Down the rabbit hole
(White rabbits onstage: Edinburgh, Scotland)
Now, this might be a difficult picture to explain. I’ll give it the best go that I can. So I arrived in Edinburgh on Friday lunchtime and within half an hour I was sat in the audience of a Fringe show, courtesy of my friend, Anna. The Edinburgh Festival and Fringe are ongoing for another week, and Edinburgh itself is swarming with people in a way not seen at any other time of the year. Walking anywhere at speed is a constant struggle of human shunting, pushing and dodging. A bicycle is more a hazard than a help and I would go so far as to say that the more slender you are, the better your festival experience – much less of you to become squashed and all the easier to slip between slower visitors.
Back to the show; White Rabbit Red Rabbit, a show by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour. I will set the scene; we arrived and sat in the darkness of the plain, small venue. The actor was already on the stage, looking rather pensive and sitting on a chair. We were offered a little extra glamour since this performance was to be filmed for the BBC Culture Show. Whether they decide to use the footage or not is something I wish to discover in the coming days. Now, to commence the play, the actor is handed a brown A4 envelope. Within this envelope is the script – rather odd – but more surprising is the fact that the actor in question has never seen the script for the play he or she is about to perform. This is why there is a new actor for every single performance, as to use the same actor twice would spoil the effervescence and uncertainty that is palpable in the room. From this point on, from the opening of the envelope, I felt that there was no going back. Everything that was to happen is contained in that ream of printed paper in the actor’s fingertips, but at the same time it could go anywhere. It was evident at every juncture that the actor was a pawn in the playwright’s game. This was all provocatively entertaining – yet what we had not realised at that point was that we were all players in the game.
All I can add is that I ended up on stage and had to read the final pages of the play. I’m not sure that happens every time – tomorrow I may find out when I go to see it again – different actor, different audience. Only the words on the page will be the same, and yet, I already realise even they will differ in a way, especially with the experience of a fresh actor. I am (hopefully) going to try an experiment; this time I will make a concerted effort not to end up on stage and I’ll see what happens.
In an unprecedented twist of fate, the actor (holding the script) is none other than Thom Tuck, friend of my flatmate and recommended highly for his own show that I also hope to see tomorrow (Thom Tuck: Straight to DVD). He did White Rabbit Red Rabbit the justice it deserved and I was completely sucked in. It was intoxicating. As a further exciting revelation, I appear on the playwright’s blog since I took this very photograph for his perusal. These were other audience members (though some readers may recognise my friend Anna as the person second from the left). They were called upon to make rabbity faces on stage. I emailed Nassim and sent it along, and as well as replying to my message, he added my email to his blog. The entire experience has been such a extraordinary journey; completely unexpectedly rewarding, thrilling, awe inspiring and wickedly funny, despite the enormous tension. I’ve had a couple of days off from what I call ‘Death by Fringe’, but now I am ready for more!
– Today Rosie is preparing to return to Edinburgh, Scotland, and to see another round of Fringe shows. More on that in the coming days –
It was indeed mentioned on the culture show this evening (if that was where Sue Perkins was presenting – I wasn’t fully concentrating at the time). The way this play is set up had me searching for the details, which your blog thankfully provides. I am fascinated by the concept of chance and singularity in an imagined world between actors and audience – coincidentally I have come up with a similar scene for my novel in progress. It has two actors instead of one and an imagined audience (at one point it’s a real audience, but at that stage it has already stopped being a play). Anyway, thanks for sharing the experience!
My review for this show – on Thursday from the above website.
This year I have taken the decision to try and see more drama than usual. This has proved a master-stroke as ” A Clockwork Orange”, ” The Dark Philosophers” and ” The Ten Plagues” were all stunning in their different ways. So, despite, the inconvenience of rushing to the other end of town (St George’s West) from our flat at an early (ish) start we were intrigued by what would follow. We were greeted by a member of the production team who handed over the envelope containing the script to today’s actor, Pip Upton. Although he is known for his one-man shows on the fringe he looked naturally concerned about what he had let himself in for.
It was left to the playwright via the script to explain what we were about to witness. Nassim Soleimanpour wrote the play in Iran but as he refused to join up for National Service he was ineligible for a passport and couldn’t travel. However, he was determined to be part of the performance and requested (and was granted) that a seat was left vacant for him. Similarly, he arranged for the audience to number themselves and get involved. It was up to me to announce the full date and frankly after six days here I was struggling to remember my name but somehow I got through. I was more fortunate than others who came on stage to impersonate the rabbits of the title.
The crux of the piece revolves around the possibility of the actor drinking a glass of poison, unlikely but as we were ushered out of the theatre by another member of the audience you could have heard a pin drop. Since there has been no mention of Mr Upton’s demise in the Scotsman I assume he survived. This is an outstandingly riveting and disconcerting play. It does make you realise how much we take our freedom for granted, yet conversely it shows how small the world is nowadays. We were all encouraged to contact Nassim by email or Facebook (assuming he is still alive) to let him know how the show went. This is the kind of show you can only really see at Edinburgh. GO!
[...] them back to back. My friend, Anna had bought me a pair of tickets to see White Rabbit Red Rabbit (which you may recall from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe). Yes, yes, so I’ve seen it three times now, but that only serves to make the experience richer, [...]