Much has been said about how and why playwrights write plays and about where their words come from. But what about when the actors themselves come up with those words through improvisation? What made them think of saying those lines when they said them? And what makes those words and lines ‘theatrical’?
Plant Assembly Theatre is a cooperative of actors, directors, writers and musicians who create theatre which explores pressing social and political issues in dialogue with local people. Their aim is to create an accessible platform for these voices, and at the same time explore innovative creative practice.
Members of the Plant Assembly Theatre team, including Dr Jeremy Scott, Senior Lecturer in English Language and Literature in the School of Cultures and Languages, ask what makes improvised dialogue worth writing down as a script, and are looking into the processes of devised theatre more broadly, and into what ‘theatricality’ is really all about, using a framework derived from literary stylistics. The result is a new play, The Plant, co-written by Dr Jeremy Scott and Greg Lawrence.
‘In the ongoing public debate surrounding Brexit and its impacts, something often seems to be forgotten: the quiet, ordinary lives that have to go on in its shadow. The Plant is a devised play with traditional music that dramatises these lives, exploring the impact of Brexit and the divisions it intensifies in an imagined community somewhere in England.’
The Plant will open on 28 October at the magnificent LV21 arts centre on the Thames at Gravesend, Kent. It will also be performed at The Churchill Theatre, Bromley on 29 October and at The Aphra Theatre, University of Kent on 30 October.
The Plant is supported by Creative Estuary and funded by Arts Council England, with support from the University of Kent. Find out more about the project and buy tickets at www.plantassemblytheatre.com.