We now have our trailer up and running! Check it out:

Rehearsals

We're well underway with rehearsals now, here are some photos of the work we're doing.

Undercovered – The Show

We’re aware there isn't really anywhere that all the information on the show is all in one place, and with the rehearsal process on the verge of going all out, we thought this would be a good time to get this information out there.


Undercovered is the Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL) Drama Society's most recent physical theatre production, headed to the Edinburgh Fringe 2012.

So, the synopsis:

Based on the true story of Mark Kennedy, Undercovered uses physical theatre and media interaction to question identity misrepresentation. The main thread of the story follows Kennedy’s alias Mark Stone, an undercover cop assigned to a group of environmental activists. Working with the protestors for seven years Mark made close friendships and embarked on a serious relationship with one of the activists, simultaneously estranging his wife and kids. The proceeding events of Mark’s life affected him forever and are still being closely looked at by police and investigators to fully understand what happened. Overlaying this narrative are scenes that present other cases of alternate identities, these include con artist and imposter, Christophe Rocancourt; Dwayne Wilson, a convicted murderer diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and David Pollard and Linda Brinkley’s online marriage-divorce case. With the fluidity of movement being intrinsic to our desired effect we intend to use techniques of dance and ensemble to create an alternative piece of theatre that comments on the misrepresentation of identity whilst sharing a gripping story we were instantly intrigued by.

We are now very excited to present our performance dates! Not entirely finalised but almost there (links will be uploaded soon):

Previews:

30th May, 7pm, 8:30pm, Royal Holloway Campus
Jane Holloway Hall
Egham
TW20 0EX

25th July, 8pm, The Firestation, Windsor
The Old Court
St Leonards Road,
Windsor
SL4 3BL
http://www.firestationartscentre.com/calendar?entry=436&display=month

Performances:

3-11th August (ex. 5th), 16:40, The Spaces on North Bridge
North Bridge
Edinburgh
EH1 1SD

We've recently uploaded onto wefund.co.uk, please follow this link to help this project:
http://www.wefund.com/project/undercovered

And the team presenting this is:

Cast:

Alex Lawson

Charlotte Cattrall

Eva Dahlqvist

Zahara Andrews

Eve Atkinson

Nat Horne

Kai Green

Production Team:

Producer/Assistant Director - Oli Back

Director/Dramaturg - Rachel Hartzell

Stage Manager - Eleri Owen

Deputy Stage Manager - Jemima Standen-Jewell

Publicity - Emily Spedding

Projection - Hannah Coupes

Sound - Christina Friis

Lighting - Wendy Haines

Production Assistant - Alex Wiseman

Production Assistant - Anna Hamilton

Rehearsal Photographer - Millie Appleton

Email us on:
undercovered.edinburgh@gmail.com

Stay fully connected:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/RHUL-Drama-Society-presents-Undercovered/176094855833269

https://twitter.com/#!/UndercoveredEF

http://www.youtube.com/user/UndercoveredEdfringe?feature=mhee

DV8 – Can we Talk About This?

So a couple of weeks ago I went to see Can we Talk about This? at the National Theatre. Since DV8 are a big inspiration for our show Undercovered I thought I might write a review style blog about it. Like I say it was a few weeks ago so forgive me if it’s not a particularly well written review.

                                  

Can we Talk about This? is a show by DV8, one of the leading companies who perform physical theatre. It explores issues of multiculturalism and the connotations that go with it. More specifically it is addressing Islamist ideology and its impact on Western countries over the last few decades. It made a fairly bold, and some might say, controversial standpoint on the issue, asserting that we, as a country, shouldn’t let events slide just because of their connection with religious beliefs. Perhaps that’s not the best description of the show but hopefully it gives you a vague idea. There is no particular narrative as such, DV8 present a montage of scenes that follows some of the Islam-related controversies through recent history (Western European). The whole play was physicalised, if I remember right. As you might expect there were some fantastic moments of physicality, even the more detailed rhythm changes in movement were quite impressive. However, it did lack some ‘pop’. What I wanted was a little more variation; towards the end of the play the dance style got a little but ‘samey’. It was mostly on one level – and that applies dramatically as well. The atmosphere was introduced and maintained throughout without massive variation. The main moment that there was a break in this, was when an ‘audience member’ threw something on stage exclaiming ‘This is Islamophobic shit!’ I thought this was a terribly organised moment. Perhaps it’s because I study theatre but I saw straight through it, clearly it was a plant: would the stage manager really walk on stage to pick up whatever was thrown (I was too far back to make out what it was). I doubt it. And in modern theatre I’d be surprised if anyone was outraged enough by anything to actually stand up against it (unless they are encouraged to like in immersive theatre production Audience by Ontroerend Goed). It felt like a gimmick to try and make us think more personally about the issues on stage. I might have interpreted it all wrong but I didn’t particularly like it.

 So overall, I really enjoyed it! Sorry, I know if you read back it might not look like that, I’ve picked on some specific bits which I didn’t like. Maybe I’ve been a bit harsh. But really, the movement and physical aspects were great! They present some interesting ideas (not sure if I necessarily agree, similarly not sure if I disagree, so I’m on the fence but it does make you think, I now feel like I should research this area to make a proper opinion of it all) and it is a decent piece of theatre.

Not sure if the show is running, but here is the trailer if you're interested:

Oli Back

Auditions

After a not-so-difficult meeting to plan the structure of our auditions, both nerves and excitement were on a high. We knew what we were looking for, (characterisation, rhythm and, above all, physicality) but would those auditioning live up to our needs? The answer was yes. After the first round of auditions we were excited to see so many enthusiastic individuals, all up for trying anything even if it was their first time working in such a demanding style as physical theatre. Although we had a weaker turn out on the second day, it was one that proved tough competition and we all knew we were in for a tough task of choosing that night. However, after some deliberation between cast and crew, the recall list was sent out, and we were looking forward to hosting these final auditions the following day. Having concentrated a lot on physicality and rhythm in the first auditions, we thought it was time to give our potential cast members some naturalistic dialogue to work with. Once again, we were very impressed with the high standards of acting from everyone, but we knew we couldn’t choose them all, so we decided to get the crew together and make this difficult decision over a drink at the bar. After some deliberation, and some food, we got it down to the seven people we wanted to cast. We called them each up individually to let them know and we were very pleased to hear their excitement over the phone. Let the devising begin!

Rachel Hartzell

The Beginning

So it’s the beginning of the road to Edinburgh! We spent ages on preparing the bid-pack for the RHUL Drama Society’s Edfringe slot 2012 and it seems to have paid off. The presentation went well and we got the slot! Now we have the much harder job of booking venues, fundraising, casting, finding accommodation and all that jazz. It may sound like it but I am in no way complaining – we’re looking forward to it! Everyone in the Undercovered production team is very excited; watch this space and we’ll keep posting the progress on here.

Oli Back

The Bid

With the initial idea in place we proceeded to work on everything that was required for ‘The Bid’. Taking a show to Edinburgh is a pretty big task: being enthusiastic and hard working is not enough. You need more than two people. You also need financial backing. There are a lot of things you need. So the way we were heading was to bid our piece to RHUL (Royal Holloway University of London) Drama Society’s Edinburgh show. Every year they receive bids from students to put a play on in Edinburgh. At the bids meeting each group presents their idea along with a document that outlines all of their plans. The committee then decide which group is the most viable for the slot. That show then gets help from the Society to launch the project and go on to perform at Edinburgh! So this is the stage we were at. We had to outline a detailed budget, plans for the devising process and provisional schedules. In the proceeding days we spent hours on end without seeing the light of day, eventually coming up with an initial story board for what looked like an exciting new piece.

Oli Back

Thank You Carey

January 1^st 2012, I was in Oxford at Rachel’s house, having just celebrated New Years we started work on a project aimed for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. We began to think about what we wanted to do; we had nothing. We both knew roughly what style of theatre we wanted to create but were a bit lost on how to begin. Taking a bit of inspiration from Kneehigh’s portrayal of Don Juan as Don John in 2008, we looked for legends, myths and stories that could be retold. We spent some time looking at Casanova but he didn’t quite grab us enough. We weren’t really getting anywhere. The next day we spoke to Rachel’s mum (Carey) about how we were getting on and she suggested the story of Mark Kennedy. Great! We both knew and liked the story and thought it would work really well. We did hesitate slightly as we didn’t want to steal Carey’s idea (something she was using herself for a writing course) but she encouraged us to do it and so we did...

Oli Back