A recent visit to the National Student Drama Festival in Scarborough last week got me to thinking about the nature of student drama, the types of it you see and even the connotations behind the words. After the trip to Scarborough and my own participation in student drama as part of Manchester University's In-Fringe Drama Festival, I've really come to dislike the phrase 'student drama'. I think the reason behind this is because ''student drama' can have a certain self-consciousness about it; a self-consciousness it doesn't need to have. I'm going to try and tie this in with my review of the only play I saw at the NSDF, Clive Judd's staging of the Simon Stephens play, Herons.
The first thing I should probably clear up is that, being a student myself, I am not suggesting the phrase 'student drama' be banned. After all, it is a legitimate way of describing theatre that is written, produced and staged by a certain demographic, like prisoners' theatre, American theatre,South African theatre, women's theatre (I could go on) etc. Indeed the people who judged the NSDF theatre, I would think, judged it by the same standards as they would judge anything else. That's why the end of the week had awards, because a lot of drama festivals do. All fine and dandy, because this was just a festival of drama like any other, the only difference being that a large majority of the participants were under the age of 25.
Where the self-consciousness comes into it is in some of the reviews I read of the Herons production. A good deal of these were written by students about students but it's an example of how student drama can sometimes get some really short-sighted associations slapped onto it.
Herons began with the sound effect of rushing water, with the characters on stage in blackout. Then, the sound stops and the character of Billy, played by Simon Longman, slowly points his fingers at the audience as if he is holding a gun.
BANG!
Now, what I did there was use the 'bang' to justify starting a new paragraph? Did you see that? Hey, I'm a student and sometimes like to mess with your mind (or, in this case, eyes) like that. One reviewer of this moment in the play said it was a bit GCSE. I'm paraphrasing but what annoyed me was how reductive this analysis was, both to the play and to GCSE drama, which is just as mixed, I'll grant you. If this was a fully professional production, you've got to wonder if it would get this same incisive analysis. No doubt the minimalist staging raised a few student-sceptical eyebrows. After all, them students, they love their empty stages don't they? Another review of the play got a bit too hung up on the scene where Scott Cooper (Edward Franklin), shoves a bottle up Billy's arse. Oooh how shocking, how visceral those students can be!! As a matter of fact, it was a particularly unpleasant moment in the play and well staged and finely acted by all concerned. But, because it was the students what did it, it seemed okay for someone to dwell on it, as if it's the point of the play, which it swiftly becomes if you make a big deal out of it.
The worst offender was the reviewer who suggested that the director of Herons was middle-class, patronising the black, urban underclass through his depiction of one of Scott's cronies, played by Ashley Gerlach. Leaving aside for one moment that Ashley was the second actor to play the part, after John Elliot (who was white) in its original Manchester performance, to refer to this as 'patronising' is insulting to Simon Stephens's writing and to student performances in general. Again, I'm pretty sure the reviewer was a student and there's that old self-consciousness again. Any quality, in some cases, seems to come second to what these students were trying to achieve, what they were trying to illustrate, unpack. Did they peel the onion of poverty and deprivation in the East End of London?
Do you know what other piece of drama I saw, a few days later, that also uses minimalist staging and uncomfortable depictions of urban poverty, primarily among black boys? The answer is 'The Wire'. I would be curious to see, if you put D'Angelo Barksdale on a red sofa in the middle of a stage with his cohorts, took David Simon's dialogue out of context and got a bunch of students to act it out, how long it would be before someone accused them of being patronising, or GCSE. Maybe no-one, maybe everyone would say that but the fact that students hypothetically performed it would open it up to that sort of criticism. This to me is unfair, since a lot of student drama is absolutely brilliant. Some of it is awful, but then so is a lot of professional drama. For instance, I can recall two performances of Shakespeare that I have seen, one recent and performed by students, the other in 2005 and headlining at Edinburgh, both of which I disliked. One, a version of 'Romeo and Juliet' didn't work, as they dropped characters, merged others and changed dialogue but there didn't seem to be any justification. The Edinburgh one was just...well I'll say 'witches in lycra' and leave it at that.
Herons itself was the third production I've seen directed by Clive Judd and, like its predecessors, it was a slow burning, well-acted and again illustrated the director's ability to make a good play out of a minimal set. Pale Horse used only a bar and some chairs and tables, All My Sons contained only some leaves and a bench and here the side of the canal was only some bricks. It was, however, all it needed.
Simon Longman's Billy may have been fourteen, he may have been seventeen but it some ways the physical age didn't matter because he was a child at heart, albeit one who had to look after his younger siblings and rage against his drunk mother rather than quietly fish for tench as he wanted to. His quiet demeanour and soft delivery were mixed with a capacity for fiercely defending those close to him, be it his mother or the girl whose murder was the violent prelude to the play. Ellie Rose, as Billy's mother, was a tragic figure, if only because she clearly cared for her son, but was a character completely incapable of taking care of children, her maternal instincts lost in physicality that reeked of drink and drugs. Similarly, Mark Weinman as the father was lost in his own world, annoyed at Billy whenever he dragged him out of his musings about herons eating his fish. Billy as a boy who had to grow up fast was re-enforced by the manner with which he gently had to look after his own dad, chiding him about jobs and attendance slips.
Edward Franklin's Scott Cooper made you want to see some Sopranos-esqe (ooh, French, very studenty) spin-off about his character. His moments of stage time were of a young boy who, again, could have been ten years older, warped as he was by his circumstances and an older brother who was in prison and perhaps ten times as psychotic. His sparring with Billy made for some of the tensest moments in the play and Longman's delivery of one particular comeback was received with rousing applause. Laurence Fox and the aforementioned Ashley Gerlach brought moments of black comic relief and nervous laughter from the audience but, in one entrance, made one mindful of the phrase 'feral youths'.
The character of Adele was the third, central character who wasn't allowed to be a child anymore. Her attempts at a carefree manner in dealing with loss and chaos around her was a marked contrast with Billy's acting as though the world were on his shoulders. Lisa Gill gave a spirited performance as a girl who was scared of her boyfriend one minute and then gently teasing Billy the next. Interspersed with calling her teacher a 'fat cunt' was more insightful and lovely dialogue about the tragedy that tied all the characters together and faking seizures. There was an especially touching moment in which she discovers she is a key character in Billy's diary entries.
All the performances were based on a script that was bleak and savage but also witty and hopeful, especially at its end. The casting left you wondering if the characters were adults in children's bodies and while it is obviously a cast that demands a young cast, the performances were such that the difference between adult and teenager was ambiguous and almost paradoxical. I think what Clive Judd has achieved with this, only the second performance of Herons, is that fourteen year olds are not a necessary part of staging a play about fourteen year olds; as long as they can convey this play's horribly thin line between the children and their equally clueless parents. The director and his actors should collaborate again, if only because these guys need another play to show off the talent which can only be built on after this production.
I think I managed to do that review without once mentioning the word 'student'. Which most of these guys were by the way.
"But James," I hear you ask. "How is this relevant to students? What can students get out of it?"
Well, isn't it obvious? They only used 25 bricks. 25 is like, such a symbolic number.
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