by Josie Melia
directed and co-ordinated by Anita Parry
Movement Specialist Phil Gunderson
Film worker Peter Ellis
Performed by pupils from Varndean Sixth Form College with participation and involvement from pupils,
drama workers and teachers from East Brighton College of Media Arts,
Falmer High School,
Patcham High School
and Varndean Sixth Form College.
Six
Inches of Travel
brings to the stage the risk taking world of adrenaline sports, the effects
of street violence on young lives and the excitement and danger of being
a member of a gang. And because there's a family involved, there are also
some secrets and lies...
The
Writer:
Josie Melia won Channel Theatre's 1998 Open Stages new writers competition
with BEE STINGS which was performed at the Theatre Royal, Margate. Other
plays include LAUGHING MATTERS which toured south east england as part
of Play-Go-Round. Josie has just won a commission from the Hazlitt Theatre
in Maidstone to write a young people's play after her work was brought
to their attention by Anita Parry at a TAB LAB workshop.
Education
Re-Mix
All the schools involved in this project worked with Josie Melia's play
as a basis for producing their own work. They presented a selection of
their scripted scenes, short films, a video and music produced with musicians
from The Hanover Band at TAB's Education Re-Mix session.
In Feb. 2000 I cast eight students in Six Inches. We met every Wed. and for the first five or so meetings we explored the key themes in the text. These sessions were really useful for Josie as the play was still being written. Getting to know the cast meant that Josie could write to there strengths.
This amount of contact also meant that the students were building into a real ensemble.
This time scale also meant that despite their lack of acting experience they developed rounded, characters. All of this background work was essential as the play is quite tele visual - in terms of there being an enormous amount of sub-text served by very little dialogue. The scenes were also very short and fast moving - very like a young peoples T.V.
At the start of the whole rehearsal process the cast knew that some of the action would be filmed, and that the playstation would be played live on stage.
The screens would have been useful sooner in the rehearsal rooms as it is the cast quickly adapted to having the video bits read in so when confronted with the reality it wasn't too much of a shot, although I would make sure all of the technology was present much earlier in the future. Themes in the play were: Sibling rivalry, peer pressure, Risk, mountain bike riding as a metaphor for living, alcoholism, violence, and simply being a teenager.
In performance the presence of two large screens supplying: juxtaposed images, atmosphere, location, comedic relief, and filmic techniques such as building tension by showing a 'stranger' arriving when not expected.( A little Hitchcock technique - giving the audience information that the protagonists are not aware of.)
The use of integrated technology meant that the set could be paired down to the minimum which gave us enormous freedom to change location and time and space by setting this up as a convention at the top of the play. One very useful use of the screens was to have a tunnel projected onto the two screens to have the camera p.o.v. move slowly into the tunnel at walking speed, while simultaneously lowering the lights in the auditorium effectively taking the audience into the tunnel with the characters. The whole auditorium became the inside of the tunnel just as the whole auditorium had been the inside of a bedroom a street etc... great freedom of location.
The final production was accessible to young people because the mixture of video, drama and fast moving action contained within a theatrical context made the piece easy to follow and understand, especially in terms of young people more used to watching television than going to the theatre. As one of the central themes was about 'risk' virtual and real it made good dramatic and theatrical sense to use the playstation being played for real on the large screens. Whenever the real 'risk' taker was on stage there would be a pairing down of technology the heighten the difference between the two characters, one hiding away while the other is trying of the use of video to show the character's inner state simply by the use of lights and a sound scape where appropriate.
On the strength of Six Inches of Travel, Josie Melia has been commisioned to write a play for The Hazlitt Theatre's youth theatre tour.