Emily Warner (she/her) talks to Ricochet Theatre about their York Performance Award and upcoming performance.
Image Credit: Image Credit: Izzy Baxter
When Maria Cook reached out to me on Facebook, I had never heard of the York Performance Award. Now, after speaking to multiple members of her group, I have learnt the value of this award and the incredible performance that it has funded. Ricochet Theatre’s ‘Elegies’, coming to York on the 17 and 18 February, won’t be one to miss.
Tell me a little more about the award you were given by York.
“When we were in our third year we applied for and won the York Performance Award. The award has been running for a few years now and provides a grant of £1,000 to graduating students from the Departments of Theatre, Film, Television and Interactive Media (TFTI), Music, or English and Related Literature. It’s funded by Barbara and Ronald Cooke and it’s now open to students from all years in their study. The idea is that you use this fund to take your performance project to venues beyond York and then return to York to perform; we’re doing just that on the 17 and 18 Feb this year. It’s an award that is perhaps not spoken about as much as it should be. I sort of found out about it by accident and a lot of the lecturers at the time weren’t quite sure how it worked. It’s definitely worth going for if you have a piece of theatre or performance that you want to tour but you also have to be aware that £1000 is going to go very quickly when you take into consideration travel, venue fees, accommodation and extra costs like set and technical equipment. It gave us a good boost to get us going but we now work from funds we have generated through ticket sales during our tour.”
What is your performance about?
“Our show presents a double bill of monologues navigating grief; Intricate Rituals by Seth Douglas and The Same Rain That Falls on Me by Logan Jones. These two intimate, contrasting monologues balance dark humour and touching pathos in equal measure. Intricate Rituals (directed by Ella McKeown and performed by Maria Cook), features Siken, your average gay university student – witty, geeky and hopelessly in love with her straight best friend. Then callous, senseless tragedy unexpectedly strikes her life and grief turns her down a darker and increasingly supernatural path. The Same Rain That Falls on Me (Directed by Jay Seldon and performed by Ella McKeown) follows Alice, travelling home to say an untimely goodbye to her father. The monologue considers the connection between climate change and the effects of bereavement on a family, especially when that bereavement is avoidable. This performance received the Pick of the Bedford Fringe award in July 2021 on Ricochet Theatre’s first ever tour.”
Why would you recommend your performance to students and young people?
“Both shows are about university students coping with grief and I think the way that young people deal with death is very different to that of older adults and is something not talked about enough. We build so much of our identities from the people around us who are important to us, whether that be family, school friends, teachers or even bullies. As we get to university we are suddenly separated from that network of support that we had growing up and thrown into a completely new environment, forced to re-evaluate and sometimes reinvent ourselves. Therefore grief can fracture a sense of self that is already vulnerable to a million changes happening to us and our world view at university. I think that Elegies is a pair of contrasting monologues that gives a platform to the experiences of two young women who cope with grief in very different ways. It’s an important story. I also think the dark humour and interesting subject matter draw younger audiences in. These pieces were born at York and have grown and developed with us as we’ve developed as artists. But the core setting of university is crucial to both – there’s a lot of relatable content for students, whether that be excruciating conversations with your dissertation supervisor or the slightly ridiculous smorgasbord of societies offered by the student union. You’ll see yourself in these characters but most importantly you’ll see young three dimensional characters who are interested in things beyond “boy meets girl”, who have hopes and dreams, and who just want to get through the university year without collapsing in on themselves.”
What was the inspiration behind the show?
“I was inspired by lots of things; my own experiences as a queer person navigating through life but also poetry, particularly poetry of Richard Siken, who is sort of the namesake of the main character. It’s inspired by things in my friend’s bin, it’s inspired by wikipedia scrolls at 3am about bugs. It’s a real melting pot of inspirations. I wanted to find a connection between what was happening to the planet and the effects of bereavement on a family, especially when that bereavement is avoidable.”
How did your theatre company form? And what do you envision for the future of the company?
“Four of us were originally part of a creative team hoping to take The Same Rain That Falls on Me up to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2020 with York DramaSoc. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, but we stuck together and decided to do our initial show independently, touring it to three different venues in the summer of 2023. We then decided to create a double bill of monologues using a script written by Set Douglas and our team grew to seven. Of that seven, six of us originally met on the Writing Directing and Performance BA, with one person being from the English Literature BA. Since leaving York, we’ve got a new producer Ella met working at Punchdrunk and we’re hoping to work with more artists as we develop new projects from outside the York bubble.”
Why did you choose the monologue form for your performance?
“It partly came out of necessity. We started out this project while Covid was still massively impacting the theatre industry (and the effects of Covid are still very much present). Monologues meant we didn’t need to worry about social distancing on stage and also made it a lot easier to rehearse over Zoom. If you’ve ever attempted having a Zoom read-through where two people are meant to be responding to each other, you’ll know it’s a nightmare. It’s also just much cheaper – it took a long time for us to actually receive the funding from the York Performance Award (nearly two years after submitting our application) so we had to make our show from nothing. The more actors you have, the more you have to reimburse, the more costumes you need, the bigger the stage and therefore venue you need.”
Can you talk to me about the costumes/set design for the performance? Why did you choose to stage it in this way?
“For The Same Rain That Falls on Me (the second monologue in the double bill) we just used a chair and an otherwise empty stage. We chose this because we wanted it to feel like the space could transform into anywhere, as we journey home with Alice to say goodbye to her dad. This places emphasis on the physicalization of the actor and encourages the audience to invest in the story with their imagination. The design for Intricate Rituals evolved quite a lot over the course of its run. We’ve got shadow puppetry and placards for our design now, inspired by theatre practitioners like Brecht and Balinese’s shadow theatre. The main attraction is our beloved overhead projector (you may have had one of these in your primary school assemblies) that Ella nabbed off Ebay. It allows us to create a much more ambitious set than we could through stage carpentry, saving us money while injecting a bit of magic.”
Maria concluded by expressing her gratitude for those who support their work. She said, “when you’re doing plays that no one has heard of, by people no one has heard of (yet!) ticket sales are the only way we can continue. It’s hard to get your name out there! Working in the arts, in this day and age, is really difficult, so it’s important that we continue to self-produce the work we love.”
Editor’s note: You can read more about Ricochet Theatre on their website: https://www.ricochettheatre.com/about-us .