Making Mischief - RSC

You on the RSC Board HG?😉

I would like to try the new Other Place but its opening seems to have gone by with a whimper

All its got to offer this year is a month of new plays that was announced long after the main season was announced and I had scheduled my Stratford holidays

I wouldn't even be able to see the whole season without going up twice in one month

I understand if its also being used for school groups and so forth, but I'll wait till next year to see if the RSC does anything interesting with it.

I feel this intensive festival model works very well, with a single acting company in two plays specifically written for the occasion. There are two different writers and directors and the design is quite different for each play, although there is a single designer. So the two plays each have their unique characters but it makes sense for them to be presented side by side and they are both very of the moment. This Festival seems much more coherent than the short seasons of new plays which the RSC produced in London, at Wilton's, Soho, Hampstead, Tricycle, etc., whilst The Other Place was closed to accommodate the Courtyard during the Transformation works in Stratford. I think they are planning maybe a couple of Festivals like this each year in The Other Place, and I found it worth making the effort to see this.

Personally I try to read every post on this forum. I don't see the point in replying to a post about a play I'm unlikely to see, if all I have to say about it is "I would see it if I could".

Hmm, I'd say it's not that I don't have any interest. If I know the play, or an actor/creative's work, then I'll definitely read a thread about something I'm unlikely to physically see. But I tend to engage more with the threads where I can usefully contribute, yes.   

I wasnt having a pop or anything. I think the RSC missed a trick by not having a longer festival to open thw other place. Its been closed for a decade ffs! I did speak to a nox office bod and they did say plans for mext year are more expansive. This can only be good😄

Indeedio! Lynette. I dont see any reason why they cant have a complete three space deason like they had in say 2001: 3 Shakespeares in the main house, 3 Jacobethans in the swan and 3 new plays in the other place. However, they are on record as saying top wont be year round performance space, daft imo!

I couldn't be arsed to travel to Stratford for a couple of 1 hour plays, plus the runs were so short the dates didn't work out

Top tip - on a discussion forum try posting constructively about what you have seen, rather than posting snarkily that everyone else is too low brow and narrow minded, and then posting random rubbish in other threads

I had the opposite worry beforehand - I was concerned that it would be too heavy to see two plays with just a half hour break between them, and that one would possibly drown out the effect of the other. If I lived locally, I'd have chosen to attend on two nights. As it turned out, the brief was for 70 minutes, and they both ran a few minutes over the hour, so the interval was hardly longer than the standard twenty minutes and the evening was longer than most productions, at over two and a half hours. I did lose time for reflection by seeing them together in one evening, but this is actually a good experience overall because they were both written for the same project and there is a sum=of-the-parts effect. In the post-show talkback, the actors said that they viewed the two plays as entirely separate and distinct when they were preparing and rehearsing, but that in performance they immediately began speaking to each other and throwing up connections.

There were just two new productions for this project and they played as a double bill throughout  weeks 1, 4 and 5.

Weeks 2 and 3 also presented a revival of Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again, pre-Edinburgh and Shoreditch, which was one of the four new plays in the pilot The Other Place Midsummer Mischief Festival two years ago.

There was also a showcase for three performances of Clean Break's Joanne, previously run at Soho, with Tanya Moodie, post-Gertrude.

The 2014 TOP Festival of four new plays presented them in two double bills playing in repertory, so all four could be seen over two consecutive nights or even in a single day in a matinee and evening, which is what I did - and this was far too much of an overload as they were all quite intense, and some overshadowed others.

Personally, I preferred this year's model of just a single evening or matinee of two plays, with the brief addition of using the festival as a springboard to tour more widely a success from previous years, and to briefly showcase a standout performance from a current RSC actor. And with talks, discussions, a rehearsed reading, etc. scheduled across the month.