Devil Gate Drive performed live on Zoom October 2nd 2020.
Vocals by Kirsten McClelland
Written by Nicky Chinn & Mike Chapman.
Devil Gate Drive: A theatrical journey back in time to the narcissistic days of 70s glam rock.
Director
Andy Corelli of Awkward Stranger had an idea.
A play about six teenagers who grew up during the Glam Rock era and
discovered who they were through the music. Not a musical, or a singalong, but
a drama. A drama that explored what it was like to grow up in the 1970`s especially
in the daily battleground of school, and society`s expectations of who you were.
The
play would incorporate excerpts of Glam Rock songs but adapted to different music
styles to suit the mood of the play and characters. For instance we could have `Blockbuster` by
Sweet performed in a bluesy style, sung by the musicians, or actors. The songs though would not be an interlude from
the story but integral to it and the life of the characters.
Would
I be interested in developing a play on that premise? I don`t think Andy had finished asking the
question when I said yes!
The
nature of the eventual Zoom premiere determined that the full ambitions for the
music had to wait for another day, when it would be presented as originally
envisioned with the musicians on stage. Still musician Mark McClelland and vocalist
Kirsten McClelland produced
their own highly original adaptations of some of the original songs. Have a listen to the graphic, if you haven`t
already, at the head of this essay and be amazed. It was a joy to work with such talented
musicians.
The
above was in the future though. Before
we reached that point during the following months from the meeting in the café
we discussed the finer points of what play would be all about. Not about the
songs or the history of Glam music but focussed on the characters. Taking Sweets song `Six Teens` as an inspiration
but only that, not expand on the stories in the song, but develop different
stories and characters.
It
would be a story about the search for self against teenage doubt, the bluster,
the bullying, the pressure to be the stereotype you were expected to be by your
family, your upbringing and maybe more crucially yourself. It would be about the characters making
choices good and bad, with consequences for themselves and others that reached
into the present day. The music would be
the catalyst, or open the door, for those choices to be made in a time when education,
that should have been the catalyst seemed remote and failed to stir the inner
them.
The
music, the songs, the desire to be more, did.
Talk
is good but a writer writes.
I`ll
start with a statement.
I
don`t believe there is any such thing as flashbacks. Or even memory really. Flashbacks or memory are artificial divides
in drama and life between then and now.
Everything exists in the present, the future never arrives either, as
tomorrow is actually today when it is.
This
was one of the things I wanted to work on in the play as a conceit and device
to tell the story. What the characters ` remember` even if they
contain facts, is only a reflection of what they emotionally feel in the
present, in the moment of `remembering.`
Dramatically
I was aiming to break down the artificial barriers in other areas that exist
between the various elements of storytelling.
Feeling and imagination are not fantasy, or escape from the truth but the
real reality of the individual characters and the group.
Andy`s
idea of all six characters in 1974 and the present played by older actors appealed
to me greatly. There would be no
shifting to the `younger selves` during the `remembering` scenes. Everything shown or heard would be contained
in the older characters consciousness.
Also
the fact the musicians would be present on stage would break the convention of
the musicians as separate from the actual performance. The music is central to the characters, they
should exist in the same present space.
As said because of the nature of Zoom it wasn`t practical to have the
musicians live performance alongside the actors. It will be on a stage.
Older
actors playing both sets of roles set me thinking further about the artificial
divides and where emotion, and which drives the characters actions, lies in
stories.
If
someone visits a place either familiar or not the refrain heard is about an `atmosphere`
that comes from the very walls of the place.
I
wanted to use and challenge that.
Example. Before and during the thinking and writing of
` Devil Gate Drive` I was developing my thoughts in a series of short plays
around buildings and spaces.
In
my play `Death of a Factory` a factory is the central character and is
about to be demolished (die!) A very different play from `Devil Gate Drive` but
looking at ways of `collapsing` the story divides to get deeper into the truths
of the situation.
This
is the opening of the play. The workers
Joe and Sam are setting up the machines for the final shift. Joe is humming and part singing. `Highway to Hell. ` The Factory addresses the
audience.
I am factory. I have
had many names. In this age my name is
Catriona Mill. I have been many things.
In this age I am a textile factory. (Takes
a piece of yarn out of its pocket.) In
my Golden years nothing but the finest cashmere. (Joe and Sam hands Catriona
pieces of yarn.) Now the cheapest of the cheap imitation. And look where that
has got me. (Puts cashmere in one
pocket, the other yarn in other pocket. Re Joe/Sam) On this day of all days I
should care about them. I have watched them so many times set up the machines.
And the machines are part of me. But they don’t care about me. They moan and
groan but they’ll go on living. Of a sorts.
And I’ve got mice running up and down my arms that can sing better than
that one. (Joe.)
In
this play there is no set, only characters. What would usually be a static
representation of a factory is a walking breathing about to die character. It
speaks the emotional memories of all that have walked through its doors. It is not one character but hundreds but at
the same time an individual entity.
It
feels its own death approach, the betrayal of those who have benefited from its
existence. It has brought so much to the
surrounding community but soon it will be gone and more than likely forgotten. Whether
those feelings are true in the sense of facts, they are true to what the
character of the factory feels. It is its
reality.
To
to me no such thing as a ` feeling` when you enter a room or a building, or
walk through a graveyard. Everything
emanates from you. Like the `remembering.
`
You
bring the energy, the `feeling.` That is
why to me having a factory set peopled by characters coming and going telling
you their story, their memories are better served as drama when the artificial
visual walls come tumbling down, and everything on the stage, including the
factory, is active.
Being
active meant displaying the actual emotion without judgement, or moralising, or
blame. Judgement, moralising or blame
put up other barriers which stops us seeing the characters as they are, but as whom
we think, or wish, or need them to be.
The
characters in Devil Gate are, yes buffeted and influenced by peer and society
forces, but their feelings are theirs, their choices are theirs, the
consequences of those choices are theirs—not society`s, their parents or
teachers. I didn`t want a separation between the characters and the world they
lived in, because the actual world that they live in, in 1974 and in the
present is their consciousness. To try
to get to that with `Death of the Factory `the factory has a voice. With Devil
Gate it was the same `collapse` of barriers, the voices of parents or teachers,
or the songs themselves held in the consciousness of the characters.
`Devil
Gate Drive` is about many things but one of the most important is having a
place inside your head which you can go…a safe place. That rings true to me because I have always lived
inside my head. To me most people do to
one extent or another. My internal world
of imagination defines me more than the outer markers such as where I was born,
how I have earned my living. I used to
work in a textile factory. All the
characters in the play are searching in one form or another for this safe
place. Of course it is there all the time but for our characters in Devil Gate
the music is the key. For me it was
writing.
Devil
Gate cut scene: the characters as young
in 1974. They build Devil Gate Drive out
of books, and pencils, what is at hand in the classroom. To be quickly put back to the rational
objects when the teacher turned round.
It was cut because I felt it put up a barrier to what they were
searching for inside their head. The safe place wasn`t static or solid but
could shift with need.
Only
in Devil Gate Drive did their lives and thoughts truly `come alive. `
No
spoiler alert here but in Devil Gate they encounter aspects that are usually in
another form but `come alive` to them through their emotional need.
Another
aspect I wanted to explore was that their
`remembering` in the present could cross over between the various
characters, not because they all went to the same space ie school, but were
connected through the emotional need of the music. This manifested itself in the drama with my take
on the ` flashback. ` The `flashbacks` are fluid from one character to another,
also shifting in a moment between then and now.
The `flashbacks` not actual memories in some realistic order that can be
checked with the historical record but emotions crackling inside their middle
aged heads.
The
unreal reality of it all is the constant flux of feelings.
This
was my basis for telling the different but connected stories of the Six
Teens. They had their own stories, and
more importantly as mentioned they were responsible for their own choices in
how those stories unfolded. I aimed to
give them the respect to make their own choices and suffer or gain from them.
I loved writing this play; it was a joy
to work with such a fantastic and imaginative director such as Andy. With a group of actors-- Janette Foggo; Kirsten Maguire; Estrid Barton; Dougal Lee; John Love;
Andrew McDonald--who despite the newness of the Zoom
form, gave their all to the process and the roles. The issues and situations the characters find
themselves in are not easy, as they shouldn`t be in a drama that has ambition
to explore real feelings, whether in a naturalistic setting, or surreal as Devil
Gate.
Zoom
brought up particular challenges luckily not for me really as a writer but for
the director and actors. Watching a supremely
imaginative risk taking director, and actors willing to go for it, reminded me
why I`m quite happy being a writer thank you very much!
My
experience of Zoom theatre makes me realise that it is not a substitute for `
real theatre` but a storytelling form in its own right.
Zoom
theatre to me is an exciting discovery and working with it as it is, is the way
to explore it capabilities. It can have
its issues with delay in sound, sudden loss of internet signal, and the biggest
for the actors not being in the room or on the same stage to interact directly
as characters.
Some
of these issues—sound not working when it supposed to—can happen in any live
show whether theatre or not.
Why
don`t we consider these aspects not as issues but as virtues. Use the delay, the sudden loss of signal, even
the remoteness of the actors (characters) as a new grammar in storytelling. I don`t have answers how to do that but
throw it out there as thoughts. It could
very well be the beginning of a new era. Early film was exactly that, early, in
other words, young, stumbling trying to find its artistic feet. Inventing
language and grammar to suit itself not merely taking conventions from the
stage and transferring them onto the screen.
If we imagine hard enough we can do the same with online theatre.
Also
theatre itself! Are we in danger at the
moment of being sentimental about its absence?
Did it work all the time, or even most of the time? Was it challenging enough in form and
content? How was the experience for the
audience? What audience did we reach?
With
Zoom the potential is there to reach hundreds or more for each
performance. There were seventy in the audience for Devil Gate. With Zoom, if you are like
me with extreme loss of hearing you nearly hear every word. I love going to the theatre but many a time I
am exhausted not by the exhilaration of the story but straining to hear and
follow it. Also regardless of the weather outside its always the perfect night for theatre on Zoom. One of the crucial elements that needs to be addressed if Zoom theatre is to flourish is money! At the moment it is mainly volunteer, or if anyone is paid at all it is by donations. That can`t really continue long term. Buying a ticket has to become the norm as with any live performance.
Returning to theatre theatre. Is
it time to get more raw in our storytelling? By that I mean to stop focussing
on the production values of something and concentrate on the rawness of the
emotional lives of the characters. Has
theatre become too comfortable in its setting?
The `night out` aspect of it. Are
we challenged enough when we go to the theatre?
When
was the last time you were truly challenged? When was the last time you weren`t
told what to think, but challenged to think?
When
I write, the person first and foremost I need to challenge is myself. I voted to stay in the EU but if I was
writing a play about it would be from the perspective of someone who voted to
leave. Again, and crucially or it would
simply me telling myself I was right and therefore superior, I would aim to
tell it without judgement, moralising or blame.
It would be trying to reach that character`s reality.
I
understand why it happens but part of me thinks standing ovations should be
discouraged. Applause, appreciation yes for the actors and director, and maybe
even the writer but…shouldn`t there be a pause, a hesitation, at the end of the
play.
A
disturbance in the inner being of the audience.
Or is it merely a pat on the head and validation that what you think
when you enter the theatre is correct?
The surface never mind the depths undisturbed.
I
am not talking about subject matter here but the questions, not the answers,
brought to the surface by what happens on the stage. Whether that stage is in a theatre or online.
John
Peel once said that he received hundreds of demo tapes every week. The vast majority he could have an instant opinion.
Good or bad. A few he couldn`t decide
what his opinion was.
Maybe
that is what art is after all?
Food
for thought?
Hopefully
`Devil Gate Drive` will come to a theatre near you in the not too distant
future.
In
the meantime as someone once said…A writer writes!
The
play I`m working on just now asks, amongst others, the question.
What would you do to
live even a little longer?
This
is the opening of `The Lazarus Option. `
PROLOGUE
(Prisoner 4500 in
prison uniform and Sarah in business suit face the audience. They are in different spaces, prisoner in her
cell, Sarah on a train on the way to the prison. They speak to the audience.)
SARAH— My name is Sarah
and I am dying. I have one chance to
prolong my life. To continue with my
good work. The Lazarus Option.
4500—I am prisoner
4500. My name has been erased. I have no problem with that. Didn`t like it anyway. I am a murderer.
SARAH— I am a good
person. A moral person. I believe in the
concept of right and wrong. Consequences
for your actions.
4500— I was due to be
executed last week. Got as far as needle touching skin. They stopped it because
of the Lazarus Option. I have no say in the matter. Okay by me.
SARAH— Like now I
travel every day to Edinburgh, to work, on the train. Today is not every day.
4500— Even at the
distance of one mile…the distance from the station to the jail…I can hear the
whoosh of air as the train stops. It is not an official stop but the driver
does it to torment us. To let his
passengers catch a glimpse, maybe, of the evil ones. A nice little earner I hear. That’s
okay. I would do the same.
SARAH—Today I will get
off at the station. It has all been
arranged. You can see it from the station. A forty storey prison that
disappears into the clouds some days. I
have heard some people on the train angry at this. ‘It should go down the way. To hell. ` When it opened I remember the
headline. ` A monument to wickedness. `
4500— Apparently we
have become quite the tourist attraction. We are good for business. A whole
little village of stalls by the track to cater for those who stop to gawp. At a safe distance of course. They don’t want to catch
our evil. I feel we should get a percentage. This cell could do with a spruce
up. A coat of paint. Maybe a little portrait gallery of my
victims.
SARAH—I’m
not one to stand and jeer at them. I find it undignified. I bring my own coffee. I relax and read a
good book. Or I work on the train. My
work is important to me. To others. This is the thing you must understand. My whole life has been for others. I do this for others. Not for me. Maybe they will gawp and jeer at me when I
get off at the station. Maybe they will
think I am visiting a relative. Do I
look like someone who would have a relative in such a place? Of course not. I am a scientist. They might recognize me! I have made the mainstream news of late.
4500-- I wonder if I will end up on
her wall?
SARAH--
I have always thought of the prison an eyesore. It despoils the symmetry of the
surrounding countryside.
4500-- She will be here
soon.
SARAH—They are less
than human. She is less than human. I
have read her file. Not strictly meant to.
She is bad and I am good. There
is no debate. I am certain. It is my
right. It is for the greater good. For others. Always for others.
4500-- They say it`s
what I deserve. No argument there.
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