#40 Facts: We were only meant to be here for 5 years!

The Young Vic building was actually intended to be a temporary venue. It wasn’t thought it would last longer than 5 years…

This photo shows the opening of our original  building back in 1970… little did they know it would last so long!

Youth Council meets Hamlet cast and creatives

Adam Hipkin, a member of the Young Vic Youth Council and Director of Teafilms Ltd., met with some Hamlet actors and creative team members recently to interview them to produce some content for DVDs that we especially make for schools. Here are some of his thoughts…

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Hamlet is arguably one of the most recognised of Shakespeare’s plays. It sits amongst Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello and King Lear, as the most popular plays of his canon (the latter of which was performed at the Young Vic in 2009 by the now late Pete Postlethwaite.).

The Director Ian Rickson, who is taking on his first Shakespeare production, is in charge of an exciting cast headed up by Michael Sheen. We went into their rehearsal rooms just up the road from The Young Vic, with a couple of cameras to chat to some of the cast and crew.

The first person we spoke to was Maxine Doyle. Maxine is the Associate Director of Punchdrunk and is the Choreographer on this production. “Hamlet is a super complex play. My process with the work to date has been essentially kind of delving into the psychological investigation of the text”.  Maxine also mentioned to us a part of the play that is being kept top secret by the production team, but I think it’s fair to say that it draws on her work with Punchdrunk.

Next we spoke to Claire Louise Baldwin and Elle While, (Assistant Stage Manager and Assistant Director) about what a modern audience will get from this production. Claire was adamant that “with regards to the actual show and the way it is set, I don’t think it has been done this way before.” Elle on the other hand focused more on the main character: “It’s [about] someone who has lost someone very important in their life. We could all probably think of someone in our own lives going through that right now.”

After a short break while we waited for the actors to come back from lunch we spoke to James Clyde who is playing Hamlet’s uncle, Claudius. We asked him why he thought Hamlet was such a popular play, one which is always being produced somewhere in the world. “It just has this extraordinary verse. If you look at some of Hamlet’s soliloquies every other line has become part of every day speech. It’s the title of a movie or the title of an album. It’s probably the most borrowed from piece of literature in the English language.”

We then caught up with actor Eileen Walsh who is playing the part of Rosencrantz. This character and his friend Guildenstern are both close friends of Hamlet’s, the other key fact being that these roles have always been played by men. Although the casting of Adeel Akhtar (Four Lions) as Guildenstern sticks to this set up, the casting of Eileen as Rosencrantz sees the first women to play the part. “It feels like a piece of new writing. A women hasn’t played it before so it’s just a new take on the whole thing and certain lines that a man says, once they are said by a women, just have a completely different angle.”

The last actor we managed to have a chat with before the afternoon rehearsals started was Pip Donaghy who is playing three different characters: Barnardo, The Player King and the Gravedigger, the latter of which sparks one of the most famous scenes in the play with Hamlet holding the skull of his old Court Jester, Yorick. “In our production they [Barnardo, Player King and Gavedigger]  are going to have the same soul, they are going to be kind of the same character manifesting themselves in different guises.”

As we finished chatting to Pip the rehearsals picked up again and so we had to make room and pack down the kit.

Friends Open House

This year’s Friends Open House was attended by over 50 friends. Friends were given a behind-the-scenes tour of the building and enjoyed a special talk from director Cathal Cleary on the set of his show Disco Pigs.

Interested in becoming a Friend? More info here!

What is World Stages London?

World Stages London is the first time a group of London theatres have worked together. It may be surprising but it’s true.

By luck, we chose our moment well. When we began four years ago, we sensed – within the small world of London theatre – a spirit of collegiality in the air. We talked to almost every theatre in town. It felt as though they’d been waiting for someone to suggest something like this.

What were we looking for? Generosity, ambition, friendship. A willingness to explore the possibility that together we could achieve things impossible on our own.  Everyone had experienced a longing to produce a particular show – or to work in a particular way – which for one reason or another they couldn’t achieve. So a group of us decided, just for once, to act together.

Over months of conversation, ideas and then themes emerged.  Should we do one huge show together? What would give coherence to the work we made? Was coherence even necessary? As things have turned out, we are a core group of eight: Battersea Arts Centre, the Bush, the Lyric Hammersmith, the Royal Court, Sadler’s Wells, Somerset House, Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Young Vic.  And we’ve been joined by the Actors Touring Company, Kneehigh, The Opera Group, Wildworks and King’s College London.

The theme that binds us is London: London in the world, the world in London. Together we are creating a season of shows each of which draws on one of the great cultural traditions which together make up the most cosmopolitan city in the world.  And each show is a further collaboration with a company or an artist of the country from which the story – in each case what we’re calling a ‘deep’ story – originally came. So we’re working with theatres in Paris, Munich, Tallinn, Brussels, Boston and Haifa as well as artists from Cuba, Brazil, the USA, India, China, South Africa and Nigeria.

Why can’t people from different parts of the world work together? The reason most often given is: language. At the heart of World Stages London is a retelling of the story of Babel – but it’s a Babel in reverse. Four of the World Stages partners are together creating a pan-London community show which, we hope, will bring together more Londoners with more mother-tongues than have ever before made a collective work of art.

World stories for a world city in London in Spring 2012.

David Lan and Nicola Thorold, co-directors of World Stages London.

Two Young Vic performances that are part of World Stages London are Wild Swans and The Suit. Tickets are on sale now!