Holly Williams

The festival, starting Aug. 2 and running for more than three weeks, has at least 15 shows, ranging from comedies to darker material. “Bible John” looks at the unsolved case of three women believe to have been murdered by a serial killer in Glasgow in the late 1960s, and “The Incident Room” examines the police investigation into the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, who was convicted of killing 13 women in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

At the Edinburgh International Festival, which coincides with the fringe festival, Swiss director Milo Rau will stage “La Reprise,” which explores the murder of Ihsane Jarfi, a young gay man, in Liège, Belgium, in 2012.

As for the lighter fare, comedians Anna Drezen, Matt Price and Rhys James will tackle true crime in their stand-up sets. In addition, true crime stars are also making appearances: the “Drunk Women Solving Crime” podcasters will have a residency in Edinburgh, while Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, lawyers featured in “Making a Murderer: Part 2,” will discuss the case.

But questions remain about the ethics of making entertainment out of murder. Do producers and consumers risk glamorizing these crimes, and possibly exonerating the perpetrators? And how much can we trust podcasts and TV shows to stick to the “true” part of the true crime label, knowing viewers’ thirst for well-paced, satisfying narratives?

As an art form, theater may be well-positioned to interrogate such questions. In “La Reprise” and “Bible John,” for instance, the actors directly address the audience and remind them of their shows’ artifice. The plays invite viewers to consider the power, and the limitations, of theater and storytelling as a way of making sense of human brutality.

In “La Reprise,” the murder of Jarfi can be retold simply: he was murdered by drunk, homophobic young men. “But then you go deeper,” Rau said, “and the play becomes a reconstruction of what happened in five acts and, in parallel, an essay about the tools, the methods, we use to make theater.” He added, “It starts with the questions: How can you understand something that is (not) understandable? How can you represent the emotions but also the violence itself onstage?”

The show features a mix of professional and nonprofessional actors who introduce themselves to the audience. They also restage conversations they conducted with Jarfi’s former partner, parents and one of his killers.

Rau rejects the idea that he is turning tragedy into cheap entertainment or using it to shock. Jarfi’s family “completely understood” his intentions, he said, even though he graphically restages their son’s murder. “I’m an artist, I believe in the power of art to heal, by repeating the trauma itself,” Rau said.

Caitlin McEwan, a Scottish playwright, also said she was not interested in making a “straight play” about true crime, but in producing “something that speaks to the audience and does something formally inventive,” she said. In “Bible John,” four women start off by playing present-day true crime podcast enthusiasts. Later, as their obsession deepens, the characters begin to reenact scenes from the case, taking on the roles of victims and police officers.

The play examines how the true crime genre leaves us craving neatly structured stories and solutions. This is particularly pointed in the Bible John case, which was never solved. “Narratively that is really interesting,” she said. “How do you tell a story as a theater-maker that doesn’t have an ending?”

McEwan also wanted to explore another thorny issue: gender. True crime is much more popular among women than men. “I’ve got a lot of friends who are obsessed, and I was really interested in why it’s always women,” McEwan said. “There are a lot of women who feel really conflicted about it, but won’t stop listening.”

Drezen, a “Saturday Night Live” writer and stand-up comic, had a theory as to why. “It’s like we’re preparing, we’re studying: obviously I’m going to get murdered at some point,” she laughed, darkly. In her show “Okay Get Home Safe!!” she explores her love of true crime, how we’re sold the idea that the world is dangerous for women, and the times when she actually has found herself in danger.

“True crime is so centered around white, cis, straight women, and femininity being this unassailable virtue,” Drezen said. “White women are in less danger than a lot of other populations — people of color, trans women — why is it that we’re so scared?” Her show will look at why violence against women is so “marketable.”

Drezen also comments on how strange it is that such a topic has become “fun and fluffy” entertainment. “I’ll take a break from political analysis podcasts, and turn on something about a woman who died while screaming ... why does this feel relaxing?”

The creators of “The Incident Room,” David Byrne and Olivia Hirst, said that ethically they did not want to use “the murder of a woman as a dramatic foundation,” and to find other ways to make the show thrilling.

The Yorkshire Ripper case has been dramatized on British television several times. But in this version, the murderer is not depicted. Instead, the action is entirely set at the police station, where detectives on the case were often completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information. Byrne met with real officers, and had access to the archive of investigative journalist Michael Bilton, to uncover the challenges of catching a suspect in the days before DNA testing or CCTV footage.

They also wanted to look at the story through a gendered lens, Byrne said, and the play is told from the perspective of a real police sergeant, Megan Winterburn. This also opened up the issue of sexism in the police force, and how the case affected the everyday lives of women in Yorkshire at the time. (The police told women not to go out at night.)

“There were more women running (the investigation) than men, but they’ve not been represented in any of the dramas about the Yorkshire Ripper,” Byrne said. “And obviously these are crimes against women. So dramatically as well as socially, that felt interesting.”

Byrne found himself as gripped by the case as by any true crime podcast. “I’ve been terrible at parties for the past two years, because it’s all I talk about,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/24/theater/true-crime-edinburgh.html" id="353cf0f3-2cb2-38de-a915-3665962c4240">The New York Times</a>.

The popularity of true crime has increased substantially in the past five years, spurred by podcasts such as “Serial” and documentaries like Netflix’s “Making a Murderer.” It’s no wonder that a true crime wave is hitting Edinburgh Festival Fringe next month.

Staging a (True) Crime in Edinburgh

With a 44-pound tiger puppet, that’s how.

Manipulated by three puppeteers, the tiger in “Life of Pi,” which played at the Crucible Theater here through Saturday, was fast and flexible enough to prowl and pounce across the stage. The eye quickly tuned out the handlers, and every flick of the tail felt full of life.

The production opened this month to shining reviews: The critic of The Daily Telegraph called it “a worthy successor to ‘War Horse,’” the Tony Award-winning play that also used animal puppets to striking effect.

“Life of Pi” begins in a zoo in Pondicherry, India, in 1976; facing political upheaval, the family of the 17-year-old Pi relocates to Canada, taking along their animals — including giraffes, orangutans and zebras — all created in the play through puppetry. When the family’s ship sinks, only Pi survives, on a lifeboat he must share with the tiger.

“We wanted something muscular and vivid and dangerous — my horror is people calling my puppets cute,” the production’s puppetry director, Finn Caldwell, said by phone. Caldwell performed in the original production of “War Horse,” at the National Theater in London, and has since made puppets for “The Light Princess” and “Angels in America.”

Playwright Lolita Chakrabarti, who adapted Mantel’s work for the stage, said the show’s creative team immediately settled on using puppetry when it came together in 2017. Chakrabarti was approached by theater producer Simon Friend about adapting the book; the director, Max Webster, brought Caldwell on board.

“I’d loved the book when I read it in 2002, and without really any idea how I was going to do it, I said yes,” Chakrabarti said in an interview. Martel gave her his blessing, she said. “He just said: Take it, do what you feel, and good luck,” Chakrabarti recalled.

Designing any animal puppet always begins with research into the real creature, Caldwell said. The internal frame for the tiger was based on the animal’s skeleton, and constructed of wood and aluminum, he explained, and the joints were made with elasticated bungee cords.

“It’s what we call a universal puppet, capable of everything that the live creature would be,” Caldwell said. “The tiger has to be able to look seasick, to attack with great speed, to turn tight circles on that lifeboat,” he added.

Putting someone inside the puppet (actress Kate Colebrook) meant it could move quicker than any other Caldwell has designed, he said. “Kate can swing a tiger’s paw as fast as she can swing a punch,” he added.

Colebrook has worked with Caldwell before, but many of the cast were operating puppets for the first time. It’s a huge challenge, Caldwell said, and the actors worked long hours to get up to speed.

Backstage before a performance last week, the puppets hung lifeless in the wings. Although made from a lightweight material called Plastazote, which can be sculpted and painted, they’re designed to look like they’re made of driftwood.

Emma Cook, a stage manager, shone a flashlight into the tiger’s mouth and tested its joints to make sure every cord and screw was secure.

“Before the show, we have to go through every nut, bolt, bungee, to make sure they’re not falling apart,” Cook said. “Despite that, sometimes things go wrong,” she added. “A nut came off a zebra in a preview, but the leg stayed on.”

Rob Hastie, artistic director at the Crucible, said during the backstage tour that “Life of Pi” was a leap of faith for the 980-seat theater. “We try to do as much new work as possible, but even a title as acclaimed as ‘Life of Pi’ comes with a lot of risks,” he said. With an untested script, experimental puppetry and a cast that had to be specially trained, it was a show in which lots could go wrong.

But when he first saw the tiger spring to life onstage, he said, he knew all would be well.

“I had the same reaction as our audiences, really: just a sense of wonder,” Hastie said, adding that he hoped the show would have a further life after its Sheffield run. Given its success, a West End transfer surely calls.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/theater/life-of-pi-play.html" id="8d77829b-a07d-35aa-a3cf-be46c532809c">The New York Times</a>.

SHEFFIELD, England — In 2001, Yann Martel’s international best-selling novel “Life of Pi” asked the question: What would happen if a teenage boy and a 450-pound tiger were stranded on a lifeboat for 227 days? Now, a new theatrical production is trying to answer another question: How on earth would you put such a story onstage?

Puppetry Brings 'Life of Pi' to the Stage

The result was “Shipwreck,” subtitled “A History Play about 2017.” It begins performances Feb. 11 at the Almeida Theater here before a likely, but as yet unannounced, run in the United States.

“Shipwreck” is set in the immediate aftermath of former FBI Director James Comey’s congressional testimony, when a group of white liberal friends gather in an old farmhouse in upstate New York; as snow falls and supplies run short, their conversations endlessly circle and jab at the Trump administration, and eventually each other.

But the house is also haunted, theatrically, by the people who lived there before — a farmer, his adopted black son — lending a long-view perspective that acts as a counterpoint to the chatter of the New Yorkers. Oh, and Trump himself even puts in an appearance.

“He kind of appears. He appears in a way. It would be so lonely without him,” Washburn said with a degree of mischief when we met at the Almeida. She was keen not to reveal too much.

Washburn was in town for rehearsals with Rupert Goold, the show’s director who also runs the Almeida. It’s a busy time for the American playwright in London: Her adaptation of “The Twilight Zone,” seen at the Almeida last year, is about to transfer to the West End beginning March 4.

Critical reactions to her work here have always been rather mixed: “Twilight Zone” was met with varying degrees of warmth, while Robert Icke’s 2014 Almeida production of “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play,” Washburn’s breakout, produced one of the sharpest divides among critics in the last decade.

Still, this post-apocalyptic comedy — in which the Cape Feare episode of “The Simpsons” transforms over generations into the nurturing stuff of myth — won ardent fans among young audiences, playwrights and bloggers.

“Almost all the critics hated ["Mr. Burns"], which in the States would have destroyed it, in a way that it didn’t seem to here,” Washburn observed. (The play’s American supporters include critics for The New York Times, who named it one of the best 25 American plays of the last 25 years.) “Here people were quite invested in hating it, or championing it — it kept going in a way, which is ideal from a playwright’s point of view. In the States, people wouldn’t even have bothered to hate it.”

That ferment — and the Almeida’s continued belief in her writing — has made Washburn a significant figure on the British theatrical landscape. Add to that the box office appeal of a title like “The Twilight Zone” and Washburn can sail into the West End; by contrast, she hasn’t had work on Broadway.

Still, she never expected “Shipwreck” to open here. “It’s a very American play,” Washburn conceded, and she’s had to tweak the script a little for British audiences. But she’s found it resonates in a country going through its own political upheaval.

“It’s not like it’s a covert Brexit play, obviously, but it touches on things,” she said. A few lines about inaction in the face of looming disaster, although written about the United States, were added in London after Washburn’s “endless discussions with agonized British people.”

She began “Shipwreck” on a silent writing retreat in June 2017. “I wanted to see what it would be like to write about the current time, because that was all I was thinking or talking about,” she said. And it was important to her to try to understand Trump supporters, too. “Writing the play came from having a very liberal experience but it also came from going online and seeking other viewpoints, visiting websites that I don’t normally hang out at.”

Whether art can, or should, tackle contemporary politics is among the issues chewed over by the “Shipwreck” characters. Their discussion of the controversial depiction of Trump in the 2017 Shakespeare in the Park production of “Julius Caesar” is a proxy for Washburn’s own wrestling with the dilemma.

“Whether art has a responsibility to be contemporaneous, whether it can be contemporaneous, is a huge question,” Washburn said. “I feel like the idea of an immediate political theater is very enticing and yet often disappointing. It’s a hard nut to crack and yet we still want to go at it.”

By the time “Shipwreck” was finished in April, she said, it was too late for 2019 programming in the United States. British theaters, however, are a little more nimble. And although she had only showed the script to a few friends, Goold had got wind, and asked if he could read it.

His first reaction was simply how funny the play was. “She doesn’t write a dull line,” Goold said over the phone. And although he was surprised at its overtly political nature — not typical of Washburn’s writing — addressing how theater can respond to politics was certainly appealing.

Goold had some concern it would be too American. “But the inability for metropolitans to come to terms with the shamanistic power of populism is as relevant here as it is over there,” he added.

Washburn was surprised at his interest, but then, she initially didn’t think anyone would want her Trump play. “I thought no one would ever want to spend any more time talking about it than we already do,” she said. “But I did want to get into the intricate, really overheated language we were all partaking in. What is it like to put this time on paper?”

Inevitably, then, “Shipwreck” is a talky, thinky piece, but Washburn’s skewering of the chattering classes is as sparkling as it is spiky. (Tara Fitzgerald, Selyse Baratheon on “Game of Thrones,” is best-known in the cast of British theater regulars.) She’s always shown forensic interest in the way we speak and the stories we tell, from making up her own language for 2006’s “The Internationalist” to tracing the mutation of culture in “Mr. Burns.”

There’s also a through-line with “The Twilight Zone.” British theater and opera director Richard Jones had brought her onto that project, having been impressed by the “audacity” of “Mr. Burns.” He described Washburn as “a brainiac” — but a hilarious one, who is “very joyful to work with.”

Washburn was working on it during the 2016 presidential campaign, and found herself wondering: “What is America doing? Where did this thing come from?”

“The Twilight Zone,” she added, “felt like the subconscious of America laid bare.”

She has now done the same thing in “Shipwreck,” once again reflecting America back at itself — even if it is London audiences who will get the first look.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/theater/anne-washburn-shipwreck-trump-london.html" id="31f04605-d88d-3e82-acef-824f18022c94">The New York Times</a>.

From 'The Simpsons' to 'The Twilight Zone.' And Now, Trump.

LONDON — When Anne Washburn started her Donald Trump play, she didn’t think it would ever see the light. After a frustrating day spent reading the news online, she would begin to write. “It was enjoyable to feel I had some measure of control over the situation,” Washburn said. “It’s the helplessness that makes people crazy.”

<h1>LONDON — The stage filled with women in Princess Diana masks, smashing VHS cassettes with hammers. A dancer wove her way through a bar, muttering about kittens. A figure wrapped in a filthy comforter emerged from a tent, crawling among clubbers dressed in fetish gear.</h1>

Welcome to The Yard: London’s only theater-slash-nightclub.

The Yard opened in 2011 in a warehouse in Hackney Wick — a district of East London that was once rundown but has recently gentrified. The theater venue, with a 110-seat, purpose-built auditorium inside a former warehouse, was meant to be temporary; eight years later, it still has a rough-and-ready feel, all recycled wood and corrugated roofing. Beyond staging some of London’s most avant-garde theater productions, there is a large bar that hosts club nights for as many as 250 people.

For five weeks each January and February, The Yard draws these two strands together in a festival called “NOW”: double bills in the theater, plus “Lates” each Thursday, where the bar is open afterward for drinks, DJs and live art performances.

The Yard’s artistic director, Jay Miller, 34, said the festival was “really the more radical end of our program,” made up of “innovating and risky” work.

So far, this year’s festival, which runs through Feb. 16, has featured “Diana is Dead” by F.K. Alexander — the aforementioned royal revenge fantasy — as well as an evening of contemporary dance: Jamila Johnson-Small, performing as Last Yearz Interesting Negro, and Rowdy S.S., a musician and performance artist, writhed across the stage in front of close-up video images of dreadlocks and nipples.

Highlights yet to come include a show by performance artist Ira Brand about dominance and submission, and a playful monologue about time travel from the celebrated experimental theater company Forced Entertainment.

Everything The Yard does is underpinned by three values, Miller said. The first is that “the stories we tell have to feel like they aren’t being told by mainstream culture,” Miller said. “The second is we create a space where audiences and artists feel able to take risks together. The third is we really celebrate the idea of the live moment, and what that means in a society mediated by technology.”

This can result in work that feels modish, with recent shows about social media and selfie culture. But The Yard has also produced acclaimed productions driven by bold directorial choices — a relatively rare thing for new writing in British theaters, where the director is more often expected to invisibly “serve” the script.

The theater’s hip, edgy work attracts an unusually young crowd: 70 percent of the audience is under the age of 35, according to Miller. And it is breaking down the boundaries between watching a play, hanging out with a beer and raving till 6 a.m. “Audiences are cross-pollinating,” Miller said. “We’re creating a new theater audience, who see that it can be as invigorating as dancing in a club.”

Communicating the unusual dual nature of The Yard has proved tricky, he added.

Marlen Pflueger, a dance student who stuck around for a recent “Lates” offering, said she had been to The Yard before for dance parties. “I didn’t know it was a theater,” she said, adding, “I think it’s such a good idea to have this combination of a club and performance space,” she said.

Although it receives about 150,000 pounds, or nearly $200,000, a year in government funding, Miller said that The Yard made more money from running its own parties and renting out the bar space for events than it did from the theater, where ticket prices never go above 20 pounds. Putting on plays and club nights can be “exhausting” he said, but doing so allows The Yard to stage the kind of work that other London theaters don’t.

Miller was drawn to Hackney Wick because it was cheap, he said. The Yard initially moved in for free. Warehouses were often broken into, and their owners were spending a lot on security, Miller said, adding, “Us being here meant there was less chance of that happening.”

Britain’s theaters are heavily reliant on government funding, but such money was cut drastically when the British government turned to austerity policies in 2010. Cash-strapped theaters took fewer risks in programming new work, Miller said. “It seemed like it was an easier choice to start a theater than get a show on at an existing theater.”

He founded The Yard in 2011 with just 9,000 pounds and no idea how long he could keep it going. But additional money from the government and private donors allowed Miller to turn it into something permanent at a time when Hackney Wick was changing drastically.

The area’s revival began with construction for the 2012 Olympics, which were largely held in East London. Today, there are plenty of trendy bars, restaurants and clubs, as well as luxury apartment developments. Miller said the changes made him uneasy. “Artists go to places that are free, and then they’re not free for other people,” he said.

Ben Bishop, The Yard’s music and events coordinator, was hired in 2017, having run off-grid warehouse parties for years. He said that he had always liked to collaborate with performance artist friends, and that working at an arts venue like The Yard seemed like a good way to blend both worlds.

Bishop said he saw The Yard as playing an important role in supporting London’s subcultures, through nights such as Pride of Arabia, which defines itself as being for “queers from the Arab world,” or Murder on Zidane’s Floor, an event run by Goal Diggers, an East London soccer club for women and people who identify as nonbinary.

The recent narrative around London’s night life has been a largely pessimistic one, with many venues closing for good, and others facing soaring costs or the denial of licenses because of concerns about noise. Bishop said that if the city’s late-night culture is to thrive, rather than just survive, artists and late-night venues needed to collaborate. “We should be seeing more types of art and expression in clubs,” he said.

Such cross-pollination is rare in London. But The Yard is encouraging it, whether that’s getting techno clubbers to buy tickets for a play, or encouraging theatergoers to stick around for a late-night event.

It may be an unusual vision for the future of theater — but it’s happening right now at The Yard.

This article originally appeared in <a id="1f445cba-c74a-4689-86f1-866e1a877c12" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/03/theater/yard-theater-london-now-festival.html">The New York Times</a>.

It's a theater, with craft beer and DJs until 6 a.m

Welcome to The Yard: London’s only theater-slash-nightclub.

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Holly Williams

Articles written by the author

Staging a (True) Crime in Edinburgh

Puppetry Brings 'Life of Pi' to the Stage

From 'The Simpsons' to 'The Twilight Zone.' And Now, Trump.

It's a theater, with craft beer and DJs until 6 a.m