Observations from the rehearsal room as Snookered hits the road

Peter Singh, Anna Carr and Trevor MacFarlane in rehearsals for 'Snookered'

Tamasha Developing Artist Anna Carr has been observing ‘Snookered’ rehearsals. 

It’s the end of the third week of rehearsals, and everybody is gearing themselves for the weekend move up to Oldham.  At the start of this week the rehearsal room was shaken up by the fight director Kevin, who was watching with an eye on the physical stories between the characters.  As an observer, watching the director, and all the actors, I feel placed in a strange, masculine setting and as a real outsider as a female in the room. 

Coming up next… ‘Snookered’ by Ishy Din

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Snookered Q&A with writer Ishy Din

Ishy Din, writer of 'Snookered'. Photo by Keith Pattison

What inspired Snookered? Is it autobiographical at all?

There are certainly parts of it that are autobiographical, I think that to make any character honest and real one needs to put ones own experiences, both emotional and physical, into them but then you also have to make the piece dramatic so once the characters were in place I had to find a journey for each character that would heighten the drama.

Small Fish Big Cheese – Sudha Bhuchar

Small Fish Big Cheese by By Sudha Bhuchar Directed by Jim Johnson at the Unicorn Theatre

 

When Carl Miller from Unicorn approached me to be their Class Acts playwright for 2011, he told me that it was a commission for a world premier, bespoke for the year six class room that I would be paired with and a strict half an hour length. I was nervous that I didn’t have any idea what to write about as I was given carte blanche to write about anything, as long as I followed these rules and made sure that all thirty kids in the class could participate in an uplifting ‘rite of passage’ experience of performing the play on the main stage at the Unicorn, giving them a unique way of saying Goodbye to Primary school.

Small Fish Big Cheese – Jim Johnson, Peshkar

As I write this I am preparing my final thoughts before day one of rehearsals for Sudha Bhuchar’s play ‘Small Fish Big Cheese’ which will feature actors from Tamasha’s developing artist programme and will be presented at the Unicorn Theatre for a week commencing the 10^th of January.