Director thrilled about new play

Published on The Gazzete (Basingstoke)

by Lucie Richards

LAST night saw the premier of an Anvil Arts production which will transport its viewers to 17th century Venice.

The Haymarket theatre is hosting the first-ever performance of new play Original Sin, by Steve Hawes, about a Venetian convent in 1609 faced with an inspection by the Inquisition.

The play is directed by Paul Chamberlain, and he is thrilled to be tackling a new piece.

He said: “It’s incredibly exciting. I love doing new plays because they are so dangerous – you really don’t know until the first night exactly how an audience is going to respond, and it’s a challenge for the actors who are creating a new role and can’t talk to somebody who’s done it before.

“It’s also great having a writer who’s living to work with, and who is available for some of the rehearsals – it’s helpful to the procedure.”

Chamberlain and Hawes have collaborated before, including an adaptation of Tristan and Isolde and Triangles, about the dark lady in Shakespeare’s Sonnets, at The Haymarket.

He said they started working on Original Sin two or three years ago and explained: “This play is a totally original idea and it’s historically very thoroughly researched. It’s got a lot of authenticity and period detail.”

The director, who is director of regional programmes at The University of Winchester, is full of praise for the play’s set design, and stresses the importance of the production’s music.

Chamberlain (pictured) said: “The play is set at a time when Monteverdi was working as a musician in Venice and so we have developed a musical score which uses Monteverdi’s music.

“The abbess who runs the nunnery is a musician and the nunnery is a very musical place.”

Despite a historical focus, Chamberlain is adamant the play is accessible to a modern audience.

He said: “There are all sorts of things for a modern audience to enjoy. It’s a good night out at the theatre. There’s lots to think about but there’s a strong narrative.”

Original Sin is running at The Haymarket from October 16 to 23, and tickets, from £17.50 with concessions available, can be booked by calling the box office, on 01256 844244, or online at anvilarts.org.uk.

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Steve Hawes talks about Original Sin

Published on the Writers Guild website

Steve Hawes tells the story behind his new play that opens at the Haymarket, Basingstoke on the 16th October.

My new play, Original Sin, was prompted by a decree issued by Pope Boniface VIII in 1298, Periculoso, which required the perpetual enclosure of all nuns.

Boniface (whom, incidentally, Dante consigned to Hell before he died) declared that he wished “…to provide for the dangerous and abominable situation of certain nuns, who, casting off the reins of respectability and impudently abandoning nunnish modesty and the natural bashfulness of their sex, sometimes rove about outside of the monastery.” His provision was to lock them in.

He concluded a wonderfully circular argument with the supposition that nuns would be thereby “… able to serve God more freely, wholly separated from the public and worldly gaze and, occasions for lasciviousness having thus been removed… most diligently safeguard their hearts and bodies in complete chastity.”

In other words they were to be sheltered from those very perils that they otherwise brought on themselves. They couldn’t get out but men could get in. Well, certain men – priests, church officials, inquisitors – usually with the aim of bossing the nuns about, some with more obviously nefarious purpose.

Mary Laven’s book, Virgins of Venice, quotes extensively from the trial of a confessor who ran a convent as his personal brothel for over twenty years. When they confessed their sins, the nuns confessed to him. Boccaccio couldn’t have invented it.

Something made me wonder what might have happened if – 20 years or so after they had been forcibly separated – Abelard had visited Eloise in the monastery in which she was confined and of which she became prioress. Give Abelard some authority. Make him an inquisistor. But spare him the emasculation her family had visited on him in revenge. Friends reunited? 

I mentioned the idea to Christine Bradwell, who runs Anvil Arts, which had recently taken over the Haymarket in Basingstoke. She was interested in finding ways to stimulate new work in straitened times. She asked me for a couple of pages. Then she commissioned me to write some sample scenes to workshop with a professional cast. The idea was to rehearse for a day and a half and then do a reading on the second afternoon in front of a small invited audience, including directors of a few of the theatres with whom the Haymarket ‘shares’ touring productions.

In the end I wrote a complete first draft – sometimes it’s easier than writing sample scenes. And it was only remotely connected to Abelard and Eloise. I found the illegitimate daughter of a Venetian doge instead. I wanted to call it Periculoso. Christine didn’t say no, but I think she winced. So I called it Obedience. Christine put together a wonderful cast, led by Hilary Tones. Paul Chamberlain directed. And, amazingly, rather than sitting and reading it, the cast got up and performed – really performed.

That was a year ago. I don’t think there was any kind of consensus among the visiting directors. I wrote a second draft based on lessons learned in the performance, in the hope of persuading them. But by now Christine believed in the play and was determined to back it as far as she could – on the condition that I found a better title. Hence the nine performances of Original Sin scheduled in the Haymarket’s autumn season. Rehearsals began on Monday. Hilary Tones is still with us.

Perhaps those theatre directors will be convinced. Or a producer will want to tour it, or investors be persuaded transfer it. Then if it earns any money, some of that money will be ring-fenced to pay another writer to write ‘sample scenes’ for a rehearsed reading of another new play. That’s the idea.

What we now have to do is persuade investors, producers and theatre directors to come and see it. But fellow writers are more than welcome.

Published on the Writers Guild website.

Santa Caecilia convent

Stephen Holroyd describes the convent of Santa Caecilia and draws detailed pictures of the convent’s layout, a fascinating journey through medieval architecture.

“The original house, which is the main body of the Convent and the land on which the church is built was given to the order in 1542 by a family of government, Andrea Mocenigo (1473 1542) Andrea was the grandson of one of the most famous of all Venetians, Giovanni Mocenigo. The family was known for physical and spiritual leadership in the fight with the Turks.”

Read more here…

The Anvil Arts – Why Original Sin?

At Anvil Arts, our role is not just to offer our audiences great works of the past, but to commission, develop and present work from the present day. To fail to do this would be to risk The Anvil and The Haymarket becoming merely wonderful museums. The challenge is to find new work that is appropriate both to the performance spaces and the audiences.

When we first read the script of Original Sin, it was immediately apparent that here was such a work. While set in the past and in a location which most of us can only imperfectly imagine, it raises questions which remain important today. The exercise of power and its abuses; the battle of the sexes; the nature of religious vocation and the ills committed in the name of a supposedly benign deity; the morality of using information obtained by torture: the play ranges widely in its scope.

More importantly than all of these, it is a well-written play with fascinating, three-dimension characters. The events of the play and the issues it explores grow naturally out of the relationships between these characters, as in all good drama. The final scene, while a satisfying resolution of what has gone before, provides food for continuing thought, rather than simply closing off the characters’ lives to end the story.

Original Sin opens at The Haymarket, Basingstoke, in October

A battle of wits and will, in which the ultimate weapon is desire.

At a convent in Venice, in the year 1609, the sharp-witted abbess faces what every abbess dreads – an inspection by the Inquisition. To make things worse, she learns that there is something very real to hide – a young man within the convent walls. Does she betray him, which means he faces certain execution, or conceal him, exposing herself and her sisters to a charge of complicity? Summoning all her powers of intellect and allure, she tries to distract the Inquisitor in a perilous game of cat and mouse in which the stakes could not be higher.

In the manner of A Man For All Seasons, this powerful and intelligent new play puts a battle of wits at the forefront of a conflict over power and submission. Threaded through by the music of Monteverdi, this is a richly rewarding drama.

Original Sin, an Anvil Arts production, opens at The Haymarket, in Basingstoke on Friday, 16 October. For  information on dates, times, prices and how to book tickets, please access The Haymarket’s website.

How did it all start?

Steve says: “Started when director Paul Chamberlain and I read Mary Laven’s wonderfully cool and lucid Virgins of Venice, broken vows and cloistered lives in the Renaisance convent (2002), about five years ago.  

“There must be a film or a play in this,” I said.  

But we couldn’t find it.  Further reading included Elizabeth’s Makowski Canon Law and Cloistered Women :  Periculoso (1997), Silvia Evangelisti’s Nuns (2007), and days and days of trawling the net.  Sarah Dunnant’s two wonderful novels set in Renaissance Italy, which in turn sent me chasing Aristo and Boccaccio. 

I remember reading a review of a play based on Abelard and Eloise’s letters at the National, and thinking, “Damn, I almost thought of that…”  It made me read the letters again.  What strikes you is that he speaks with a kind of seasoned authority, but she’s got the edge on him intellectually.  There’s something fearless about her thinking.  And somewhere the thought glimmered, what if he visited her in her convent after they had been parted… when he can pull rank on her?  

And then of course there’s Measure for Measure…”

What’s to come

Original Sin opens at  Haymarket Theatre Basingstoke in October 2009.

In the meantime, we will talk to the author, Steve Hawes, about his inspiration, the extraordinary life of St Cecilia (patron of music), the adaptation for the screen and the play itself. We’ll also talk to the actors involved, the producers and people related to this extraordinary production.

Keep an eye on this blog.