Watford Palace Theatre presents

The play is a fascinating look at how untold secrets within families can continue to impact relationships years after the secrets have been buried… CK:  All families have secrets. Sometimes a problem in our own lives is caused by something which happened in a previous generation. Theatre is a place for healing ourselves, through witnessing stories which release our deepest fears and hopes.

 You’ve worked with Brigid before. How has your working relationship informed the creation of this new play?
CK:  Brigid understands and trusts my process of writing- I start with key scenes or images, and explore the play by writing lots of scenes – which may not be in the final draft- then trying them out aloud with actors. Over two years I refined this story, re-writing and re-writing. Brigid and I question every line and image, like two detectives uncovering the real drama. This way I’m guided by the hidden story not by a more obvious plot line. The result is a play with deep layers that genuinely moves people.

The characters are relatable, down to earth people. Is there someone identifiable to every audience member?
CK:  I’m only happy when people say that characters remind them exactly of their family or friends. I want the audience to feel deeply connected to the play, and laugh in recognition.

Much of the play takes place in a home in the Peak District that has been in the same family for years. How does this environment impact the play’s action?
CK: The house is the only one for miles, beside a reservoir in a wild landscape of hills and moors. I set this play in a huge outdoor place because people behave very differently there. So many plays are set in small rooms, I want this one to be bigger than all of us.

Part of the play takes place many hundred years ago. What does this element of the story bring to the modern setting of the play?
CK I like magic in theatre, and one way I create this is to jump time, and show you someone in exactly the same place as a contemporary character, going through a similar experience, but finding a different solution. We make all our life choices in relation to who came before us.

The play is designed by Adam Wiltshire, who has created a design to encompass the feeling of this specific British landscape. How has the design formed part of the rehearsal process?
CK The designer, director and movement director have all visited the Peak District with me so I could take them walking over the moors and to reservoirs. By experiencing the landscape, they are now creating the feel of it in the stage space and in the way actors move. The set is awesome, and it changes form drought to flood in a spectacular way- wait and see.

The final day in the rehearsal room. Already? Surely not. There’s so much cake left. Now, I’ve never worked on a play where homemade cake has been such a prominent feature of the rehearsal period. And exceptional homemade cake too. We’ve had chocolate cake twice over, Victoria sponge cake, banana bread (basically cake, in my opinion), chocolate cookies (these were cakey in texture); there’s even a scene in the play entitled ‘Cake’ for goodness sake!

Frankly, I’m caked out. Anyway, back to task – during the morning session, Brigid delivered her usual well-positioned notes from yesterday’s run. Once digested, the busyness of the day ahead took over. Putting the microscope on specific moments in the play and working notes, costume calls, set familiarisation – and an exciting set it is too from Adam Wilshire.
Ambitious, curvaceous and matching the play for scale. I sound like a bloody critic. So high is one part of the set, that as I walked up to its peak, my head floated off my shoulders and the palms of my hands grew dots of sweat. Wimp. I turned around, very tentatively, and walked back down knowing that I’ll not have to make that journey ever again. Thankfully. I honestly thought I had a better head for heights than that.

Around us, drills whirring, head torches, Leatherman tools and a general whiff of heavy duty littered the stage area. Anna, myself and the Stage Manager, Pete, carefully walked the set for steep gradients, exits and entrances, cue lights, the quick change area and most importantly, the fastest route back to the dressing room for what will, eventually, be a cup of voice-soothing herbal tea! In the afternoon, we were back up to the rehearsal room to join the rest of the cast, for the final run-through of the play before we move onto the stage next week. Watched by a very studious, note-scribbly technical department, we dug our heels in to give ourselves the best chance going into the tech. Tech? Already? Surely not. Well, goodbye rehearsal room – you’ve been a grand host. Now for the six hundred seat real deal. Bring it on.  

Chris Kelham

The video trailer for Our Father is now ready and live! Watch the video trailer here

The trailer was filmed in Peak District, where the play is set, and includes voice-overs from the actors, and features Faye Winter.  Watford Palace Theatre, the cast and creative teams of Our Father would like to thank film-maker Dan Rollings for his wonderful video. We hope you enjoy it – please let us know your thoughts.

Watch the video trailer

Monday again. It was tracksuits, t-shirts, sweat and games this morning as Shona Morris, our movement director, gave us a wonderful warm-up to set us up for the week. I’ll certainly be taking her work into my warm-ups before each performance. It’s enormously helpful for connecting with the text.

To compliment this, we’ve now begun working through the play, plotting the scenes and developing our confidence with the physicality and the language. This is very much ongoing from now – deepening the work all the time.  Each evening is now taken up with line learning, research, seeing mates in plays and sleeping. I find it tough to sleep at this stage in rehearsals, my mind is a circus of thoughts and the thought-party really gets going just as my head hits the pillow at midnight, or thereabouts. All sorts of questions, ideas and anxieties about the play bleed into the brain and by about 2am, the Our Father Ringmaster has called it a day and I’m dreaming of dolphins and orang-utans chatting freely as they stroll across Shepherds Bush green. Definitely no connection there.

Chris Kelham (Jack/Priest)

As part of my research into the history of Anchoresses, I visited an Anchor Church in Ingleby, a village situated in South Derbyshire. The Anchor Church is a series of caves carved out of the Keuper Sandstone moulded by the  Old River Trent, and subsequently became the home of anchorites centuries ago. The Anchorite, or Hermit’s cave, has been cut from the rock, been extended by human intervention and is complete with doors and windows.

The course of the River Trent was artificially altered so that 300 acres changed sides, and this is why it is possible to see the caves today. It is even mentioned in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1.

“Methinks my moiety, north from Burton here,
In quantity equals not one of yours:
See how this river comes me cranking in,
And cuts me from the best of all my land
A huge half-moon, a monstrous cantle out.
I’ll have the current in this place damm’d up;
And here the smug and silver Trent shall run
In a new channel, fair and evenly;
It shall not wind with such a deep indent,
To rob me of so rich a bottom here.”

The caves were thought to have been the cell of the anchorite St Hardulph, who lived and prayed there in the 6th and 7th century. In the Middle Ages, it was used as place of worship by a monk named Bernard, who died in the caves whilst doing penance for an unknown crime.

Seeing these caves, where these people had lived to dedicate their lives to their beliefs in prayer, was overwhelming. What immediately came across was the crude conditions in which they lived. Although the caves would have provided some shelter to the conditions outside, it was immediately obvious how cold and damp the inside of the caves were. This was certainly not an easy life to live.

Written by: Faye Winter