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When It Was May

Photo of Joshua Roche

Joshua Roche

When It Was May is a new piece of writing on its fourth draft and looking to be finished through work in rehearsal. The play imagines six friends reuniting ten years after university – the sixth friend, an unnamed woman, is beautiful, surreal and absurd. She has succeeded where the lives of the other six have become average, expected. Through seven days in a house in May, the six friends attempt to live alongside each other, and alongside the un-named woman. Through this situation, the action of the play hopes to analyse why beauty makes us uncomfortable, how the ‘real’ world of news information works in relation to our own ‘irreal’ or sheltered lives, and what happens when these two worlds meet, turn sour, or become interminable.

Playwrights that have informed the script, and to which the play is tied academically include Vaclav Havel, Samuel Beckett, Ionesco and Patrick Marber - the process of living with a person so beautiful and so unapproachable that she is nearly an emblem drew me towards the absurd, and stylistically I am very interested in Marber’s rhythms and realism. As regards the division between the ‘real’ world and the ‘irreal’ western one Slavoj Zizek and George Trow have been guiding writers.

What we hope to understand a little better by producing this play is how far the modern day world of fame and information has become completely absurd in the same way as the Communist Bureaucracy was for Vaclav Havel and the human routine of existence was for Beckett.

FatGit Company Theatre

When It Was May also acts as the first production of FatGit Theatre, a new company formed of students that has been given the chance to perform through the sponsorship of IATL. The rehearsal process is therefore also a chance for us to discover how producing drama in a fixed company changes the method of practice and invention. The advice (through their texts on the subject) of Peter Hall, Charles Marowitz and Peter Brook have has given guidance to the process and the IATL spaces have allowed us to test the theories of these prolific company theatre directors in a real rehearsal space.

Performances

Were held in the Studio, Millburn House, on:

  • Wed 16 March 2011
  • Thu 17 March 2011
  • Fri 18 March 2011