Preview: Kelvin Players, ‘A Sense of Place’

North Bristol’s excellent non-pro outfit The Kelvin Players present their first devised piece in their 88-year history.

In the near future, scientists Anya and Beth have discovered an unusual side effect of an official Government drug – hallucinations which allow you to witness events from the past like movie clips. They take their findings to Crick, the Minister for Education, and persuade him to take the drug with them in the attempt to see various events from the lifespan of a fossil.

But the scenes they visit seem to be far from prehistoric, and the scientists begin to question if the drug is working correctly or if something strange is going on. Meanwhile, Crick must grapple with the fact that if a drug can allow people to see true history this could have dangerous repercussions in a future where fake news and alternative facts hold sway.

The story and script have been devised over a six-month period collaboratively between the actors, the director and a dramaturg. Here’s director Josh Cooper to tell us more.

I wanted to create a play which uses the kind of visual and physical theatre embraced by companies like Gecko and Frantic Assembly, and there will be an exciting balance between standard naturalistic scenes and inventive contemporary theatre techniques. Alongside this we have a story which speaks to our modern times and incorporates influences from a range of modern films and TV shows – from Doctor Who to Inception!

The episodes in history that our time travellers visit are quite obscure, as this form of time travel has to be rooted to a single object, and you can only visit scenes from its history. In this case the object is a fossil, yet the travellers find themselves visiting time periods such as 1955, 2003, 2021 and 1962, but nothing prehistoric. Is something amiss here?

We really want to create a good balance between entertainment and thought-provoking theatre, and this is the key to the structure and ideas of the play. The audience are invited to search for parallels to the modern world and where we might end up in the near future with mention of artificial intelligence taking more jobs, driverless cars, Universal Basic Income and work being optional, as well as implanted tech.

However, we also invite the audience to see how history has repeated itself and what we can learn, and have learned, from past events. This is all married up with scenes in a range of genres and several visually stimulating physical theatre sequences which represent the tripping on the drug which is similar to lucid dreaming.

We began by forming the company of actors alongside a dramaturg (Tim Whitten) who wrote the script. I had a basic stimulus (a historical event) as the stimulus and we did research and development from this. The first rehearsal period was exploring devising techniques from companies such as Frantic Assembly, Gecko and New International Encounter alongside the company doing their own research of texts and images to add to our ideas.

We then broke for the initial writing of a treatment, before reconvening to work the scenes into shape before another break to finalise the writing of the script which we have now been working with for the last month in the run up to the performance.

This was a completely new way of working for the Kelvin Players, who have always done scripted work in their 88-year history but it allows the actors to get far more involved in the creative process, and for the director and dramaturg to get feedback on ideas regularly. It has been a thrilling and inspiring experience, and given that this is a common way of working in professional theatre, something which I am pleased Kelvin allowed us to embark on.

Kelvin has always been an open-minded group, and the decision to allow us to do this production was probably helped by the fact that I was artistic director at the time! But we met very little opposition. Kelvin is used to working in a range of styles, and recently they have focused on contemporary plays rather than just going for the popular options to get bums on seats. It is one of the reasons why the club is so unique in non-professional circles. And, given the prevalence of this style of theatre professionally, it made absolute sense for us to undertake the project.

The addition of a strong physical theatre element was something I especially wanted to push for this production as this again has been something which has become increasingly common over the last 10-15 years in professional theatre and is again something which many people think a choreographer is needed for. However, the techniques of the companies mentioned above are very simple to implement and allow you to crate visually exciting work from very simple ideas and principles such as the idea of a circle of people all holding hands and not being allowed to let go, which allows a range of physical exploration but is very easy to grasp.

Overall, this has been a thrilling and exhilarating process which the actors and creative team have enjoyed and which has led to a fast-moving play full of powerful imagery to give the audience plenty to chew on.

A Sense of Place is at Kelvin Players Theatre from Tuesday, July 11 to Saturday, July 15. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.kelvinplayers.co.uk