Nurturing New Talent – Emerging Theatre Company Rhum & Clay at The Watermill

27 January 2012

Looking back on the week we spent at The Watermill, it is strange how different it appears to a lot of Rhum and Clay’s rehearsal process in the past.  Whereas the early rehearsals for our first show had been in various parks around Paris and our following show was mostly created in a deserted bar in Oxford, we suddenly found ourselves living next to the rehearsal space, with a tremendously receptive and supportive theatrical community on hand to answer our questions, bring us props and offer us feedback.  We found this a far superior arrangement! 

It also marked a first for the company, as we have never adapted a novel before.  And what a strange, thrilling and hilarious novel it is.  One thing we have strived for as a company is to make all our shows enjoyable and fun for the audience.  With its chase scenes, absurd characters, brilliant one liners and ridiculous plot about an undercover policemen infiltrating an anarchist council, The Man Who Was Thursday seemed like the perfect book to adapt. 

For the first few days of the week, we spent a  lot of time exploring the ideas of storytellers, or characters who could frame the story in some kind of context.  Doing some preliminary research on the period, we found it unbelievable how, much of the time, real events in the late 19th century were far more bizarre and absurd than Chesterton’s work of fiction.  Anarchists accidentally blowing themselves up in public and police chasing around innocent removal vans in an attempt to foil a grand conspiracy were just two of many things that felt like they were pulled from the world of the book. 

As the week progressed, our storytellers impressed themselves more and more into the narrative and the feel of the piece began to take on the mannerisms and humour of a vaudeville comedy.  When we realised this, it was a great release, because it gave us an angle into the rest of the story and how we would approach it.  It’s always going to be difficult trying to represent seven characters on stage at the same time when there are only four actors, but with the style we found ourselves in, that difficulty became very much a part of the fun. 

As we worked we had continuing input from Beth Flintoff, the Watermill’s Outreach Director.  Being close-knit group of four, it was refreshing to have an outside eye, helping to refine ideas and ask questions about what we were trying to achieve with the piece.  We ended the week with a presentation for The Watermill staff of the work we had created.  We had settled on four ‘sequences’ that we thought gave the best idea of the direction in which  the piece was going.  The feedback was very useful and gave us a few pointers as to how the piece might progress in the future. 

A week is a very short time to create something for an audience but we were very happy with what we produced and that it did justice to our idea about the novel and how we wanted to adapt it.  We are a new company so the support we have been given is invaluable.  It can be intimidating to navigate the theatre industry and try and forge a path for ourselves amongst a lot of other companies trying to achieve the same thing.  That a theatre such as The Watermill is taking an interest in us is incredibly heartening and shows that all the rehearsing in parks and underground bars was worth it.  We are looking forward to continuing to work with them in the future.      

Kristoffer Huball
Co-artistic director of Rhum and Clay Theatre Company