Pony Pie
theatre/glasgowArchive for The YelloWing
Images from The YelloWing
These images are from “The YelloWing” and belong to Robbie Murrie for Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.
The YelloWing ON TOUR
Fresh off the road from the start of touring “The YelloWing,” my collaboration with Julia Taudevin. We’ve had a great time meeting the crew at Edinburgh’s Storytelling Centre and Inverness’ Eden Court One Touch Theatre. Professional and hard working folks there made our start an easy one and gave us the confidence to produce two great performances in both venues! We have had an intense rehearsal process in the last weeks (hence ignoring the blog on pony-pie) but it’s all come together on the road and now we have a lot to look forward to when we pick up the tour again for Glasgow at the CCA on Sauchiehall St. Those performances will take place on the 13th through the 16th at 7.30 with a 1.30 matinee on the 16th. Tell your friends. Word is tickets are selling fast and we want to share the piece with you and your friends.
Also, on the 15th there is a talk back with Dee Heddon after the show, a brilliant scholar and writer of contemporary theatre practice. There may be other panelists but there is certainly be an interesting conversation with myself as Director of the piece and Julia. We had a chat after both shows this weekend and they were excellent. The venues being very different and being chaired by different folks these chats were incredibly different. But each time it came through that the piece successfully works to invite a narrative “reading” of the play and leaves enough room for personal interpre
tation that requires the audience to bring a part of themselves. This was our ambition with the piece because we knew making statements or declaring any one thing as “true” when it comes to mental health would be dangerous and irresponsible. So, we created this character, this scenario, and then a physical performance jeweled with question marks. The response was overwhelmingly honest and open with several people giving private anecdotes. Also, a great generalized chat about the politics of mental health. And most importantly, the importance of the Mental Health Arts and Film Festival. These people are playing the role of patron to artists who are talking about mental health in a serious and artistic way without financial incentives that colour the ways people talk about/label/condemn/romanticize mental health. We had nothing to gain but the spectator’s openness to the work.
See you in Glasgow! Also, please write to the Scottish Government to acknowledge and praise the work being done under the umbrella of the festival.
“The YelloWing”
Glasgow CCA
350 Sauchiehall St.
Oct. 13th to Oct. 16 at 7.30 pm (1.30 and 7.30 the 16th)
There will be a post-show chat on the 15th
Review of The YelloWing
From Neil Cooper’s review of New Works New Worlds Festival at the Arches, published July 6 2009 in The Herald. At the festival Julia Taudevin and I premiered our collaboration “The YelloWing.” We’ll move into further development in the fall before a tour around Scotland with the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival:
October 3, 2009 at The Netherbrow, Edinburgh
October 4, 2009 at Eden Court, Inverness
October 13, 14, 15 & 16th CCA, Glasgow
“There have been many stage versions, for instance, of Charlott e Perkins Gilman’s pioneeri ng novel, The Yellow Wallpaper, which so deftly captured the 19th-century experience of a woman incarcerated after being declared mentally ill. Julia Taudevin and Amanda Monfrooe’s one-woman play, The YelloWing, is a 21st-century response to its source material that suggest things haven’t changed much over the last century or so. Taudevin plays a woman who at first glance has it all; a high-powered career and an ice-cool demeanour, all wrapped up in a little black dress to die for. Once back in what turns out to be some kind of institution, however, the brittle façade crumbles in a torrent of histrionics as she attempts to tear down the walls that confine her. As silhouettes of caged birds conjured from the woman’s imagination flicker on the wall, the voice of her husband at the other end of the telephone backs her further into a corner.
As Taudevin’s character lets rip physically, mentally and every which way, it’s impossible to recognise the “little goose” at the start of the play, such is her increasingly extreme unleashing of what may be a misunderstood form of post-natal depression. While still a work in progress, there’s plenty of dramatic meat to grab hold of in a piece set to be developed further for an autumn tour supported by the Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.”
*Photo by Sha Nazir.
“The YelloWing” Performances
“The YelloWing” is going into technical rehearsals in one week in preparation for performances July 1st and 2nd at 7.30 pm.The Arches is the place to be to see several new performances from a variety of Scottish-based theatre artists as well as installations, readings, and chats with some of the artists. To find out more about New Works New Worlds click here.
Julia Taudevin and I have been working for about two months devising a piece in response to Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a short story published in 1895. We’re starting to piece the thing together and look forward to seeing you at what is a work-in-progress showing in advance of further development and a tour organized with the Scottish Mental Health Arts & Film Festival. I should be clear, this is not a Pony Pie production, but I am directing the project. I look forward to seeing you there!
