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ANDERSEN’S ENGLISH WORKPACK

Produced by Out of Joint 2010

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Introduction

Aim of Workpack

The resource materials in this pack are intended to enhance students’ enjoyment and understanding of Andersen’s English. The activities are variations of the rehearsal techniques used by Max Stafford-Clark during the production, and present creative and practical strategies for learning in a classroom setting. The workpack also works alongside the workshop that Out of Joint provides for Andersen’s English, led by the Artistic Director, the Associate Director or the Education Manager.

The resources are primarily aimed at students aged 16+ who are studying Drama at BTEC or A Level. The workpack is in two main sections – Researching the Play and the Rehearsal Process.

Rehearsing the Play

Andersen’s English explores the story behind a real meeting between Charles Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen, when the latter outstayed his welcome at Gads Hill Place in 1857. Artistic Director Max Stafford-Clark always encourages vigorous research before and during the rehearsal process, and with 9 out of the 10 characters in the play being real people, there was extensive reading on this period of history and the people themselves. This section includes an introduction into the play’s setting, as well as Dickens himself and the controversy of his personal life in his later years.

Rehearsing the Play

The Associate Director Jessica Swale gives is an insight into the rehearsal process with extracts from her diary over the five weeks before opening in Bury St Edmunds.

Student Activities

The workpack includes an introduction into Max Stafford-Clark’s rehearsal techniques such as actioning and status, as well as classroom exercises relating to the production.

We hope you find the materials interesting and enjoyable.

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Contents

Part 1 : Researching the play

The Play’s Setting, and Characters Page 4

A Background to Dickens Page 5

The Dickens Controversy Pages 6-7

Part 2 : Rehearsing the Play

Max Stafford Clark’s Rehearsal Techniques Actioning and Analysis Pages 8-10 Exercises To Do Pages 11-12

A Trip To Gad’s Hill Place Pages 13-15

Associate Director Jessica Swale’s Diary Pages 16-19

An Interview with the playwright, Sebastian Barry Pages 20-22

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The Play’s Setting

Andersen’s English tells the story of Hans Christian Andersen reminiscing in Copenhagen in 1870 of his stay with Charles Dickens and his family at their home in Gads Hill, Kent 12 years earlier.

Dickens, a great admirer of the Danish writer, invited him to stay for two weeks during that summer; Andersen outstayed this welcome by three weeks.

The sudden death of Dickens’ older and much loved friend Douglas Jerrold in June 1857 deeply affected Dickens, and he spent much of the summer away from Gads Hill organising readings and performances to raise money for Jerrold’s family. This left Andersen a lot of the time with his wife Catherine, sister-in-law Georgina and their children.

The play opens and closes with Andersen prompted to talk about his visit on news of Dickens’ sudden death, at the age of just 58, in 1870. He speaks in hindsight of the collapse in Dickens’ marriage that led to their separation and Catherine’s banishment from the family home and her children.

But Andersen does not recall the growing tensions in the Dickens household, greatly due to his hesitant grasp of the English language, and perhaps also due to his huge admiration for Charles and his desire to be accepted and loved.

The Characters of the Play:

Charles Dickens Aged 46 in 1857 when Andersen comes to stay

Anderson Aged 65 when he reminisces, 52 when he visits Gads Hill

Catherine Dickens’ wife; aged 42

Walter Dickens’ son; aged 16

Kate Dickens’ daughter, aged 19

Georgie (Georgina) Catherine’s younger unmarried sister, aged 30

Aggie The maid in the Dickens household, aged 16

Ellen Ternan an Irish actress, 18 is doubled with Kate.

Stefan a young Danish friend of Andersen’s, 18 is doubled with Walt

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A Background to Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens, arguably England’s all time greatest novelist was born in Portsmouth in 1812. In 1821 his financially stable childhood in Chatham came to an abrupt end when his father, John Dickens, was imprisoned in the Marshalsea debtor’s prison in Southwark, London for spending beyond his means in entertaining and the general maintaining of his social position. The family soon joined him in residence there, while Charles boarded at family friend Elizabeth Roylance in Camden Town, North London.

To pay for Charles’ board and help his family, Dickens began working ten-hour days at Warren’s Blacking Warehouse, on Hungerford Stairs near Charing Cross. His job was pasting labels on jars of show polish, which earned him six shillings a week. The treatment of employees, particularly children in the early 19th Century was unregulated, extremely strenuous and often exceedingly cruel, and this made a deep impression on Charles. It undoubtedly influenced later characters, novels and essays, and also formed the foundation of his interest in the reform of labour and socio-economic conditions.

In 1836 Dickens married Catherine Hogarth, daughter of George Hogarth, editor of the Evening Chronicle. Catherine was from a wealthy and established family, and although Dickens was to go on to become the most famous writer in Britain, at the time it was a match slightly above his social standing.

Catherine, who bore him 10 children, suffered emotional and physical strain from the many births, and her unmarried sister Georgina joined the Dickens household to help raise the children.

At the time the play is set, Charles has just learned of the sudden death of his beloved friend, the writer Douglas Jerrold. Soon after Andersen’s five week visit ended, he formally separated from his wife Catherine. In the 19th Century it was expected that Charles would remain the primary carer for his children, and so Catherine’s banishment from him and their home meant that she did not see her children again. Georgina did not return to her family when Catherine was sent to London, and instead remained at Gads Hill until Charles’ death in 1870.

It is argued that the catalyst for Catherine and Charles’ separation was the 17 year old actress Ellen Ternan. Ellen performed in his amateur theatre company in Wilkie Collins’ A Frozen Deep to raise money for Jerrold’s family. Charles fell in love, and maintained a secret relationship with Ellen until his death. The exact details of their association are not concretely known, and continue to fuel debate amongst Dickens’ scholars.

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The Dickens Controversy

Andersen’s English’s focus on Dickens’ family life, in particular the breakdown of his marriage, could be deemed controversial. While Charles’ relationship with Ellen Ternan is widely known, the banishment of his wife and continued companionship with her sister is less so.

If one looks at the Wikipedia entry of Charles Dickens for example, in the 16 pages that cover his personal and professional life there is nothing of his marriage breakdown. All that is said of Catherine is that she bore him 10 children and accompanied him on his first tour of America (which she reluctantly did, not wishing to leave the children for 3 months). Georgina is said to have joined the family over that time to help with the younger children and ‘remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until her brother-in-law’s death in 1870.’

In the 19th Century if a marriage separation was demanded by the husband (for reasons of ‘insanity’ on her part, for example) it was necessary for him to remain with the children in the family home. As a result, Catherine was forbidden from seeing her children, and she never saw her husband again. There is no evidence to suggest that Georgie and Charles had a sexual relationship, in fact Charles ordered the doctors to examine her to prove she was a virgin. An extreme measure perhaps, but in the 19th Century a relationship with a sister or brother-in-law was tantamount to incest. These statements are undisputed facts; Catherine was sent away, and Georgie remained in the house, and yet they are not widely known.

Perhaps it is unnecessary to delve into the story of Dickens’ failed marriage. Perhaps his body of work should speak for itself. Many scholars, writers and members of the public are fascinated by this period in Dickens’ life, his ‘breakdown’ some argue, which was also near the time he began his relationship with the 19 year old actress Ellen Turnan.

His affair with Ellen continues to be debated, and there is a school of thought that while they were companions, their relationship was never sexual. This of course can be neither proven nor disproved.

In the play three of Dickens’ sons feature: Walter (aged 16), Charlie (aged 18) and Plorn (aged 6), with Charlie and Plorn as puppets manipulated by the actors, leaving Walter the only ‘real’ son onstage. Walter was sent to fight in the army in India by his father at 16, despite desperate protestations by Catherine and Walter himself. The biographer Michael Slater admits that Dickens was, not uncommon at the time, rather dismissive of his own part in the size of his family. During the dinner scene on the first night of Andersen’s stay in Act One there is the following exchange between Charles and Catherine:

DICKENS: Well, that is an awful lot of singing. I am afraid I will be much in town now myself, if I am to make arrangements for Jerrold’s family. At least there are only five children. It was my fate to have so great a crowd of them, Andersen, that I meet them in the corridors in the night, and think I have prowlers. One night I may shoot one.

CATHERINE: I hope you would not kill one of our children.

DICKENS: Of course not, madam -- since it was you made them in the first place. It’s just that you made so many.

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There is certainly an element of playfulness here, but the general sentiment that Catherine gave birth to children, of her own accord, that he must now deal with should not be overlooked.

Dickens’ admirable interest in the reform of labour and socio-economic conditions has certainly heralded him a champion of the people. He could even be considered the ‘father of Christmas’ with his A Christmas Carol, a staple among book shelves and educational reading lists to this day. The play and the production does not characterise Charles as a cruel Dickensian brute, but it may come as quite a surprise to learn that his relationship with his own children and wife was not as generous implied by his stories.

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Max Stafford-Clark’s Rehearsal Techniques

Actioning & Analysis

In a rehearsal period of five weeks at Out of Joint, the first two are spent analysing the text, primarily using a process called ‘actioning’ that encourages the actors to explore their intentions in every line, or rather every thought within the line. Before we block (position the action onstage) any of the scenes, the actors sit around a table with the writer and director and together they decide these ‘actions’.

An action is a transitive verb, which means something that you want to do to the other person you are talking to (whether physically present or not). For example, you might tell someone that you love them in order to embarrass them, please them or anger them. The ‘embarrasses’ or ‘pleases’ or ‘angers’ is the action of the line.

Have a look at this extract between Dickens and Catherine.

Night time.Catherine is reading a little book of poems. Dickens has a measuring stick and is measuring.

CATHERINE: What are you doing Charles? DICKENS: I am measuring.

CATHERINE: What are you measuring?

DICKENS: The distance - between two points.

CATHERINE: And why Charles?

DICKENS: Because – I – it will be easier perhaps to block the door to my dressing room.

CATHERINE: It was very convenient for you, going in and out that way.

DICKENS: It was. But now I find I wish to be inconvenient – and inaccessible, except from the corridor outside.

CATHERINE: I do not understand you.

DICKENS: I do not understand myself. Indeed I am like a man on fire, like a sailor in a plunging ship. Like a fierce, buzzing fly without its wings.

CATHERINE: It’s time to sleep. I can read no more of these Four Seasons. It used to calm me. I have reached the end of Spring and I am exhausted. I will blow out the candle, if you not mind.

DICKENS: And leave me in the dark?

CATHERINE: I will obviously wait until you are in bed.

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Stanislavski, the pioneer of naturalism (believable acting) thought that everything a character does or says must have an established ‘objective’. In the scene above, (in its most simplistic form) Dickens’ objective is to block the door to his dressing room, and therefore change the layout of their bedroom, and Catherine’s is to dissuade him. To delve a little deeper, Catherine’s objective is to connect with her husband and calm his worries. But it would be very dull and unhelpful direction to tell the actor to simply ‘plan’, ‘dissuade’ or ‘connect’ all the way through the scene. The lines show us that Dickens is distracted and perturbed, but that again is not a helpful direction for the actor on its own. To play a scene ‘distracted’ throughout would give no texture to their dialogue, or to their relationship. In terms of Catherine wishing to dissuade him, or calm him down, there are numerous ways that one can do this. One can dissuade someone by ‘attacking’, ‘soothing’, ‘seducing’ or ‘pleasing’… to name just a few.

Actioning encourages an actor to play with the ext before making more specific decisions, and helps to map the emotional journey of the scene. If the company feels that the scene steadily builds in tension, then the actions could rise in intensity with each line. For example, to ‘focus’, to ‘alert’, to ‘warn’, to ‘grip’, to ‘shake’ and to ‘horrify’, as actions in a sequence would ensure that the scene develops towards a natural climax.

Here is the scene again between Catherine and Charles, only this time with ‘actions’ for each thought or line:

Night time.Catherine is reading a little book of poems. Dickens has a measuring stick and is measuring.

CATHERINE: [PROBES] What are you doing Charles? DICKENS: [EVADES] I am measuring.

CATHERINE: [PINS] What are you measuring?

DICKENS: [RIDICULES] The distance - between two points.

CATHERINE: [PURSUES] And why Charles?

DICKENS: [TEACHES] Because – I – [TESTS] it will be easier perhaps to block the door to my dressing room.

CATHERINE: [RESISTS] It was very convenient for you, going in and out that way.

DICKENS: [CONFRONTS] It was. [INVOLVES] But now I find I wish to be inconvenient – and inaccessible, except from the corridor outside.

CATHERINE: [CONFRONTS] I do not understand you.

DICKENS: [ENLISTS] I do not understand myself. [HORRIFIES] Indeed I am like a man on fire, like a sailor in a plunging ship. Like a fierce, buzzing fly without its wings.

CATHERINE: [SOOTHES] It’s time to sleep. [ENGAGES] I can read no more of these Four Seasons. [LIGHTENS] It used to calm me. [AMUSES] I have reached the end

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of Spring and I am exhausted. [PREPARES] I will blow out the candle, if you not mind.

DICKENS: [REPROACHES] And leave me in the dark?

CATHERINE: [HUMOURS] I will obviously wait until you are in bed.

You can see how certain actions allow the actor more room to play and develop. Catherine’s lines ‘It’s time to sleep…..I will blow out the candle’ has five actions that colour and deepen the character’s intentions. The actor is directed here to ‘soothe’ and then ‘engage’ in quick succession, breaking up the short sentences with new and invigorating ways to play them.

Here is the next section of the scene, for you to action yourself:

While actioning always think of what the character wishes to do to the other. Of course each character has their own emotional state and their own agenda, and these are very important factors. But they are not alone in the story. Characters may be driven by these factors, but the way in which they communicate them is what enriches the scene.

Dickens staring at her

CATHERINE: What?

DICKENS: I am fixed to the floor. I wonder if it is not a symptom of madness to be unable to rest, even when quite still? Two foot six and a half inches. I will just note it down for the carpenter. I will go and do so. I won’t wake you, never fear. I will creep back later.

CATHERINE: What is the matter?

DICKENS: There is nothing the matter, in the proper understanding of the phrase.

CATHERINE: If you say not.

DICKENS: I say – go to sleep. Go to sleep. Go to sleep.

CATHERINE: I will not sleep easily, with Walter going away.

DICKENS: We should be thankful there is a great Empire to mop these sons up. CATHERINE: To mop them up? These boys I love?

DICKENS: Well, well, come now, Kate, let’s not pretend you had the doing of them. It has been Georgie mostly has tended them.

CATHERINE: Now you are getting angry.

DICKENS: I am not getting angry.

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EXERCISES TO DO

1. IMPROVISATION

We use improvisations throughout rehearsals. They are an excellent way of exploring characters and their back stories, as well as imagining what might be happening before or after a particular scene. With regards to Andersen’s English, a play told from the perspective of an outsider, improvisations can be used to delve into a scene that this outsider might not have been privy to, or that he/she simply didn’t understand.

Try some of the following scenarios as ways to explore the characters and their backstories.

a. Georgina first comes to stay

We know that Georgina was asked to stay at Gads Hill Place to help with the children and the running of the house. By the time of the play, Georgina has established herself as an important member of the household. She is maternal with the children, and acts as Charles’ confidante. Catherine has grown angry and upset at what she sees as a gross intrusion. But was that always the case?

Improvise the first dinner that Georgina had with the family on her first night at Gads Hill. Is Catherine happy to see her sister? Is Georgina intimidated by Dickens, the great novelist, or has she always had an easy relationship with her brother-in-law? What of Walt and Kate? Are they excited to have their Auntie Georgina to stay, or are they upset that their mother may spend less time with them? When you have played around with the characters reactions to each other and expectations, think about how they might feed into the action of the play.

b. Aggie and Dr Bill

Charles discovers that Aggie is pregnant when he is told by Dr Bill, though at the time he does not know that his 16 year old (soon to leave to fight in India) is the father. Improvise the scene between Aggie and Dr Bill, and explore Aggie’s initial reaction to the news as well as Dr Bill’s. Does he offer her advice? Does he comfort, or chastise her? Does she confess it is Walt’s child? This scene would be of great help to the actor playing Aggie when she comes to play the later scenes with Charles.

2. STATUS

You will need a pack of cards.

Begin by splitting the group in half, half take the stage, the other half sit and watch as the audience. Give each active player a playing card (take the face cards out first so that all cards are between 2 and 10). Ask them to look at their cards and then put it out of sight.

They must now imagine they are returning home from a night at the Victorian theatre. The number on their card delineates their status, 2 being the lowest, 10 being the highest. They must play the level of their status. Choose a character appropriate to this status level, e.g. a 10 might be the owner of the house and the host, an 8 a respected writer, perhaps , a 3 a quiet and shy individual,

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perhaps an ignored child of the owner or a maid. Shout ‘action’ and watch the scene develop.

After a few minutes, ask the actors to line up at random. Now ask the audience to put them in order of status, from lowest on the left to highest on the right. Then ask them to reveal their cards. How clearly did people play their status? Consider how factors like energy, body language, choice of words, mode of address and the taking up of physical space all help to reveal status levels.

Now swap over halves. Ask the second half of the group to, this time, choose a character from Andersen’s English. Ask them to choose, in their heads, a status level of between 2 and 10 for their character, and to take that card from the pack without showing anyone. Now they can begin a scene with all the characters, perhaps the picnic scene when they climb Gad’s Hill. Once they have performed this scene, ask the audience to line up the characters in order of the status they played. Now they can reveal their cards. Ask the audience to comment on which factors helped them to ‘read’ each character’s status. Discuss whether you all agree with the decisions on the various status levels of the characters.

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A Trip to Gad’s Hill Place

During the rehearsal process, the entire Out of Joint company went on a trip to Gads Hill Place, home of Charles Dickens and his family, and the setting of Andersen’s English. The house is now a primary school, and we were kindly let around the building, ducking in and out of classrooms and staff rooms that were once dining rooms and the guest room that Hans Christian Andersen famously outstayed his welcome.

Jessica Swale, the Associate Director, writes about the trip in her rehearsal diary.

Here are some photos from the trip:

David Rintoul, who plays Dickens, ascends the staircase with a flourish. The staircase was painted by Dickens’ daughter Kate

David Rintoul (Dickens) and Danny Sapani (Andersen) look around what was once Dickens’ bedroom

An insight into Dickens’ sense of humour: the gravestone for the family’s pet bird.

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The fireplace in Dickens’ study, with Sound Designer Carolyn Downing and Company Stage Manager Matthew Hales.

David Rintoul (Dickens) and Lorna Stuart (Kate) with drama students from Gads Hill School after they acted out a scene for them

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Dickens’ conservatory, now the school canteen

Out of Joint Co. outside Gads Hill Place.

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ANDERSEN’S ENGLISH REHEARSAL DIARYExtracts from the rehearsal diary of Associate Director, Jessica Swale

Day 1We began the day with a read through with the whole company, which was lively and seemed to catch the layers of the text more than one might usually expect from a first cold reading. Sebastian’s writing is highly poetic, like Dickens’, full of metaphors and imagery, but the storytelling remains at the heart of his writing. The tale of Catherine’s rejection by her husband was pertinent and moving, Niamh bringing the soulful nature of the part to the fore sensitively.After the read through we looked at the model box1. Lucy has created an interior-exterior world, with ferns inside the house and wall paper denoting the landscape panorama of Gad’s Hill behind. It suggests something of both Dicken’s love for walking in the local landscape and the claustrophobia of the family life inside. It is a beautiful set, crowded with furniture as Dickens’ house was, the challenge for us will be blocking2- we’ll have to be careful to ensure that the actors can be seen. Max wants to use the furniture as a playground for the actors- when they go on the picnic, for example, they will climb onto the piano (the hill top) via the chairs and the dining room table, so lots of challenges ahead- an exciting prospect.

We talked this afternoon about Dickens being a fallible man, rather than a villain. Seb said that he had been struck by a comment Desmond Tutu had made, that ‘there is no crime on earth that I couldn’t commit if another man has done it’; we are all capable of anything when we are put to it. Dickens did a terrible thing to Catherine; some critics excuse him as a remarkable man who had a remarkable lifestyle- it feels almost like sacrificing an individual to serve the greater cause of English Literature. I’m sure most people would argue that it was worth this sacrifice, considering the vast contribution he made to the English cannon, but a woman’s life and happiness forfeited? Who can say.

Other critics, like Claire Tomalin, argue that his behaviour was inexcusable and that, in fact, the women in his novels are two dimensional, which reveals his lack of understanding of the female character. Certainly characters like the angelic Rachael in Hard Times, and the mean Widow Corney in Oliver Twist are testimony to this.

Finally we looked at the characters’ journeys in the play. There are many ways to read the text- how culpable is Georgie? Is the baby Walters’? Does Catherine bring her fate on herself by failing to support Dickens? How does this visit affect Andersen and why is he here? Many questions to answer over the next few weeks.

� A scale model of the set for the actors’ benefit� Deciding where the actors will move, sit or stand at any point.

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VISIT TO GAD’S HILL

Day Trip! We all piled on the train this morning to Higham in Kent, decked in walking boots and warm jackets. Despite a small hiccup when the doors of the train closed early, leaving half of us still aboard to visit the next station, we eventually made it to Gad’s Hill Place, Dickens’ house. His house has since been converted to a primary school, a lively and bustling place. I am sure Dickens would have been pleased that his beloved house has been converted into a place to educate the young, a recurring theme in his books. We were given an excellent tour of the house, somewhat interrupting a few lessons, much to the delight of the students. We visited the room Andersen stayed in, in which Dickens’ left a note for months afterwards declaring that this was the room where Andersen outstayed his welcome. It was an oddly moving experience, standing in the room where Dickens died (probably) and in the conservatory where Kate and Dickens had the discussion of her future- whether she should or should not accept Charlie Collins’ proposal. We performed a short scene for the GCSE students, who enjoyed this little foray into Dickens’ world; they certainly asked questions eagerly.

It was the details of the house which I found most intriguing; seeing Katie’s hand painted decorations on the stairs; looking at the dumb waiter which has all the original cogs and mechanics as in Dickens’ day; seeing his study with the view over the garden and out across the high road, where Dickens sat and wrote. One of the most intriguing aspects was the tunnel which Dickens would walk through each day to go to his writing chalet. There are drama masks above the entrance and exit to the tunnel- Dickens passed the comedy mask on the way to his writing den and the tragic mask on the way back towards the family house. We wondered whether this was a purposeful decision, that for him the tragedy of life was the reality, and that his sole happiness was the escapism of his writing.

The day was topped off with an amazing display of culinary genius in the shape of two giant cakes and tea, heartily enjoyed by the cast, provided by the school cooks. Then we piled into the minibus like Dickens’ crowd of children and sang all the way back to the train. Something about the house seemed to bring us back to our childhoods briefly.

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WEEK THREE

We arrived at Hampstead theatre today for a week in their rehearsal space. It is the same size as the stage and has the rostra and furniture set up, so it’ll be exciting to move the action onto the set now.

We kicked off this morning with a talk from Danny, who had been sent to Copenhagen for a weekend research trip on Hans Christian Andersen. He met several Andersen scholars, visited the mermaid statue and brought us all some herring, delightful! We found out that Andersen was rather embarrassed that his fame was found in children’s fairytales rather than playwrighting or poetry. He was a decent playwright but his talent was clearly in narrative storytelling. He was a great entertainer too, a fan of making intricate paper cut outs as he spoke, which he would then surprise and enchant the audience with at the climax of the tale.

He was an odd looking man, six feet four, with huge hands and feet and a rather unusual face- he was rejected and bullied at school for being so tall and lolloping, nothing like the other boys. It was probably these formative experiences which led to his characterisations in The Ugly Duckling and the numerous other tales which portray an abandoned or bullied child. His stories have heart, and he was the first noted writer to create tales with ambiguous endings. Most stories prior to Andersen had a clear moral agenda; Andersen’s were far more intricate and open ended, which is probably why they have endured to this day. In rehearsals we read The Red Shoes, and it is absolutely heart breaking. I was narrating and felt rather choked!

In the afternoon we worked on the picnic scene, negotiating the furniture- after a few spills and balance related incidents we staggered through it. It is going to be wonderful when it is fully staged and lit but I think it is going to take a great deal of practice! Max took us back to the actions several times, when the action seemed to veer rather away from the journey we had established. It is immensely useful for the actors to think of what they are trying to achieve with a line rather than to focus on playing the emotions; it is far more convincing and pointed to play ‘to plead’ and ‘to persuade’ than a generic state like ‘to be sad’; that just results in an overlaying of emotion which is not based on truth. A good afternoon’s rehearsal.

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FIRST NIGHT IN BURY

The first night of a new play is always rather nerve-wracking for all involved as no-one is quite sure what kind of a play it is yet. Andersen’s English is a family drama, but it is also has tragic qualities; there are humorous moments, there are songs, the acting is truthful and naturalistic yet the set itself, and our use of it, is rather surreal. We are all very familiar with the play, we have run it enough times to have a good sense of the shape of it, but no-one knows what the audience reaction will be. It is an exciting time but there is an inescapable feeling of trepidation and anxiety, as always on a night like this..

We spent the tech working out the logistics of the furniture in the space. Inevitably when you move from a rehearsal room onto the stage there are things which are different- distances, heavy costumes, changing lighting states, music, puppetry. Stage management make every effort to reproduce the stage in the rehearsal room but one of the challenges of this point in the proceedings is getting used to the ‘real thing’. Indeed, both a wonder and a terror of touring is the need to slightly re-jig the blocking to suit each new space. Auditoria require varying levels of volume; in some spaces the actors have to play up to ‘the gods’ (the top stalls), in other spaces the audience are almost on three sides as the stage juts out into the audience space (an ‘apron’). We have some audiences which consist primarily of school parties; Saturday matinees are often an older crowd, and a Friday night audience often stop in for the show before a night out. And in each town the audience demographic varies. Each of these audiences ‘feels’ different for the actors; they will laugh at different places, warm to different characters, enjoy particular moments. It means we are always kept on our toes; it is one of the most exciting elements of touring a production.

Tonight our first night went remarkably well. Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal is a beautifully restored Georgian theatre, it feels rather like working in a chocolate box, it’s so ornate and delicate. For a period-set piece like this it looks rather like the play was made for this space. It is beautiful.

Before the performance, we worked hard this afternoon to get used to the space vocally. We also worked on the puppetry, trying to involve the puppets as fully as possible as independent characters in the scene. We made some last minute changes to help keep the scene changes pacey, having discovered the distances we now have to work with. Those decisions paid off; the play was nimble and dynamic, the actors enjoyed having the audience responses, and we had a warm and effusive reaction at the end of the play.

A good deal of the audience stayed for our post show discussion. They were particularly enamoured by Plorn, the smallest of the three child puppets, who joined us on stage, although didn’t have a great deal to say for himself. The question of casting a black actor as Andersen came up; Max explained that it helped to place him as an outsider, and to reveal his difference as the visitor in this tight knit family situation. He also reminded the audience, of course, that Danny Sapani is a regular with Out of Joint and has brought us some extremely memorable performances over the years, as Macbeth and as the terrifying Mizinga in J T Rogers’ The Overwhelming. Whilst there was clearly an advantage to echoing the idea of his difference through casting a black actor, ultimately Danny is a wonderful performer and is highly capable of playing both the sorrowful and comic elements of this strange, strange man; he captures that very particular Andersen quality which Dickens’ so nimbly explains,

He is a most profound, original, and wonderful artist, but a spectacular nuisance of a man… Like another child – an elderly lunatic child.

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AN INTERVIEW WITH SEBASTIAN BARRY

Tell us about your starting point for the play. What made you want to tell this story?

I didn’t know what I wanted to do at first. It was 1999 and I was trying my damnedest to write a new book for a musical in New York, to be directed by Martha Clark, the great choreographer. It was to try and do honour to the old Frank Loesser songs for Hans Christian Andersen, the musical. I was reading every book I could find, and then stumbled on this visit of Andersen’s to Dickens. I thought, perfect, nine children, two geniuses, plenty of room for Thumbelina, Inchworm etc. But Martha wasn’t keen, so we went another route. But the notion stayed with me. In 2004 I asked Max what he would think about such a play, and he said, why not have a look at it. I then read as much as I could about Dickens and his family. There’s a book, just about, for every one of them; very marvelous books. Such sad fates. Dickens himself, of course, has attracted biographical kings, from his friend John Forster to Peter Ackroyd and Michael Slater. Claire Tomalin has a wonderfully interesting book about Ellen Ternan.

But why was I doing all this? No clear idea, except maybe there was something in Andersen’s outsiderness that struck a chord with me. Mutatis mutandis, his ‘Irishness’; his not-knowing (a very good condition for a writer sometimes, strangely); the fact that he didn’t really spot any trouble in the house, and wrote about it so warmly afterwards, and praised Catherine in particular, who rather kindly had befriended him; Dickens’ love of Moore’s Melodies, which I share. You examine widespread themes such as race, empire, social conscience and creative genius. But at the heart of the play is a raw and painful family drama. Is this what you see the play as being about?

It seems to be, now. I had about thirty pages in 2005, God knows what they were about. Maybe Dickens’ amazing theatricality (he was a man with a million major attributes, each worth a play). Every year or so I stripped this play down like an old engine, as ruthlessly as I could, and let scenes ‘grow back’. The final pieces only came in November when I heard Niamh Cusack would play Catherine. It sparked something. Many of Max’s old notes, and the heroic notes of others which I had been too stupid to understand, suddenly came back to me; a dozen quite essential things, and somehow that cloud parted for a moment and I felt somehow that that first intimation twelve years before had been answered as best I was able. Looking at the situation you have set up and the characters you paint in the play – how much is fact and how much fiction?

Fiction, fact, history, anecdote, memoir, memory… This was something I tried to get at in a recent novel, The Secret Scripture. Is fact really reliable? Is fiction not a sort of factual picture of an emotional state? And so on. Andersen did visit, he did stay five weeks instead of two, he did admire Catherine (he was one of the few people really to write about her at this stage of her life, 42, after bearing ten children), Dickens did tire of him and anyway was caught up in grief for his friend Douglas Jerrold (and he had also just finished Little Dorritt so was no doubt exhausted), Walter did go to India, etc. But my little Irish maid Aggie is invented, although somewhere in the letters there is a passing reference to a maid in difficulties in the house. So much of it is true, or not untrue, as Larkin might say. But it is still more or less essential to remember that plays come under the heading of fiction. In this play you present two literary geniuses as normal everyday men, with fears and flaws.

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What are you saying about the pedestal we put great authors on? Do you think we conjour up unrealistic, romanticised, images of famous writers from the past? And do we expect our authors to practice what they preach when it comes to the codes of morality in their work and in their life?

Writers are raised up, or were traditionally. But Dickens as a writer was a colossus, you can’t raise him high enough.

Morality… I am with Bishop Tutu on this, who said once in Atlanta, ‘There is nothing a man can do that I might not have done in other circumstances.’ I was henceforth a Tutu-ist.

Over the years it became more amazing to me that the central event in the play had happened. The more I thought about it, tried actually to envisage it, the more it seemed so strange, so dark, something rather terrible at the heart of his story. We might say he did something that a thousand thousand men have done, but they have not always been so visible in history. There is a cruelty in the play, but it seems to me part of the business of being alive, of being human. And sometimes we mete out such a cruelty, and sometimes we are the recipient of it. In marriage, that may occur in the one conversation. You paint quite a harsh picture of Charles Dickens, but give perhaps a previously unheard voice to his wife Catherine. Did you feel that through this play you wanted to give her the chance to tell her story?

More and more, I did. I was watching with Andersen, more and more. She is written about in various books, here and there, scraps and shards, in interesting ways. Her daughter Kate as an old woman said there was nothing ‘wrong’ with her, that she was full of regret for what had happened to her mother. Dickens insisted she was mad and neither loved nor was loved by the children. But this was a singular period in Dickens’ life. There are many Dickenses, both before and after this, both ‘real’ indeed, and imagined. In general, you just can’t help but be moved by him, his monumental energy, his extraordinary passion. The Dickens of Ackroyd and Slater is a heroic man, in the sense that he lived life victoriously, against the odds, wielding all the while the great gentling sword of his work. His empathetic impulse towards social reform was stitched into him like a second system of veins. But just in here, in the tiny parenthesis of this play, and a merely imagined play at that, he seems to me like a man possessed of an idea that he cannot put aside, that would have killed him to put aside. Everything with Dickens emotionally is high stakes in that sense. But this is why over the years I came more and more to care for Catherine, well, to be very alarmed on her behalf, let us say. Are you a big admirer of Charles Dickens and/or Hans Christian Andersen? What is it that fascinates you about these two writers and their work?

Dickens is the first proper author I read at age ten, after a long struggle to learn to read. Even the film of Oliver Twist is the first film that nearly did for me, as a child in Hampstead about aged eight. Did Dickens invent the daylight world? Did Andersen invent the shadow world? Having ‘lived’ with Andersen for twelve years, I can safely say I love him. I see how strange and inconvenient he could be, and awkward. Even more so than Dr Johnson, say, even more so than George Moore. His diaries are incredible and extremely moving as he approaches death. He is so honest about his own nature, and always castigated himself for not ever being happy, or so rarely, in the present moment -- the condition that bedevils us all.

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Dickens didn’t speak to his great friend Thackeray for ten years, after Thackeray made quite an innocuous remark about Dickens vis-a-vis Catherine. To gauge by that, there is little point in me proclaiming my love for Dickens. He no doubt would never ever have forgiven this play. But I revere him, and he is the man who lit the lamps in all our imaginations. Tell us about your connection with, and history of working with Out of Joint.

This is the fourth play ‘with Max’ (I have written twelve plays in all, I think). ‘In bed with Max again,’ my wife calls it, I think humorously. We did three plays before this: The Steward of Christendom in 1995, Our Lady of Sligo in 1998, and Hinterland in 2002. I was so happy that Max was willing to go again. He is an adventure in himself, an epic man, a great theatre person, a huge teacher. Sometimes working on a new play is a Siberian experience, sometimes the Cayman Islands. This was the latter. I cannot convey to you properly the level of his encouragement. You are an award-winning novelist as well as playwright. Is it very different writing fiction on your own for a solitary reader, compared to writing a play for a live audience? And how much do you work with the director, cast, and other creatives to create the final live performance?

I grew up in the theatre, where my mother was an actress. I was part of the audience for a long time, until I was thirty-three, and then wrote a play after many years of writing prose and poetry. A play, every speck of it, every flavour, has to pass through the mouths and the bodies of the actors. You are supplying clothes for them both quasi spiritual and temporal, or trying to. It is a vast responsibility and sometimes a great joy, as is novel writing, but that brings you to a different cliff face, a different pretty pass. It’s geographical. Actors prove everything in their very selves, like essayers, like alchemists. Finally, have you ever had an unwanted houseguest?

Never, but I have a horrible suspicion I may have been one myself, once or twice.