University News Last updated 19 January 2011
Birmingham School of Acting (BSA), part of Birmingham City University, kicks off 2011 with four shows at the Crescent Theatre – a last chance to see this year’s BA (Hons) Acting graduates. Running during the second and third weeks of February, each play in the Spring Season deals with families and the complications of their interdependencies.
Opening the season in the Crescent Theatre’s Main House is Ansky’s Jewish play A Dybbuk, directed by Max Webster. A ‘dybbuk’ is a Hebrew word for ‘ghost’ and the play is considered by many to be the greatest Yiddish drama of all times. It recounts the story of a wealthy man’s daughter who is possessed by the spirit of her dead beloved. Adapted by Tony Kushner, this classic tale is passionate and illuminating and serves to burnish the original’s mixture of spiritual exhalation and material poverty, brought funnily and furiously alive in this contemporary and provocative production.
Playing in the Crescent Studio concurrently with A Dybbuk is the unpredictable, funny and disturbing play Piano / Forte, directed by John Adams. Piano / Forte is a drama of madness, music and mayhem, that includes Spanish acrobats, a couple of bouncers and two feuding sisters - one placid and deeply troubled inside (Piano), the other demonstrative, neurotically brutal and emotionally florid (Forte).
Playing in the Crescent Main House and directed by the highly-acclaimed Joss Bennathan, Edward Thomas’ Gas Station Angel was written in 1998, and takes the viewer into a dizzying world of fairies, angels, a mysterious disappearance, a shrinking landscape, a house about to fall into the sea and a tinted-glass blue Marina 1800 C, ready to drive into the heart of Saturday night.
Assisting on Gas Station Angel is budding dramaturg Daniel Tyler, currently studying for an MPhil in Directing and Dramaturgy at the University of Birmingham. Daniel will be blogging about the experience of working with Joss Bennathan and BSA’s actors and facilitating online content to help audiences get to know the characters in advance of the performances.
Running alongside Gas Station Angel, in the Crescent Studio is DH Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law, directed by Hester Chillingworth, a new guest director for Birmingham School of Acting. This production deals with family ties: you can’t choose your family. You can choose your partner, but now you can’t choose your in-laws.
Like his three brothers, DH Lawrence’s first job was a coal-miner; he worked most his life in a number of jobs until the age of 66. He was very much at home in the small mining town, and widely regarded as an excellent workman and cheerful companion. His best seller The Daughter-in-Law, a play close to his heart, was first published in February 1913. Similar to DH Lawrence’s childhood, the play is set in a mining village not far from Nottingham at the time of the 1912 strike, around a family comprising Mrs Purdy, the mother; her two sons, Luther and Joe; and Luther's new wife Minnie, the daughter-in-law of the play title. This play sets up the timeless dynamic between son, wife and mother which is as ‘now’ as it was back then.
Bookings for all four plays can be made through the Crescent Theatre Box Office (T: 0121 643 5858 / www.crescent-theatre.co.uk). Tickets cost £7, with a concessionary rate of £5 available to over-60s, unemployed people and individuals booking in a group of five or more.