This is a short blog about don’t’ forget the birds, Open Clasp’s new production touring in November 2018. Today I wanted to write about laughter, as laughter has been threaded through all the company’s work for the past 20yrs, with the exception of Rattle Snake. It’s been in our bones, my default position, to laugh, for this laughter supports our not getting tied up in sentimentality, so we can think and act. And with don’t forget the birds we find it again with this real-life mother and daughter.
Rehearsals have started and we are reading the script, looking at the words and laughing loads. We met the mother Cheryl in HMP Low Newton, she was one of the original theatre makers and performer with Key Change. When Key Change won the Best of Edinburgh award and ended up in New York, it was and wasn’t a Cinderella moment. For those back at the office it was sheer, roll up your sleeves, lose sleep and hold tight to a roller coaster that at times felt as if it was coming off the track. But we did go to New York, did get the reviews and awards. So, when Cheryl was released, we met up and she became a gold star member for the company, an ambassador of the work with women affected by the criminal justice system. Cheryl is a phenomenal performer and we had an obligation to raise funds to make a show that she can perform and shine in. I interviewed Cheryl in 2016, Laura Lindow (our Associate Director) suggested I also interview the daughter Abigail. So I did, then I played with the idea of both telling their own story of what happen after Cheryl walked out of the prison gates, from each of their own viewpoints, and not just the after, but before and during life in prison.
Every time we meet Cheryl she reminds me of the ‘100 year old man who climbed out of a window’ (the book), she tells a tale and big worlds open before our eyes, her life full of intrigue and surprise, new stories keep spilling out and in to the script. Abigail’s voice is velvet in tone and song, all eyes are drawn with every word spoken. The script is powerful, heart-breaking and heart lifting.
Supported by a seed commission via Black Theatre Live and Queens Hall Hexham in 2016, we spent a week doing some research and development. It was the first-time mother and daughter had seen the script. Laura and I offered them time together to read and take each other’s words in, as one had said things about the other. They said, ‘no, let’s just read it’. So, we did. It was unlike anything Open Clasp has done before.
To rewind, we’d met the daughter, Abigail, on the outside when she came to see Key Change at Live Theatre and Cheryl was still inside. At the theatre Abigail learnt things she didn’t know about her mother, life in prison and the impact of domestic violence. Now the mother was going to learn something she didn’t know about her daughter. Laura and I worried we could break this close, intimate mother and daughter and tried to take care of them both as they stepped through the script. This ‘thing’ that sat between them was worked through and healed during the week, as they communicated, talked and mended (though Cheryl didn’t know until reading the words that there was anything to mend) through the creation of don’t forget the birds. Theatre helped Cheryl in prison, and this R&D helped both mother and daughter find each other again, helped the daughter to communicate – it was like Rattle Snake, proper life and art colliding.
This show has been two years in the making and there is a lot to think about. Their lives are full, interesting and at times a little controversial, for some, maybe.
