As a company comprised of three men from the north of England we are not only proud of this. For us, ‘northness’ is something we intend on celebrating. Scarborough, Newcastle and Bradford. 3 Towns and Cities sharing a common bond of blue collar industries which has shaped the landscapes and history of these places. Bradford has its historic textile mills, Scarborough its tourist industry and Newcastle with its Collieries and Shipbuilding. These places have shaped us into the men we are today, and as a result, the theatre makers we are today. This blue-collar, working class approach to life is easy to understand and articulate if you’re lived in these areas and have existing in its ecological bubble. But what if you haven’t? Read below my Northern Manifesto…
You tell the truth, whatever the cost.
You work for what you have.
You mark the sacrifices others have made for you.
You always get a round in.
You don’t shirk from opposition.
You share what you have.
You always, always get a round in.
Northerness is infinite, yet can be finite when captured in a theatre performance. This manifesto bleeds into my approach in a studio. Professional Northerners may appear as professional charlatans but we have a dedicated practice to produce the work we do. A northern practice. Once we have an idea we explore it to its limit. We push it, morph it, twist it and could even throw it off a cliff. The point is we explore. This reflects our Northern manifesto in ‘you work for what you have’ – we took an idea and worked with it. Furthermore, we sacrificed our own individual tastes for taste of the larger collective. We truly worked as Northerners in this process; honoring our heritage whilst looking towards the future.
An example of where we utterly exposed our Northern heritage was during the court scene. In this fragment, Josh and Myself donned courtroom wigs reminiscent of the 19th century whilst we debated the assassination of Spencer Percival. Throughout this section, we performed our texts with a heightened version of our native accents. Think Sean Bean in a wig. This deliberate juxtaposition of the visual costume which reflected a certain status and the auditory reflecting a stereo-typically less high status created an interesting contrast. Typically in 21st century performance northern dialects are not commonly used, and when used, are only done for comic effect or to show a lesser status. This was not always the case as actors such as Sean Bean, actresses such as Julie Walters and plays such as John Osborne’s Don’t look back in anger being synonymous with proudly displaying and celebrating their ‘northerness’. This was a conscious decision as it fleshed out or own northern voices in the process, the performance and make a contextually valid and interesting image. By heightening our elements of our personas for performative means enters into interesting territory covered by companies such as Forced Entertainment (more on them later) and The Wooster Group. The latter containing Willem Dafoe who’s performance in The Crucible was described as:
Dafoe’s performance persona is at once his presentation of self to the audience and in his image of himself performing. There is a certain frankness to the approach; the performed image is generated by the activity of the moment, by what the audience sees him doing under the immediate circumstances. Task/vision, vision/task; ‘The perfection of persona is a noble way to go.’ (Auslander, 1997: 45)
The effect of this is it allows us to tell the story as characters and as ourselves allowed us to tell the story as it was and as it should be told for today. Consequently, this reflected both England as it was back then and as it is today. Interestingly, this performance bares similarities to the musical Hamilton which states: ‘Is a story of America then for America now.’ To transpose this to our performance: This is the story of Spencer Percival for England now.
To conclude, later on in this blog series will take about exposing our process of working. Almost as if making the show is the show itself. The Northerness and its prominent display is a key component of this. I am aware of how passionately northern I am. It is my wish that this blog entry will not come across as an egotistical display of this fact. Instead, an inquiry into the relationship between geography, history and inter-personal relationships which exist between the maker, the collaborative and the material.