FAIRYTALES OF NEW YORK

A PRODUCTION SET IN THE 1940s, DEVISED VIA 21st Century TECHNOLOGIES

Over recent years I’ve become especially interested in exploring how web platforms and emerging online digital technologies can enable actors-in-training to be more active artistic co-creators within theatre-making processes. I’d like to focus on a processes that I led for East 15 Acting School in 2016, as this best illustrates this practice: a devised Christmas show Fairytales Of New York.

The conceit behind the show was this:

It’s Christmas Eve 1946. New York’s WRLD Radio presents the First Annual Ford Hour Christmas Special! Eleven of America’s brightest stars of tomorrow, from radio, Broadway and the motion pictures, are brought together for one night only to perform four American fairy stories by L. Frank Baum (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz) in a live radio broadcast from New York’s Radio City Music Hall, taking audiences to the limits of their imagination - and beyond! 

In developing the show, our first task as a company was to choose the four American Fairy Stories that we most enjoyed from L. Frank Baum’s larger collection of tales. Baum’s American Fairy Stories are set in non-specific U.S. locations at the turn of the century. To suit the show’s conceit (and for fun!) we chose to set the stories specifically in early 1940s New York. To add era-authenticity, we decided to pepper the script with the wonderful words and phrases that you only hear in screwball film comedies of the era. To achieve this, I selected six classic U.S. screwball comedies from the period, the group organised themselves into pairs, and I invited each pair to choose one film from the list, watch it together, and create a list of the era-specific words and phrases spoken in the film that captured their imaginations. First you can see the home page of the online sharing space that I created: notice again how I organised it into particular posting threads bespoke to the needs of this project. The next image illustrates the learners’ posts in response and the six films that acted as their inspiration. Below these images are a post from Robin inspired by It’s A Wonderful Life! and a post inspired by Bringing Up Baby from Cheeto.

Next, the acting company needed to create characters: a group of young, talented performers on the cusp of fame who would perform the radio broadcast on Christmas Eve 1942. I thought that it would be fun if these fictional characters were composites of genuine stars of early 1940s radio and film. To lay a firm foundation, I invited each cast member to research two stars from the the era and prepare a 20 minute practical workshop for the other group members to experience, with film or audio clips to illustrate the particular acting skills or performance techniques that these stars of yesteryear possessed. In the images below left you’ll see where each student uploaded their ‘Actors’ Craft Appreciation Sharing’ content in advance of their workshop, for the other group members to use as a reference. You can then see an example of the content that the students shared. In this post, Charlotte discusses the particular performance qualities of the actor Jean Arthur.

Inspired by their research into these 1930s/1940s stars, the company then created fictional ‘stars of tomorrow’ whom they could embody within the show. We engaged in a long-form improvisation in which our acting company’s fictional stars each auditioned for the opportunity to take part in the live radio broadcast and shared their particular performance skills. The images below are a selection of the fictional resumes that each cast member brought along to this audition improvisation, and which subsequently acted as a guide for the show’s costume designer (each learner’s guidance notes to the costume designer are included). The acting company’s character preparation was tremendously thorough and inventive and many of the often hilarious discoveries that we made within this mock-audition improvisation eventually found their way into the Fairytales of New York performance script.

The success of the mock-audition improvisation led to us rehearsing the show almost entirely in character, over a period of five weeks. This resulted in a joyous and highly creative rehearsal room atmosphere and, equally, contributed so much to the wit, relationship detail and ensemble spirit that the show ultimately possessed.  

There was a space within the web platform for the acting company to share their research into early 1940s radio broadcasting techniques. In her post below, Hsin-Huei shares her discoveries about the art of live Foley sound effects. Hsin-Huei became quite the Foley expert: she passed on her skills to the other members of the acting company, collaborated with the sound design team and the show’s designer, and we eventually had the luxury of two long trestle tables filled with Foley objects to play with throughout the rehearsal process. Much of the humour within the eventual show came from each fictional star’s success (or lack of!) in operating these Foley items under the pressure of a live broadcast.

Our fictional radio show needed a sponsor and Matthew’s idea, shared in his post below left - ‘sponsored by the Ford Motor Company and Servel Refrigerators’ - was too good to lose. This extract from the script illustrates how our sponsor was introduced into the broadcast. I’ve also included an image of the beautiful large wooden sign that hung above the stage action during the show. All of the content within the sign was devised by the acting company and then lovingly created by the show’s design team.

To help bring a sense of authenticity to the show’s central conceit of being a live radio broadcast from Christmas Eve 1942, the acting company researched actual radio broadcasts from the era and uploaded authentic broadcast content to the online sharing space that we could harvest for the show. Below you’ll see two posts, in which Kathryn, Matt and Cheeto share audio weblinks for authentic in-show advertising messages and jingles for real products from the era. This content that they found was (unintentionally) hilarious, but also beautiful in its authenticity and sincerity. With a few nips and tweaks, content of this kind was incorporated into the performance script almost verbatim. You can see an example from the script below.

Robin was curious about radio quiz shows from the era. In his post below left he shares some of his research discoveries, which inspired the fictional quiz that featured within our show: The Better Half, in which a young married couple’s knowledge of U.S. Christmas traditions and rituals was tested as they competed to win the show’s star prize: a brand new Servel refrigerator. An extract from this part of the script sits alongside Robin’s post, along with a production still that illustrates one of the audience participation prompt cards (others were ‘LOUD APPLAUSE!’ ‘OOOOH!’ ‘AHHHH!’ etc.) that were created by the show’s design team and which were used heavily within The Better Half sequence.

Alongside the four L. Frank Baum American fairy stories, spoof advertisements for genuine (yet sometimes unbelievable!) products from the era, and the quiz show The Better Half, peppered throughout the evening were festive 1940s songs (Everybody's Waiting For The Man With The Bag; Jing-Jing-A-Ling; (Baby) It's Cold Outside; Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas) performed by the ensemble with live musical accompaniment, an Ice Hockey sports broadcast, a dance marathon, and a series of ‘War of the Worlds' inspired weather forecasts. STAND-BY and ON AIR signs illuminated and flashed, and we used radio mikes that were customised to look authentically 1940s and which included our (fictional) radio station logo (the acting company were comprised of students from all corners of the globe training within the school's MFA International course - hence WRLD).    

Above right is a short promotional video that I created to publicise the show. It should give you a strong sense of the show's energy and spirit...   

More information about the Fairytales of New York production, along with many more production photographs, can be found here.