One-woman show slowly taking shape

By NIGEL GEARING

When Kathryn van Beek's play The Language of Angels was selected by the Auckland Theatre Company for a month of script development workshops followed by a public preview, she thought her piece "would require a couple of tweaks, then be ready to show. You know what it's like when you're young."

Two years ago van Beek emailed the company all five or six - she can't remember now - of the plays she'd written so far, hoping Angels would be selected for the first of its literacy unit script-development programmes.

Director Oliver Driver liked the look of van Beek's true story, which is based on many meetings and interviews with an acquaintance who attempts suicide and is committed to a psychiatric institution. There she forms a relationship with another patient. Both escape and flee to Sydney, where things go terribly wrong.

Angels was selected for the programme, receiving a free playreading. On the strength of that script it was chosen for workshopping with professional actors, a director and a script consultant before the final step, presentation for audience feedback in this year's Final Draft series, in which only four writers have their work performed.

"It began as a one-woman show which was lyrical and interior and its emotional impact touched a lot of people," says van Beek. "We did another workshop which had at least 12 characters in it. I tried to structure it to make it into a play. At the end of this process I had two scripts, one that told a story and one that was better crafted. Director Anna Marbrook wanted to fuse the two."

By the time the 23-year-old's work was ready for workshopping she had completed a degree in scriptwriting at Unitec followed by a masters in the same discipline at Victoria University.

"I'd spent so much time trying not to learn the rules about methods of writing. Anna Marbrook quickly let me know you can't break the rules until you know what they are. She laid her biases on the table at the beginning and in so doing established a very honest working relationship, so there was no agenda.

"While I suffered all these stupid romantic ideas about being able to write three plays in a year, Anna said I should aim to write a play in three years. What's so fantastic about this way of working is that rather than being one of many students clamouring for a tutor's attention, you are being mentored by a director with a lot of experience."

The result has four actors playing six characters with no added props, special effects or lighting, and minimal costuming in a bare-bones production.

Sally Stockwell plays the central character, Kate, Kathryn's cousin Jackie van Beek plays Kate's mum and fellow patient Pixie, Emily O'Brien Brown plays sister Judy and fellow patient Lucy, and Phil Brown plays the employee at Braeburn Psychiatric Hospital.

On each seat is a feedback form which theatregoers are encouraged to complete. And somewhere among the viewers will be the author, monitoring everything.

"It's so important to be out there in the audience, seeing if they laugh, are uncomfortable or quiet at the times I hoped they would be, or if they are texting their friends. If the play was complete then maybe I'd be frustrated at the lack of props and sometimes I wonder about people paying to see a work in progress, but when I think about the amount of work that's gone into this, then I think they are getting their money's worth. It's such an ongoing process."

Performance

* What: The Language of Angels

* Where and when: SiLo Theatre, until Oct 5, 8pm