Cymbeline was the inaugural production by The Peripeteia Players, which was formed by Rachael Dyson-McGregor and I, after I attended a masterclass with Tim Carroll for a week in Auckland, New Zealand in March 2006. Under the guidance of Stuart Devenie, and having convinced the local Irish pub The Dogs Bollix (a beamy converted church, candles in bottles, rugby in the background, cheesy nachos) to let us have the run of the place, we gathered ten of us together, adopting Carroll's practice of all learning two major roles and asking the audience to flip a coin two minutes before showtime to determine the casting. We invited the audience to keep treating the pub like a pub rather than a theatre - to go to the bar whenever they wanted, rather than waiting for a break, putting the onus on the actors to be responsive and interesting, rather than relying on traditional (that is to say, default 20th/21st century) theatre etiquette. Within the company, we resisted the titles you'd find in 'normal' theatre, thinking instead about what kind of structures might have been in place in Shakespeare's company - for example, there is no record of Shakespeare's company having a director, although they did have an actor-manager. The role of the director only became defined once proscenium-arch theatre became the norm, with its lighting and set and 'blocking' to shape the action (to best please those paying the most in the middle of the stalls). When playing in-the-round and at the mercy of unpredictable weather/standing audience/birds, as at the Globe, it becomes ridiculous to try and constrain a production inside such tight bounds - the actors need to able to be responsive to the changing conditions, and the role of the director shifts, in the best cases, to train the actors to be ready for anything, and to build a culture of trust and playfulness that encourages this. It is a more exposed way of playing, far more (in my experience) akin to playing a gig.
The show ran to packed houses and some bemused locals at the Dogs Bollix and we brought the show back later that year to the Silo Theatre. In order to create a more forgiving and unusual theatre dynamic inside the low rectangular black box theatre, we painted a bright mural of birds and flying things across the ceiling, and hung cloth of all kinds around the walls. We also seated the audience in the round and played both inside and outside the oval created by the chairs. Sean Lynch created one continuous shifting, weather-like lighting state for us without operating cues, so that the actors had to respond to and be affected by the lighting, rather than the other way around (the exception to this was the battle, where actors and audience alike were plunged into darkness and we lit each other with torches). Stuart had donned a toga at the Dogs Bollix to play Jupiter descending on a giant eagle; at the Silo, we lined up a different local actor every night, with the actors not knowing either who or where Jupiter would appear from in the audience.
At some point we began to articulate a kaupapa (or set of principles) for the company, which became:
OUR VISION: To create community by making great theatre that highlights the relationship between actors and audience.
OUR AIM: To build a repertoire of strong, powerful classic and new works, playing and sharing them with communities all over the country and the world. The process that we undergo to make these works is collaborative and collective, with the aim of creating a strong ensemble with a shared consciousness of the world of the play we are inhabiting and a shared ownership of the work.
Somewhere under the coats of black paint, the mural is still there.
CAST
at The Dogs Bollix
POSTHUMUS or CLOTEN/CORNELIUS..........................Matu Ngaropo / Trygve Wakenshaw
GUIDERIUS or PISANIO....................................Liesha Ward-Knox / Rachael Dyson-McGregor
CYMBELINE or QUEEN/ARVIRAGUS......................................Edward Peni / Sarah Gallagher
IMOGEN or CAIUS LUCIUS.................................................Nisha Madhan / Madeleine Hyland
BELARIUS or IACHIMO...........................................................Daniel Mainwaring / Phil Brooks
JUPITER...............................................................Stuart Devenie
Directed by Stuart Devenie
Produced by The Company
Costumes by Eleanor Riley
Stage Managed by Makyla Curtis
Publicity by Julia Holmes
At the Silo Theatre
GUIDERIUS or PISANIO was played by Rachael Dyson-McGregor / Tahi Mapp-Borren
JUPITER was played by a different guest actor every night
Lighting Design by Sean Lynch
Sound Design by Drew MacMillan
Operation by Ora Simpson