#workshop: onstage

[derekklenadaily]

onstagecollectiveofficial: 🤯 What a lineup! Do you have your application in yet??😍 You do NOT want to miss working with these Broadway guest artists in June!#broadway #chrismccarrell #lightningthief #lightningthiefmusical #aladdin #drewgasparini #derekklena #moulinrougemusical #moulinrouge #comewhatmay #moulinrougemusical #moulinrougechristian #anastasiamusical #sunsetboulevard #newyorknewyork #onstagecollective #auditions #singersofinstagram #actorsofinstagram #dogfightmusical #wickedmusical

[aropride]

i cannot even describe how sure i am that there will be another mcr concert someday . Like ive been known to falter in my mcr5truthing (in the same way as peter when he tried walking on water & jesus reached out a hand to save him) but truly genuinely from the bottom of my heart those bitches will be back i know they will be

[actingmasterclassseries]

Summer Stand-Up Comedy Workshop

Let's talk about stand-up! Lately, this has been our most requested class. If you have questions about building your set, touring, comedy etiquette, or connecting and working with bookers, you may find this workshop informative and worthwhile.

[bookwyrmbutch]

First Time on The Land

It is an eight hour drive to the Land, and I’m anxious the entire way. I’ve never liked meeting new people, and I’m terrified that my wife and I had wasted a ton of money on what would inevitably be a miserable experience.

But when we arrive at the gate, my anxiety is thwarted by a parade of helpful womyn who guide us through the check-in process. I drive through the Land at 5 miles per hour, and wherever we look, there are womyn. They're busy unpacking or talking to one another, but when a car comes by they all wave and smile, shouting "welcome home!" The Land itself is beautiful, a pristine forest with a blanket of ferns covering the ground. Everything is green except the asphalt walking path that shimmers with leftover rain. As we get further in, tents pop up everywhere, nestled side by side. Plastic flowers are staked into the ground, and clotheslines strung between the trees bear Pride flags and handmade tapestries that flutter in the breeze. All of this is woven so seamlessly into the natural forest that I can’t quite believe it’s temporary.

There is an opening ceremony before the first concert. A womyn stands onstage and sings, and hundreds of womyn join her. “I am open, and I am willing, for to be hopeless would seem so strange. It dishonors those who go before us, so lift me up to the winds of change.” I am already crying and I know if I lift my voice with them that I will sob, so I keep my head down.. I’m not ready to be open.

The next day we wake up to a choir of women singing in the morning chant circle, and BMG starts in earnest. Womyn of all backgrounds volunteer to share their knowledge in participant-led workshops on writing, poetry, drumming, quilting, whaling, massage, salsa dancing, indigo dyeing, lesbian history, Nordic runes, plant identification, body painting, detransition, butch identity, and more. There is an archery range, a movie tent, and a large vendor space where womyn sell their wares. Shuttles driven by volunteers trundle up and down the dirt path, ferrying womyn across the land. The days pass in a flurry of activity, both of us exhausted but unwilling to rest. We try to do everything, much to the amusement of the older lesbians watching. They know what we don’t, which is that being here is enough of an event by itself, and the conversations we’ll have before and after these workshops are as valuable as the workshops themselves.

I’m continuously stunned by the generosity on display. One womyn cooks breakfast for two hundred, and another makes lunch the next day. We overhear a womyn give a stranger her spare air mattress. My wife tells me she has a headache and a passerby gives her an electrolyte packet and an apple. A woman offers me a comically huge blunt during a night concert, and another shows me where she stores her food when I compliment her ciabatta.  Everywhere we go, womyn stop to talk. In workshops, I stand up (tits out!) and speak my mind, and womyn listen. I smile at everyone and say “good morning” to whoever I pass. And at some point I notice... I’m not anxious. I’m talking to strangers all day and it feels wonderful.

At the closing ceremony a womyn sings to us again, and everyone joins her. “I am open, and I am willing…” This time, I’m able to join in on the second chorus.

Sunday is bittersweet. My wife and I wake up early and cry into our oatmeal. We decide to take a walk before going back to our tent, unable to face packing up. I could sense the fear - absent for five glorious days - waiting for me outside the gates. Once we’re all cried out, practicality takes over and we pack our things, load the car, and head out. 

Two womyn stop us at the gate. 

“Are y’all coming back next year?” one asks. We say yes.

“Good, because I know your faces now!"

The other pipes up, “Faces? I’m going by breasts!”

The knot in my chest loosens as I laugh, and we drive home.

We have our wristbands, our sunburns, and a new labrys necklace. We carry a warmth, a brightness, in our chests. But a few days in, the feeling disappears and I can feel my walls going up again. That unconscious tension in my gut. A week after re-entry, my bruise from archery fades, and with it the feeling of being on the Land that I could once call up so easily just by taking an extra-hot shower, or a long walk outside. Now as I write this, I can hardly remember the person I was this summer. She’s waiting inside me to make her appearance again. 

There are times I feel her stirring: when I connect with other womyn like me. When I feel grounded and at peace with myself. And sometimes I can feel her revolting when I try to duck back under the yoke of other people’s expectations. I’ve seen what life can be like without that now, and I can never really go back. It feels like there will always be a part of me waiting under the trees.

Thank you @nansheonearth for challenging me to write about my experience on the Land, and for helping me find it in the first place.

[drdemonprince]

Hi not sure if you're still accepting kinks but I have a fantasy to share and something you responded to a while back unlocked it for me I think? I don't remember the conversation you had with an anon but it was around the lines of needing to pee and that becoming part of the enjoyment and denial etc. Anyway that's now living rent free in my brain because it was always something that stressed me out during sex and now it's something that gives me a lot of pleasure to think about. Anywho getting to the point, the fantasy is that I'm on stage at some sort of workshop sitting in a chair guided by the person leading the workshop. He invites someone from the crowd to come onstage and go down on me for hours as sort of an experiment to see how the overstimulation affects me. So this person is going down on me, the guy running the workshop is making me close my eyes and try to visualise exactly what the guy is doing and to replicate it as I kiss him. And as hours pass I get the overwhelming urge to pee and it's really embarrassing and I keep asking him if I can get up and go pee and he tells me that I'm not allowed and I have to hold it in because it would be really rude otherwise. And then I get more and more desperate and I can't take it anymore and I end up peeing while the guy is going down on me but he doesn't stop or get phased at all, he just keeps going and the sensation of relief plus the overstimulation plus the embarrassment makes me cum.

hot!

[dec4podcast]

This episode, we present part II of our conversation with leading UK author, publisher, podcaster and television historian, Oliver Crocker‬. In part one, we discussed his acclaimed book on the iconic BBC television series, All Creatures Great and Small. This time, we focus on his ongoing success, The Bill Podcast, according to Listen Notes in the top 1.5 % worldwide, and Oh, What a Lovely Memoir, the autobiography of actor Larry Dann, edited by Oliver and published by Devonfire Books.

Born in 1941, Larry Dann worked as a child actor in movies, which included a brush with Spencer Tracy, Deborah Kerr and George Cukor, was part of Joan Littlewood’s theatre workshop, worked with David Niven, and appeared in several Carry On movies, but became a household name on television as Sgt Alec Peters in one of the most popular and influential police shows of all, The Bill.

One of many highlights in Larry Dann’s memoir is the fascinating window he affords us into the groundbreaking Theatre Workshop, run by Joan Littlewood, and the production of their huge international hit, Oh What a Lovely War which, according to Michael Billington in The Guardian, not only changed attitudes toward the Great War, it also ‘remade British theatre’.

Top Image: Onstage in Oh What a Lovely War. Bottom Image: Larry Dann in Carry on Behind (1975) - with Carol Hawkins, Sherrie Hewson and Brian Osborne.

We talk a little more about the Carry Ons, and a fascinating series currently running for Oliver’s podcast subscribers, The Evidence Room, where Oliver takes us deep behind the scenes of of The Bill, thanks to an extensive archive of never before seen production documents and correspondence, provided exclusively by The Bill’s long serving production scheduler, Nigel Wilson.

The Bill ran for nearly 2500 episodes, from the pilot, Woodentop, in 1983, to its final episode in 2010.

Some more background, images, links and suggested further reference at our website;

Brian Murphy, a member of the Theatre Workshop with Larry Dann and who wrote the foreword to Oh, What a Lovely Memoir, sadly passed away since we recorded.

Special thanks to Oliver Crocker and to all our readers and listeners.

[bellesdomain]

Updating Starlight in Bochum

So... the German production has had a lot of rewrites over the years. Understatement, but bear with me here... first MAJOR overhaul was in 2002, when the show imported a lot of material from the just-closed original London production.

Next in 2007/2008, the show got tweaked, cut back somewhat, and material from the US/UK Tours was imported. The show was smaller and cheaper to run.

In 2013, the material received another major overhaul and became more cohesive than before - rather than a threadbare attempt to put on a big-scale production, things like the orchestrations were modernised to actually suit a smaller digital band. "I Do" got imported from the UK tour at the same time.

Then, 2018, obviously MASSIVE changes to the show after the 2017 workshops. All that work was done to "fix" the problems with the show as seen in the 2017 "One Night Only" English-language gala.

Since then? Well, the Creative Team have been very busy in 2023/2024 mounting the Wembley revival show, with a lot of new material, new designs, new characters... pretty controversial changes but well received by the public.

2002... 2007-08... 2013.... 2017-18.... see a pattern there? Pretty much every 5 years there's been a major update to the German show. COVID has thrown a spanner in the works, I think they wanted to mount the UK Revival more like 2020, 2021, so there's a delay in the schedule. But I think that 2025 is going to bring major updates to the Bochum show.

But what updates? The Wembley show is "Non-Replica", which means the Direction is by Luke Sheppard not Trevor Nunn (or Arlene Phillips recreating his work). Choreography belongs to Ashley Nottingham not Arlene Phillips. Costume Design is Gabriella Slade's work not John Napier. Arlene Phillips was given the vague title of "Artistic Dramaturg" for the Wembley production, but none of her input under that role is going to specifically BELONG to her, in a legal sense. I assume. Unless there's been some very interesting wording in contracts...

So, how are they going to update the Bochum show? The credit for a Female Greaseball, for example, presumably goes to Director Luke Sheppard. If they change Greaseball's gender in Bochum, they have to credit (and pay!) him for using his work. Gabriella Slade's costume designs being used means Gabriella Slade gets paid for their use - but what is John Napier's contract with the German production? Can they just - STOP using his work and stop paying him for the costumes, while still using his set design? (and obviously, they're not about to stop using that!) Seems likely that he would have a clause in his contract to say that they can't just cut him off - which would explain why he returned in 2018 to design the new characters when he had already decisively retired. But if they do add the new characters, would they get John Napier back to design more? Would a new "Associate Designer" work with him for the show?

Musically the question is simple - Andrew Lloyd Webber has the melodies, Richard Stilgoe has the words. They can add in "Hydrogen" with no difficulty, but the problem lies in who is singing it and why!

But contrary to popular opinion Andrew Lloyd Webber is not the story writer nor the absolute authority on decisions. I believe he has the power to veto decisions, but he doesn't have the power to push things through without the full agreement of the rest of the Creative Team.

So... I have no idea what will ACTUALLY get put onstage in Bochum next year. I expect the Really Useful Group Contract Lawyers are working hard to iron this all out, because it does all boil down to money - who is gonna get paid for their work! Pay Artists fairly! But also boils down to producers wanting to run the show as cheaply as possible to maximise profits, because capitalism.

One thing I am sure of is that we're overdue some significant rewrites to the German show. Keep an eye on casting and the New Kids joining the show in the new year...

[datshitrandom]

Darren Criss | Performs onstage at the New York Theatre Workshop's Gala | February 10, 2025 | 🎥 via Broadwaycom

[jgroffdaily]

A few quotes from Gracie Lawrence talking about Jonathan in different interviews.

WWD (available in the link above):

She first met her would-be costar Groff fresh off a flight from Europe after being on tour with Lawrence.

“I got in at 1 in the morning, and then the next morning I went to rehearsal and sang with Jonathan. And I was just immediately like, ‘oh, I think this person’s about to become one of the most significant and closest people in my life,’” she says.

Broadway.com

And then there’s the Groff factor. “There is not a better person,” Lawrence says of her leading man and onstage love interest. “I could just gush about him forever.”

Hollywood Reporter

“I met him on the first day of the workshop and we fell in love.”

[mori-is-missing]

just realized i’m way overworking myself and i don’t think my body appreciates it.

i had drum lessons and a taiko drumming workshop this morning. i’m currently doing a show, and i have another one tonight. i also have a party today from 9-11

all my symptoms are flaring up but i need to push through it because i really need to do these shows. and this is just gonna make it worse. ugh :)

i started crying onstage because i’m in so much pain. it was a sad scene though dw

[benzgarfield]

Benz, Nut, and Pon at Grand Open House of IDEA LIVE

ETA: ENG Sub here

They talk about Benz receiving his Master's degree ("Doctor Benz next")

They give a shout out to Nut's heels

Pon gives a spoiler for Pit Babe 1st Anniversary and says that there will be a new song

The interviewer asks if there will be new artists and they're quick to insist that the artists are the same

They're asked if Tony will be joining and said to tweet if you want to see him onstage

Benz says production has leveled up, skills have leveled up, the new song is "not inferior to Speed of Love," and also that Nut's height has leveled up

They talk about a fitting and workshop (but it's a little unclear what was said - 5:38 if someone with better hearing wants to take a look)

In regards to one-upping Pavel's motorcycle at the PavelPooh fanmeet, Benz jokes that this one will have a car and maybe a boat, and Nut says he wants to rappel down from a helicopter

[fallinginaforrest]

SPOILER WARNING FOR WORKIN BOYS, I BREAK DOWN MY FAVOURITE SHOTS. SPOILERS WILL BE HERE. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Okay here's my opinion:

Curt being the DP for Workin' boys is the best thing that coulda happened to it. There are so many choices that were made during filming that just absolutely heighten the level of comedy. It's shot like a Mockumentary almost? The shakycam and the randomized movement? As someone who wrote a Mockumentary last year, I can only dream of pulling off a film like this.

A couple things I wanna point out:

-the minuscule push in on Hidgens when he realises he won the workshop competition feels very office-ey.

-the cut back to MK's amused face had me WHEEZING

-the pan over to Paul as be reminds Hidgens to remember the changes

-"apparently a musical about six men bonding on a football field isnt 'of the times..."'etc, this line right here felt like a talking head, I appreciated it.

-those time cards eg: "Rehearsal #2, 28 days until opening" lent itself so much to the documentarian feel of it.

-"wow, what an auteur", not a camerawork comment but I appreciate the joke for all of the film and theater theory studiers

-the "rehearsal montage" I love a good meta joke.

-even in this montage, the camera is never really onstage. At all. Like, it's always situated off to the side or in the audience, and then zoomed in, the documentarian is trying to capture all of the action on stage instead of trying to make us feel immersed in the rehearsal process. We're not really aligned with any of the characters, we're an audience, and we better stay that way. For our own sake.

-and then this dynamic totally changes, and shifts away from the mockumentary feel

-but I'll get to that in a second

-henry is almost always by himself in the shot. I think the one of the only other times that the entirety of another character's face is seen alongside Henry's (I mean, both faces are CLEAR and uncovered in the shot) is in the two shot of him and Paul's stage manager in the rehearsal montage. He is totally singular in his experiences with this show! He is not one of these girls, if anything he is opposed to them. And this becomes clearer later, but it's a nice seed to sow, establishing that he is not in a collaborative mindset at all. The only other time I can think of is him and Zoey behind the curtain, even then, the only time both of their faces are actually IN the shot is when they're behind all the workin' girls. There's probably more but ykwim.

-also the sheer number of times that Henry is off centre in the shot with just a bunch of space surrounding him.

-okay after "two week notice" or whatever tf that song is called (Kim sounds amazing as always) is when the style shifts. It feels less like a mockumentary and more like this sort of voyeuristic peek into Henry's psyche. I LOVE IT.

-the fact that he is never shown in the shot with the workin' boys! It makes you absolutely feel like he is just talking to the air around him (this is hatchetfield so who knows, either way its unsettling)

-we get aligned with ruth, for the first time, we see the audience from the perspective of a character, not just from a stage POV

-the camera roll!! We don't get a full rotation but we feel dizzy and unsettled when we look at ruth, which is exactly how she feels!

-camera roll close up on Zoey. Uncomfortable, unsettling! Rests in a canted angle before continuing to roll on Hidgens! Who is centered in a low angle shot! We don't see the axe until he brings it up to his face! He is not only in a position of power here, but revealing the axe only when Henry makes it clear he is gonna kill them makes it clear that he calls the shots! We've departed from the Mockumentary style completely, as if this was never a documentary to begin with, more like we're flies on the wall or spirits in the theater or omniscient eldritch beings... anyway-

-long shot of Henry dragging zoey's body, no footage of them being killed, aligns us with the audience

-our friend the camera is getting shakey again, the chaos is in the process of ensueing

-THE PULL OUT SHOT OF GRACE WITH THE GUN. I GASPED. I KNEW IT WAS GONNA HAPPEN AND I GASPED. Fun fact on my first watch I thought this was a dolly shot but I dont think y'all are fitting a dolly on the Hudson theater main stage steps, and also the distance is too short so it must have been a pull out. It was REALLY SMOOTH.

-notice, when grace quotes the bible, we are EVER SO SLIGHTLY looking up at her. It gets progressively more obvious the further she gets into the line, but she has the power now. Somehow she always ends up with the fuckin' power, maybe I should convert to christianity smh.

-shakeycam is back again baby!

The creative minds put so much love and care into Hatchetfield, and you can tell that every project is a passion project. People know starkid primarily as a theater company, and that's great and all, but in reality it's an Avenue for all kind of creatives to not only have the opportunity to create all kinds of amazing things, let alone theater, but also have a way to show people. It's moved past being a theater company, with things like Starkid returns and Workin' boys, it's more like a production collective, and it feels like the beginning of a new era. Not only in terms of broadening the way that they Express themselves and be creative, but also in terms of finding a new niche in the industry. Finding a new, wider audience. Because yeah, you're always gonna have people that dislike the new media you produce, for nostalgia's sake or whatever, but beyond that, there are going to be be people that absolutely love what you have to offer. There's no point in trying to revert back to the way it was before, or trying to cater specifically to an audience from an era gone by. How do you grow as an artist if you're always thinking in the past? Starkid is moving in a new direction. The next musical is likely not going to be hatchetfield, but I dont even mind because it's going to be new. New is always good, and Starkid has a bright future.

TL;DR @curtmega you're a literal genius, and starkid is TOTALLY AWESOME

[adarkrainbow]

I will complete my trilogy of Hansel and Gretel stage adaptations of fascinating visuals with this piece. I made several posts about the Royal New Zealand Ballet's adaptation and its homages to Germanic cinema (and obscure carnival traditions). I reblogged something about the Hänsel and Gretel concert of Lindemann-Tägtren and its disturbing, horrifying but also darkly clownesque visuals... And now I bring you the San Diego Opera adaptation of the famed Hansel and Gretel opera, with quite impressive puppetry!

I will copy-paste here the content of an article by Beth Accomando, which can be read in its original form here.

It’s not every day that an opera singer gets to bring a cannibalistic witch to life.

"I lure children into the forest and I cook them into gingerbread cakes and then I eat them. It's delightful," said tenor Joel Sorensen.

But what’s not so delightful is having to wear a big puppetry rig to create a larger-than-life witch onstage.

"I am a puppet," Sorensen explained. "The witch is a puppet, a very large puppet. And I have a colleague, Iain [Gunn], behind me. He bears the bulk of the weight on his back. So I'm basically working with a puppet while trying to sing and convey a character. It's a real challenge."

The challenge for director Brenna Corner in bringing Engelbert Humperdinck's "Hansel and Gretel" to the San Diego Opera stage was how do you bring a fairy tale to life?

"One of the things that I think is really tricky about 'Hansel and Gretel' is size. How do you make two grown-ups look like they're kids and two other grown-ups look like they're adults? And then someone else looks sort of even bigger and more powerful. And quite frankly, the best way I could figure out how to do that was puppets," Corner said.

So anything that was not human became a puppet. Like the witch.

"It's different in that it's not my physicality. So, because I'm manipulating her hands, her arms, and I'm working in tandem with [Gunn] so I can't move as quickly as I might normally or as sharply but facially and vocally, I'm trying to do the same things that I would do if I were performing it without a puppet," Sorensen said.

Now if you are thinking of puppets as something you put on your hand, think again. Imagine actors completely enveloped in layers of fabric with a large sculpted head or face high above their shoulders and an arm span that exceeds 10 feet.

"We had to really kind of blow up the notion of what a puppet is in order to successfully encompass the fusion of opera and puppetry," said Judd Palmer of Old Trout Puppet Workshop in Calgary. "Our inspiration was classic 19th century children's book illustrators like Arthur Rackham or N.C. Wyeth. We wanted the whole thing to feel like it comes out of a book and it becomes the illustrations coming to life like a pop up book."

Palmer designed the puppets for a production in Canada and Iain Gunn of Animal Cracker Conspiracy here in San Diego is now the puppeteer working with Sorensen to play the Witch onstage.

"I get to live inside this character that I'm helping to bring alive," Gunn said. "But she has her own voice standing right in front of me. I don't know how to describe it, but I feel like I am transported inside this imagination. It's like I'm in the 'Time Bandits' or something like that where … we're doing something magical and it's a magical character and the only reason it's alive is because we're in there giving it our all. So it's pretty cool."

The puppets engage the audience in a unique way.

"It's this agreement that the audience makes with the performers," Corner explains. "That we agree not to see the person who's obviously a person and instead we agree to look at what is fabric and some PVC pipe and a plaster-like face, right? But we agree to do that. So what's extraordinary to me about puppetry is that as an audience, we're continually investing our imagination in seeing the thing that the performers want us to see and then as the performers keep investing in that then all of a sudden they go away. They don't exist there anymore and it becomes something else kind of magical."

By not trying to fool the audience and instead asking them to play along in this game of make-believe, the audience becomes a co-conspirator.

Palmer pointed out, "You can see the puppeteer right there in a ridiculous outfit. They're sweating and panting from having to run across the stage and they're waving the puppet around. It lets us all in on the joke in a way but also in the kind of the dream. It makes it evident to everybody in the audience that they are going to have to invest imaginatively in this in the same way as the people on stage are."

It's recommended that you bring a child-like sense of imagination to this show.

"That joy that you had when you were a kid," Corner said. "And you could imagine what would happen if a stick was suddenly a giant scary monster. I think that's what you want to bring to this production because that's what this production creates is the sense of wonder and joy and mystery that's inherent in being a kid."

And inherent in a story that begins with the magical possibilities of once upon a time…

San Diego Opera’s production of Engelbert Humperdick’s "Hansel and Gretel" opens Saturday and will have three additional performances through Feb. 16 at San Diego Civic Theatre.

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Prairiewolf - Inspiration Barn, Longmont, Colorado, September 28, 2024

A beautiful (if unseasonably warm) night in Longmont! Last Saturday, Prairiewolf played our new record, Deep Time, in its entirety in a century-old barn. It was a blast — and we even made it through the one Deep Time song we hadn't debuted live yet, the tricky "Wheel of Persuasion." It sounds killer, its ghostly atmospherics ricocheting around the rafters. We also brought our pal Matt "Rayonism" Loewen out on clarinet for the closing "Revisionist Mystery > Journey In Satchidananda," which all together stretches out for a good 15 minutes. Yowza. Listen in on the Archive (while you still can!?).

The whole evening felt like a nice culmination of the 'wolf's 2024, which started out with recording our new LP, moved into workshopping it all onstage, took us on a brief/wondrous tour out west and finally brought us back to the Rocky Mountains for more fun shows (and endless hype, haha).

Deep Time has been out now for almost two weeks and it has been great to get it out in the world, in spite of vinyl-related manufacturing delays. One more reminder that you can get it on CD (with bonus mystery disc), LP or digital via Centripetal Force (North America) and Worried Songs (UK + Europe). However you get it ... get it!

[consanguinitatum]

David Tennant's Plays: An Experienced Woman Gives Advice (1995)

I haven't done a thread on any of David's plays in a while, so I had some time yesterday to rustle one up about his 1995 play, An Experienced Woman Gives Advice. It premiered 28 years ago yesterday (which was why I chose to do a deeper dive about it) so let's get into it! An Experienced Woman Gives Advice (I'll use EW to refer to the play from here on out because what a long title!) would be David's first time performing onstage at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.

Prior to winning his role in EW, the last play David had done was What The Butler Saw as Nicholas Beckett, a role he was warmly praised for. What The Butler Saw ran for two months at five different venues around England before closing its run at the Nottingham Theatre Royal in late May 1995.

EW's playwright, Iain Heggie, had seen phenomenal success with his 1987 tour-de-force, A Wholly Healthy Glasgow. But in the years afterwards, Heggie had produced only a few more plays before deciding he'd rather go back to teaching and let his writing commence at its own pace.

Originally written as a miniature sex comedy, EW was long in development, and received further script development workshops at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in 1992, and at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1993.

Its world premiere would see Heggie's return to the stage.

Initially, it might have seemed odd that EW - with its Glasgow setting, Scottish writer, and fully Scottish cast - didn't make its debut in Scotland. But because Heggie and the Royal Exchange had similar actor-centered outlooks and many of the artistic directors in Scotland preferred a more visual style, Heggie chose to work with the Royal Exchange (who liked his work anyway) and the play made its debut in Manchester.

Previews for EW began at the Royal Exchange Manchester on 21 November 1995, with an opening day of 23 November 1995. It had a small cast of five: Siobhan Redmond as Bella, David Tennant as Kenny, Jenny McCrindle as Nancy, Alastair Galbraith as Irving, and Alexander Morton as Stick. It was directed by Matthew Lloyd, and its assistant director was Marianne Elliott.

The set, which was designed by Laurie Dennett, was quite sparse - a communal back garden and garden shed of a block of Glasgow tenement flats. The music was composed by Paddy Cunneen, who fans will recognize from many other projects he did with David, some of which I've previously done deep dives into (like Sunburst Finish, The Pillowman and Bite).

The three-act play had a runtime of 3 hours and 20 minutes, with two intervals - one 15 minutes in length, the other 10 minutes in length. It closed its run on 16 December 1995. Tickets were priced from £5.50 to £18, with matinees on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The action takes place on two Sunday mornings and opens with Bella, who's a 39 year old teacher, gardening in her back garden. We learn she's in a three-year long relationship with a live-in toyboy lover, Kenny (DT) who's a former pupil and 15 years younger than her. And that he didn't come home the previous night.

Bella calls Kenny her "charming, fallible boy", and she treats him like one. Former lovers say he's "tall, kind of blond, with a lovely lean build" and "incredibly rich brown eyes." There’s "just no resisting him,” and he's "bastardly good looking.”

David in rehearsals as Kenny (from program of An Experienced Woman Gives Advice)

In a series of interruptions from people passing into the garden, Bella (Redmond) dispenses advice to the inquiring strangers Nancy and Irving (Galbraith), and learns Kenny spent the night with another woman...from the woman herself, Nancy (McCrindle), who doesn't realize who she's told. What Bella does with this information - and how her meticulously cultivated freedom of choice lifestyle shatters, especially given her first love, Stick (Morton) lives nearby - is what the rest of the play explores. We see love, lust, and lies play out as Bella makes her choices.

And there's a scene with Bella and Kenny...and sex behind the doors of a rocking, exploding garden shed!

I haven't been able to locate a production script of the play to see whether this scene was enacted onstage, but Heggie's published script book says this scene, where Bella strips Kenny of his clothes piece by piece before they go into the shed to have sex offstage, had some brief nudity. None of the play reviews I've been able to find mention any nudity, though one article about the play does state that due to "strong language and the sexual nature of the story, the play is not suitable for children under 15." (I don't know how much weight I should give this particular article, however, because it also calls the lead character "Maggie" rather than "Bella"!) Anyway, if this scene was included in the play, it would be the second known instance (the first being that now-infamous What The Butler Saw full frontal nude photograph) where DT was onstage in the buff!

Speaking of reviews, they were wildly different - some found it hilariously funny with barbed, sharp dialogue, while others found it fatiguing. David's "able portrayal" as Kenny was praised as part of an extremely talented cast, and his was called a "great performance".

David and Siobhan Redmond earned Manchester Evening News Theatre Awards (MENTA) nominations - Redmond for Best Actress, and David for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. They also earned British Regional Theatre Awards nominations; Redmond for Best Actress and David for Best Actor. The play itself was also awarded a MENTA nomination for Best New Play. Redmond won both her nominations; David and the play didn't.

Photos from the play are almost nonexistent. I haven't located any images housed in any archives anywhere...so far. That doesn't mean they're not out there, mind you, just I haven't found them yet! I did manage to find a few of horrible quality while digging around in newspaper archives (I'll refrain from venting here about the quality aspects of digitizing newspapers, as that's a rant for another day) but it's a damned shame. I mean, in one of these, David just looks like a David-shaped black hole with floating arms! Nevertheless, I'll leave them here.

Something else I found fascinating during my research was that, like many venues, the Royal Exchange had a tradition of scheduling at least one informal discussion with the director and members of the company for each of their productions. While I didn't find any information on whether a discussion of this sort occurred during EW's run, I have to assume it did. Ah, to be a fly on the wall for that!

And that, my friends, is pretty much the story of An Experienced Woman Gives Advice! I wish I knew much more about this play, but like many parts of David's theatre career, wide gaps in our knowledge remain. But I keep on looking.

Thanks for reading!

[aropride]

am so confused,,,,i thought gerard way was a transwoman??????? top ten mew confusion moments @_@

I DIDNT SEE THIS EARLIER HI. ok so well first u would not believeeee how many people argue abt this topic online 😭 second: they havent said specifically what labels they use but they said theyve "always preferred he/they" and that "ppl can use whatever i dont really have a preference" and apparently dressed as a girl during high school and college & theyve talked abt gender and stuff and how they wouldve gone 2 a gender therapist of they couldve at the time. and in hit unreleased song everybody hates the eagles which they workshopped onstage over several shows (insane thing that happened And i watched this on instagram live. insane. bonkers.) they called themself a girl so. theyve not like Officially publicly labeled themself as nonbinary or gnc or trans but at this point i think its a little silly when ppl get mad at each other online for saying theyre probably under the trans umbrella