Alle the Disc's a Stage

Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters.  A tale that is strangely familiar - it has a dead king floating around a castle after being murdered by a close relative, usurper rulers who can't seem to get the blood off their hands, daggers floating before people's eyes and three witches who can't seem to help meddling.

Of course this version also has obsequious chamberlains, grumpy demons, a fool whose improv is just terrible, overly dramatic players and a dwarf whose gender is entirely open for debate.

We had so much fun putting this play on! I will leave you with the now-traditional post play picture story book.

The Kingdom of Lancre, a tiny little kingdom somewhere in the Ramptops that noone has ever heard of.  Magrat, youngest of the three witches, is desperate to become a witch of the old school; potions, books, grimmers (or grimoires as she will point out), magic swords and picking toadstools by moonlight.  Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are rather more disillusioned by the whole thing.  Potions stain your robes, books are pretentious, magic swords too often get themselves stuck in stones and you can't get the darn thing out when you need it and picking toadstools by moonlight leaves you with back ache and wet feet.

While at one of the witches many tea parties meetings on the heath, the cosy coven is interrupted by the sound of hoofbeats and the rude arrival of a soldier with an arrow sticking out of his back, carrying a bundle.  He thrusts the bundle at the witches and then inconsiderately dies at their feet.  Before the three can ask 'what the bloody hell was that about' another two soldiers come rushing in and the first demands that the witches hand the bundle to him.  Granny refuses and is attacked by the soldier, who is stabbed by his comrade who apparently has enough sense to know that you just don't go around attacking witches.

The witches open the bundle to reveal a baby boy and a crown which provides an instant dilemma as to what on earth they do with both of them.  After a lengthy debate about the problems of hiding crowns that always end up with them being found and put on by any random passer by, Magrat remembers that she had seen lots of crowns at the theatre (although they look more realer than this one) and the witches head off to see a play, after pointing out that they can't meddle in the affairs of men.

Meanwhile, at the castle, the servants are frantically searching for the missing son of the late King Verence and Verence's crown, on the orders of the new and rather smug Duke and Duchess.  At least, they had better be frantically searching if they value their heads.  The new Duchess can't abide slackness after all.  The chamberlain, with a great deal of oily smarm, confirms that the baby was taken by witches.  The Duke and Duchess are horrified to discover that not only do they have witches in their Kingdom cluttering up the place, the witches don't even pay taxes.  They vow to stamp out this monstrosity and check that the baby is dead as an afterthought as apparently the witches, disappointingly, don't practice human sacrifice but instead are actually respected by people.

At the theatre after the show the witches ask to meet the Vitolliers, the head of the band of players and give them the baby, Tomjon, to look after.  Although suspicious, the couple agree to take the baby into their care.  Magrat hides the crown in a prop box and, after getting her bottom pinches by a member of the troop, gets an impromptu lesson on where babies come from from Nanny Ogg.

The Sergeant, who isn't the sharpest sword in the armory, has visited the witches to try to arrest them and get the baby back and returns to deliver his report to the Duke.  He is pleased to tell the Duke that the witches were very nice to him and his men and gave them cups of tea and a bun with currents in.  All apart from young Roger who isn't allowed fruit on account of his trouble so he had a biscuit.  It is clear that this Kingdom is not the easy kingdom to rule that the frustrated Duke (who is starting to become obsessed with a bottle of anti-bacterial gel) was hoping for. 

Thoroughly depressed the Duke demands entertainment from his Fool, a young man who has sworn to loyally follow his Lord unto death.  Although adept (ish) at capering and jokes and appearing, well, foolish, the Fool is cleverer than he initially appears to be and has learned when to keep his mouth shut.  This ability means he is often privy to secrets and rantings he would rather not be around, especially considering he never wanted to be a Fool in the first place.  As a result of this innate ability to be wherever he really shouldn't be, he has perfected the backwards tiptoe and the art of whistling when conversation gets uncomfortable.

The Kingdom starts to behave strangely.  The taxman visits the witches (and is politely turned away by them), there is an out-of-season earthquake despite the fact that you don't get earthquakes in Lancre (someone really should remember to send the land a memo about that) and the animals of the forest are still not talking to anyone, despite Magrat's best efforts.  People's houses are being burned to the ground (this is nothing new but at least the old King let you get out first) and the Duke is convinced that the trees are whispering about him so has embarked on an extensive plan of agricultural improvements, increasing work in the saw mills and generating industry by chopping down the forests (the Fool's idea).

Things are getting suspicious so the witches decide to do a bit of detective work and summon a surly demon to try and find out what is going on.  Magrat is hugely disappointed by the fact that instead of spices and candles and an octogram of protection to perform the summoning spell they instead use a rolling pin, box of soapsuds and an old washboard.  After all, in her words, it just isn't the same.

After upsetting the demon (if a witch is only allowed three questions she might as well get to the point and 'what the bloody hell is going on' doesn't leave demons a lot of wriggle room to get smart with their answers, which upsets them) the witches find out that the land of the kingdom is unhappy.  The new Duke and Duchess are only interested in money and having people obey them.  The Kingdom wants a king that cares for it so it is throwing a few tantrums right now to get people's attention and falling sick in the process.

Magrat later questions the other witches about the Fool she met at the Theatre and finds out that his name is Verence, and his master was the late King Verence whom he was named for.  The Fool's father was a bit of a cad and very popular with the ladies in his day according to Nanny.

Witches still can't meddle though (despite the fact that they just saved the baby and hid the crown and summoned a demon to find out what was going on).

Nanny Ogg has lost her pet cat, Greebo, and goes on a mission to find him, a mission that ends up with her captured and locked in the dungeon of the castle, faced with torture as the Duke and Duchess try to make her confess to crimes against them, which includes spreading rumours that they killed the old King.   

Thoroughly fed up, Nanny meets the ghost of the late King Verence who is still floating around the place gazing longingly at his favourite food in the kitchens.  He had tricked Greebo to the castle in the hope that the witches would come looking for him and would restore his son to the throne and tells Nanny exactly what happened the night of his death, when the Duchess handed the Duke the King's knife to stab him with and then shoved him down the stairs.

Cold and hungry and faced with the fairly dismal prospect of being tortured imminently, Nanny and Verence play eye spy.

Granny and Magrat, both disguised as unconvincing apple sellers, enter the castle to find and rescue Nanny.  Magrat is apprehended by guards and the Fool comes racing to her rescue.  He is fairly inept at this and Magrat ends up rescuing him and casting a spell to make the door to the dungeon (eventually) explode.

The witches barge in to find Nanny in the stocks, the late King Verence, the Duke and the Duchess.  The Fool is dispatched by the Duchess to fetch the guards but, clearly conflicted between his loyalty to the Duke and the fact he really wants to get to know Magrat better, dives behind her to hide instead.

The witches demand that the Duke abdicate, an act he refuses to do (fairly obviously) and instead laughs at his victory over the witches.  They can't meddle he reminds them, any King they put on the throne will only be ruling with their permission and therefore will be no King at all but a fool indeed.  They can't replace him without meddling and he is not going anywhere.  The Duke has won this battle.  Granny reminds him about Verence's son and the Duke gleefully points out that the boy is a child and not able to rule until he is a man, which gives the Duke at least 15 years to prepare.

Defeated and dejected, Granny acknowledges that the Duke is right.  The Duke and Duchess leave, sneering and jeering at the 'Wyrd Sisters', and Nanny is freed by Magrat and the Fool.  The late King begs the witches to intervene to put his baby son on the throne and save the Kingdom but the witches refuse, saying that they can't meddle.  The Fool nervously asks Magrat on a date (the meadow at 2pm) and she eventually agrees.  Overjoyed, the Fool rushes away after promising to wear a flower so that she recognises him.

Not satisfied with their victory, the Duke and Duchess are looking for a way to squash the rumours that they killed the old King with his own dagger.  The Fool absentmindedly comments on the power of words to subvert and twist reality and states that, with enough time and rumour, words can become reality and even become history.  The Duchess latches onto this idea and demands that the Fool go and find someone who can write a play, a play that will go around the world and be remembered long after rumour has died, a play that will rewrite history and present facts as the Duke and Duchess want them to be presented.   The Fool departs for Ankh-Morpork, the capital city, in search of a play-write.

Granny has the biggest temper tantrum that the Kingdom of Lancre has ever seen over the fact that someone has dared to put a witch in a dungeon (she could have caught her death) and being called 'Wyrd Sisters' by the Duke.  She concocts a plan to put the boy on the throne although children can't rule (that isn't meddling apparently).  Inspired by Black Aliss, an old witch who once turned a coach into a pumpkin and lived in a real gingerbread cottage, she takes action.  Black Aliss put a palace to sleep for 100 years (although she didn't actually, she just froze the palace in time which is really easy to do) and Granny is determined to do the same with Lancre, moving the whole kingdom 15 years into the future, meaning that the son of the King will now be an adult and ready to fight for his throne. She summons Nanny to help her as she will need to fly around the entire kingdom by cock crow.

Magrat keeps her date with the Fool, who is wearing a flower, just as he promised to help her recognise him and the two flirt rather awkwardly and fairly adorably with each other.  

Just as Magrat kisses the Fool, Granny and Nanny complete their spell, kickstart their brooms into action ready to fly around the Kingdrom (after a couple of duff starts from Granny's which really needs a mechanic to have a look at it and perhaps change the oil) and the land is frozen for 15 years.  Everyone is locked in place, exactly as they were, waiting for the rest of Discworld to move forward.

15 years later, shocked by what the witches have done and the fact that she has just entered the Guiness Book of World Records for Longest Kiss Ever, Magrat reacts badly (witches are very good at tantrums) when the Fool tells her he is going to Ankh-Morpork on a mission for the Duke and storms off in a huff.  The Fool goes anyway and, upon entering the city, is instantly mugged by a band of licensed thieves.  He has all of the money he was given to hire a play-write stolen but it's OK, a receipt was put in his hat so no one else does him that night.   

Luckily the dwarf Hwel (a play-write genius) and Tomjon come across the mugging and Tomjon, the greatest actor the Discworld has ever seen, persuades the robbers to give back most of what they have stolen.  Grateful and still rather dazed, the Fool offers to buy Hwel and Tomjon a drink, and, upon discovering that they are with the Theatre, hires them to write the play.

Hwel and Tomjon return to discuss the matter with Vitollier.  Hwel is reluctant at first as the whole idea seems fishy but Vitollier persuades the dwarf with the idea that the money will help build the Disc Theatre, meaning that they won't need to roam the countryside anymore, putting on performances for people who throw potatoes at them.  Hwel with her broad brummy accent agrees and writes the play (complete with three witches, you can do a lot with three witches, surprising no one's thought of it before really, and a ghost to Vitollier's dismay as you can never get the chalk out of the clothes).  

Tomjon agrees to act it and takes a group of the players and Hwel on the long journey to Lancre to perform the play for the Duke and Duchess.  Vitollier is despondent at seeing his son go, convinced that he will never see him again.  There is destiny at work here, he bemoans to Hwel, whom he discovers is actually a woman,  the mountains are calling him home and Tomjon looks just like the Fool as well.  It's all too much to be a coincidence. 

Back in Lancre the witches watch in their crystal ball as the little group of players wander on the road, slightly perplexed at the lack of swords and armour that they seem to have with them to fight their battle and also irritated that the group appear to be lost on the moors and are clearly not stopping to ask the local badgers for directions.

Granny takes it upon herself to intervene (not meddle), unconvincingly disguised as an old woman gathering wood and terryfying most of the band of players in the process who know better than to trust old women out on the moors gathering firewood, especially when there are no handy rivers available to carry her across and she rejects your lunch menu due to digestive issues.

The witches still can't meddle.  Rescuing the baby, hiding the crown, planning to replace the Duke with the late kings son, moving the kingdom forward 15 years and helping your lost "army" get to where it is supposed to be going isn't meddling.

The Fool and Magrat meet in the meadow again and the Fool tells Magrat about the play, a play that will absolve the Duke and Duchess of any wrongdoings and secure their favourable place in the history books.  The Fool tells Magrat when and where the play will be and agrees to let the witches into the theatre via the unguarded kitchen gate.

The play starts but things go wrong from the beginning.  Actors can't remember their lines, it is as if they are trying to tell untruth's and the land won't let them.  The witches are also not best pleased to see actors playing them on stage wearing green blusher and talking about putting babies in cauldrons.  Granny, realising that the audience are taken in by the web of lies unfolding on the stage in front of them and not wanting witches to always be 'old hags in green blusher', decides to take action (not meddling still) and heads purposefully backstage.

Backstage the Duke and Duchess are aware that the witches have come to the theatre and tells the guards to find them and arrest them.  The guards find the three actors who are playing the witches and mistakenly arrest them, ignoring their protestations of innocence.

Hwel, searching for the witches for Act 2, stumbles upon the three real witches backstage and shoves them in front of the audience as Act 2 starts.  The witches take advantage of the opportunity and cast a spell over the actors who instantly start to act out events as they really occurred the night that Verence was murdered.

Seeing this happen on stage in 'his play' snaps the Duke's mind and he inadvertently confesses to everything whilst denying it all.  The Duchess laughs the Duke's speech off, saying that without witnesses there is no proof, and without proof there is no deed.  The Fool can't take it anymore and reveals that he witnessed everything that night and saw the Duke kill the King.  Enraged at the Fool's betrayal, the Duke stabs the Fool with the theatre knife, stabs himself with it, runs off and falls over the battlements to his death.

The Duchess, in a desperate attempt to save herself, accuses everyone around her of treason and threatens to have them all executed.  She continues until Nanny, fed up with her talking, hits her over the head with a prop cauldron, knocking her out cold so she can be dragged off to the dungeons.  The Duchess later escapes from her cell but makes the mistake of going into the forest, where the bunnies finish her off.  Never trust a bunny.

With a distraught Magrat cradling the body of the Fool to her, Granny picks up the theatre knife, examines it and then demonstrates to everyone how the knife is a trick knife with the blade disappearing into the handle as actors can't be trusted with real ones.  The Fool realises that he is, after all, still alive.

Granny then declares that Tomjon is the rightful King of Lancre and offers him the crown.  Everyone is a bit thrown when he refuses to accept it, wanting a life in the theatre instead of a life in a castle.  The problem is, as Hwel points out, Tomjon don't really have a choice.  It's something he is born to.  The only chance he would have is if he had any brother's or sisters.  There's a pause, an idea hits Magrat and everyone stares at the Fool who suddenly looks very, very uncomfortable.

The three witches (one a bit more worse for wear having drunk rather a lot from her new coronation mug) gather back around their cauldron on the moor to talk about the coronation banquet they have just been at.  During the course of the discussion it is revealed that the Fool's father, who had a bit an eye for the ladies, had a dalliance with the Queen.  Magrat is horrified as this means that while the Fool and Tomjon share the same father, that father is not, in fact, the old King.  Granny points out that it doesn't matter,  the Fool has his head screwed on, he cares for the land and royalty has to start somewhere and it might as well start with him.

After all, witches don't meddle.

Building a World

It takes a lot of work to make a world come to life.  With the Discworld it is possibly even more challenging as you are building a world that is like ours, but different.  A world that exists for a lot of people only in their imagination and fan art and you are trying to make that world a reality.  You also need to build a world that will work within the context of the play, that will allow the actors the right amount of space to move around, will provide workable, practical pieces of set for them to interact with and climb on and will also allow them to get on and off the stage.  You need to marry the concept of the Director with the reality of what is possible and what is practical.

As a group of Players we are incredibly fortunate to have a set designer and builder as talented as Derek is.

He is a stalwart member of the group who has been with the Company in its various guises for over 50 years, who churns out set after set after set for our productions, and who also happens to be our President.  Each set takes months to build and is then transported in pieces to the theatre a couple of days before the play opens when the build starts.  It's not just the large pieces you see in the pictures that he is responsible for, he also builds the key props as well, such as, in the case of this particular production, the demon barrel (made out of plywood attached to a water butt which required a last minute edit to allow Sinead to actually get into it!), the large Cauldron (paper mache around a frame) and the stocks (wooden boards with a moveable mechanism).  I have seen Derek build working sinks with real water running out of taps, build a frontier shop that revolves and turns into a bedroom and make a giant, slightly obscene, Greek statue for a mansion. 

Discworld therefore was just another challenge for him.  The concept that RV gave Derek was relatively simple - a world supported by the great turtle A'Tuin with a cartoon like quality.  A castle on one side, the forest on the other.  Ramparts for actors to walk on and sit on and elevate themselves.  The Disc itself covering the stage (at one point this was going to be a rotating disc but that idea got shelved pretty quickly).  A Halloween Pantomime set.

By the weekend of Get In Derek had completed the majority of the work; all that was left was to transport it to the theatre and put it together.  

Get In involves as many hands on deck as possible.  A bunch of us met at the Warehouse for the load (humming the tune from Tetris as we tried to work out how on earth everything would fit into the van) and then more people met us at the theatre to unload.

Derek quickly marked the outline of the disc on the stage in chalk and then the flats were unloaded and carefully carried through (although scuffs and rips were inevitable) and pieces were laid out on the stage as we awaited instructions about how we were supposed to put things together.

We had two hours on the Sunday to get as much of the set together as possible - the large flats that required bracing at the back went up first as this was the day we had the most number of people around.  Braces and weights were provided by the theatre so we just needed to get the pieces up, screw them together, make sure that they were in the right place and brace them.  Easier said than done as flats are huge - each one took a good 2-3 people to support it.

Sometimes a ladder just isn't high enough to reach key elements either.  This is when the tower comes out to play (often only after someone realises that they need it and have managed to block it off stage.)  I once forgot about the tower being onstage at the Playhouse and ended up needing to move bits of set that had been fixed into place in order to roll it into the wings.   Towers also have all the cooperating ability of a supermarket trolley, just a supermarket trolley that is 20 foot high and has a habit of getting stuck on curtains.

People with a good head for heights were sent up the tower to hang key set pieces, hopefully straight, and then the boys got to play with power tools, fixing flats together.

Gradually the bare bones of the set started to take shape and you hoped that you had put things in the right place!  You see those ramparts below?  Yep they moved quite a lot which meant that people standing on them to secure the battlements had to be very, very careful!  We didn't fix them in place for another 2 days as we needed to be able to paint the disc around them.  The middle of the steps also needed additional bracing as you had the distinct impression that if you stepped on them in the wrong place you would go straight through.

Get In is fulled by a steady supply of tea, coffee and sugary snacks.  Play week isn't exactly conducive to a balanced diet in general - meals are often skipped, dinner becomes a pastry and a coke if you remember and you grab sandwiches when you get a moment.  You ride play week on a sugar high and crash at the end. I finished play week and immediately ate a plate of vegetables and other people have similar stories (one of my friends confessed to me that she got in after a performance, cooked a pan of peas and ate it before going to bed as she was so desperate for vitamins!). Being in the Gulbenkian we did have the advantage of the cafe next to the theatre (you didn't even need to step outdoors to get food) but this isn't always the case at other venues!

Over the next couple of days the few of us who had taken annual leave came into the theatre to help Derek get the set together.  One of the biggest and most time consuming of the jobs was the Disc on the floor.  It started with a base layer of blue paint, carefully edged around and then was left to dry for a couple of hours.  Land masses are marked on in dark browns, forests are stippled in and water pools outlined in green.  The volcano was marked on the central island and then the water effects completed.  This was the time consuming bit.  We first stippled white all around the edge of the disc and also used it to define the coves of the islands.  We then added layers of blues and greens to break up the white and give the waterfall effect around the rim of the disc.  On top of the blue in the centre went the swirls for the cloud effects and then the boards were fastened to link the turtle to the disc. These were painted blue, allowed to dry and the waterfall effect was continued up and over the boards. The whole process took two days and destroyed my nails which are now stained blue as we gave up with brushes, getting a better effect from using our fingers to swirl the paint.

The idea is to get something which looks subtle but has depth and interest to it under the lights.

Of course when you are spending a week in the theatre you have to behave yourself.  There is absolutely no tom foolery allowed - it's a very serious business!  At no point at all did we re-enact Titanic or play stupid games with the Turtle and the barrel.

As the set went up and the paint went down there was also work taking place on the technical aspects of the show.  This was the opportunity to rig lights, work on the lighting design and ensure that the sound is cued correctly.  This bit was a challenge, especially when we ended up loosing our sound engineer on the day of the tech rehearsal as he could no longer get there until the first performance.  One panic later we had a replacement engineer who had never worked in the Gulb FX and LX box before but knew his way around a board.  The only issue was the fact that he couldn't get there until the dress rehearsal, which meant that the tech would be run with lighting changes only, not sound.  This worried both RV and myself immensely but there was absolutely nothing we could do about it.

Instead we focused on getting the lights right.  This play had to convey a multitude of different settings, from a cottage in the forest to a sun dappled meadow to a damp, dark dungeon.  There was even a sequence with supernatural forces and of course the casting of spells (which we had wanted flash bangs for but they were too expensive).  To help with this process key set pieces were left in their positions on the stage to make sure that they are being lit correctly and people working on the set often get yelled at from the box with the request 'Could you just move and stand there so we can see how you look?  Cheers!'.  Lights often needed moving as well to get them in the right position, such as lighting the stairs through the auditorium which meant that for sections of the build workers were asked to vacate the stage so that the tower could be rolled on and allow people access to the rigs.  When the lights were right markers went down on the stage to ensure that when set changes occured the moveable pieces were always set back in the same position time and time again.

At the end of the first day we moved into the tech rehearsal, jumping cue to cue to ensure that all of the technical aspects of the show were actually working properly.  Tech is a long, often stressful process which requires infinite patience from the actors as they walk on and off the stage time and time again.

The second day we were back in the theatre, putting the finishing touches to the world, covering up errors and seams with masking tape and painting over the top (again a time consuming process as you continue the brick structure to make the pieces appear seamless), fixing the barrel to the truck that will allow the demon to be rolled on and off the stage and painting it to look like floor boards, strengthening the ramparts as people needed to be able to run up and down them, supporting the turtles head, fixing the holes in the turtle, painting and cleaning props and painting the boards that mask the struts.  Basically we were frantically trying to get the stage ready for the dress rehearsal.

 

We made it though and after 20 hours in the theatre painting and building we were just about ready to go.  Dress rehearsal is run as a real rehearsal, as though you have an audience in and we were able to do that as RV had spent all day getting the sound right ready for the engineer to come in that evening.

 

Regardless of how frustrating, lengthy and time consuming the Get In process can be, it's one of my favourite parts of putting together a show.  It is the time when you really feel the show come to life and you get a real rush of pleasure hearing the excitement in the actors voices when they see it for the first time.  There is a reason I dedicate an entire week of my annual leave to play week and Get In is integral to that.