Practitioner focus: Propeller Theatre
Keith Burt
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Keith Burt takes a look at practitioner Propeller Theatre and establishes how you can approach their work with your students.
Manuel Harlan
Since the 1990's, Edward Hall's Propeller Theatre has been taking a physical, radical and often outrageous approach to performing Shakespeare. Having won a vast array of awards over the last 30 thirty years, their productions are powerful, visceral and hard-hitting. Their work is a mix of rigorous text work and modern physical theatre. They have been influenced by mask work, animation, film and music from all ages.
Performance style
Their production of Richard III epitomises Propeller's style perfectly. Directed by Edward Hall, as are all of their productions, he is not afraid to take risks. In an interview, Hall says that in Richard III he's done a few quite outrageous things that he's never done on a stage in twenty years. He's set the play in a gothic Victorian hospital, featuring evocative, bloody imagery in the style of the Grand Guignol. The interpretation swiftly changes from gallows humour to rage and madness in a blink of an eye. Every line spoken by the actors brings forth the bloodthirsty nature of the play. As one reviewer described it, this is not a Richard for the purists, but there's plenty of imagination on display here even if some of the poetry has been lost.
And that is the focus for Propeller Theatre. Their aim is to unlock Shakespeare for a modern audience, especially a young audience. But this doesn't mean that Propeller want to dumb Shakespeare down to make it ‘accessible’. They want to make seeing Shakespeare as engaging, as visceral and as powerful as possible. Enshrined into their very being is the idea that Shakespeare challenges ‘every preconceived notion we consciously and subconsciously have about people, morality and what it is to be human’ (Edward Hall). They believe that getting close to his artwork is a deeply civilising experience, allowing us to see truths that were previously hidden to us by our instant, media driven culture. We need to think far harder before we judge what we see, and just because we see something as a truth, it doesn't mean that there isn't an opposing perspective whose truth is equally as valid.
Production style
To produce such an engaging and powerful production, Propeller must also have a powerful approach to performance. They approach performing and producing Shakespeare with great clarity, speed and as much imagination as possible. Their style is creating a total theatre performance. Everything they do on stage is designed to contribute to the narrative, including music. One thing that Propeller Theatre particularly prides itself on is creating all its music and sound effects in view of the audience, to establish a credible background to the action. The concept of family is central to the work Propeller create. Everything is as an ensemble, from everyone having a say in the rehearsal room to everyone sharing minor characters or music-making when not on stage themselves.
Activity 1
A key element to the work of Propeller Theatre is reimagining a Shakespeare text in a new, often gruesome, context. This is a process called transposing. Think of a Shakespeare play that you are familiar with and consider how the play could be transformed into a new context. In a true Propeller Theatre style, try to take it to an extreme and consider how every part of the production can be transposed: characters, setting, context, content and meaning.
Activity 2
Explore the first scene of the play and spend time working on the text. Read it carefully and annotate the text for meaning, context and interpretation. Make sure that every word in the text is understood by everyone and that you can explain it in several different ways. Ensure that everyone understands the context of every line: how it fits into the scene, the play, the character, the themes and issues within the play and how it relates to the audience. Finally, how does the line transpose into the new setting you are giving it?
It is also important that the scene is put on its feet as quickly as possible. Establish a physical presence on the stage, determining who is on stage and who is available to play minor roles or to add music.
Activity 3
Perform the first scene of the play but place it in a deliberately tough location so that it impedes the acting, such as an office where the audience sit in the doorway watching the action unfold. Find creative, unusual and interesting solutions to the problems of staging in that location.
Activity 4
Finally, create a soundscape for the action, so that there is continuous sound throughout the scene that both adds and underlines the tension within the scene. This is an opportunity to continue with the ensemble approach to performance and ask actors who are not performing to create these soundscapes.
