has just written her first play Betty, Petty & Me. Trunk is her second play, a work very much in progress.
ABOUT THE DIRECTORS
BethanDear is Artistic director of theatre company Jackdaw. In 2013 she was invited to attend the NT Studio Directors course. Productions include; Tell Tales (VAULT Festival), Harlesden High Street (TaraTheatre), Senses (HighTide Festival), Sketchfest (Almeida Theatre), Hindle Wakes (Finborough Theatre), What Will Survive of Us (National Theatre Inside-Out), Pandora’s Box (Barbican Curious Festival) and The Goodnight Bird (Finborough Theatre). Assistant directing:The Masque of Anarchy for Sarah Frankcom (Manchester International Festival), Before the Party for Matthew Dunster (Almeida Theatre), Festival of the Dead for theatre company Tangled Feet and Resident Assistant Director at the Finborough Theatre (2010).
Pia Furtadodirects work from new writing to musicals and opera. She is artistic director of combined arts company The Theory of Everything. Opera Credits include: L’elisir d’amore (OperaHollandPark), Werther (Scottish Opera), Susanna (Iford Arts), Cautionary Tales (libretto and direction, Opera North), Werther, L’Histoire de Babar and Le Chouette Enhrumée (Les Azuriales), Coffee Cantata (Wellcome Trust/Early Opera).Theatre and Musical Credits include: Say it with Flowers (dramaturg/director, Sherman Cymru), DirtyGreat Love Story (59E59 New York/Soho Theatre/Bristol Old Vic/Theatre Royal Bury St Edmunds/Pleasance Edinburgh. Fringe First Award) andRomania 21 (dramaturg/director, Teatrul Tineretului, Romania).
Open Space discussions with Mandy Fenton and Lucy Kerbel
Last year, the Guardian, Sphinx and Equity published an alarming statistic stating that for every two stage roles written for men, only one is written for women. While the Western world purports to have achieved gender equality, such a statistic reflects a deeply rooted perpetuation of whose voices are being heard, particularly on such a powerful platform as the stage.
Mandy Fenton launched Equal Writes in response to current issues around gender parity existing on stage in the UK and as part of the nationwide campaign addressing this situation.She was awarded The Writers’ Guild Theatre Encouragement of New Writing Award 2013 for Equal Writes.Mandy trained and began working as an actor after a career in TV production for BBC, Ch.4 and LWT.She trained at Uta Hagen’s HB Studio New York and Royal Central School of Speech and Drama.Theatre includes: Shalom Baby (Theatre Royal Stratford East), Wife After Death (UK No1 Tour), Autour D’un Banc (La Cave), Parallel Lives (Soho Theatre), Shout (Tristan Bates Theatre). TV includes: Dream Team (Sky One), Goal (BBC Worldwide).
Lucy Kerbel is the Director of Tonic Theatre and an award-winning theatre director. Having begun her career as Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio and English Touring Theatre, Lucy went on to direct a range of classics, new writing and productions for younger audiences. It was while directing around the UK that Lucy became interested in the question of gender equality in theatre. She recognised that the industry would need better support if it were to achieve greater balance in its workforces and repertoires and so in 2011, with the support of the National Theatre and Royal Opera House's Step Change scheme, Lucy founded Tonic Theatre to go some way towards achieving this.
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