Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Live Like Pigs By John Arden Two opposite worlds collide. What follows is not pretty… Hockney Theatre 15 to 17 March 2017 Image by Homer Sykes “ “ What I loved about Arden was the intoxicating vigour of his language: he wrote a muscular, colourful prose, interspersed with ballad and song, that ricocheted off the walls of the theatre like a ball in a squash court. Michael Billington The Guardian Welcome It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to our production of John Arden’s ‘Live Like Pigs’. It is a real delight to bring to the stage a principal work by one of Yorkshire’s finest playwrights. John Arden was one of the first of the so called Angry Young Men to write for the theatre in the 1950s and his plays, never dull, challenge convention and explore uncomfortable themes. ‘Live Like Pigs’ is certainly not for the faint hearted. It is a comedy that will force you to laugh, but one that also has the capacity to move you. It challenges the respectability and morality of British society and aims to leaves us contemplating what is it about freedom, and those who wish to own it, that so terrifies us. Tonight’s performance is a true collaboration. I am indebted to my co-directors Miss Stokes and Miss Bruce whose skill, expertise and industry has been vital; we have dovetailed our talents and together have shared the directorial burden. Huge thanks and congratulations to Shelby Deal and Tony Deacon for the fantastic set and staging; I didn’t think it was possible and they have proved me wrong magnificently. Thanks to Pete Dutton (for working with and supporting Shelby on the stage) and also for the excellent props, the lighting, the sound and for organising our brilliant tech crew. Finally, a thank you and a well done to the cast, who have taken this underperformed play and given it new life; it is almost 60 years old, yet this young cast prove that ‘Live Like Pigs’ still entertains and still has much to say. I’m sure John Arden would be delighted to find his work being presented once again in his native Yorkshire. Enjoy the show. Lee Hanson Head of English and Drama Who was John Arden? John Arden (1930-2012) was a Barnsley born dramatist, noted for his politically challenging and linguistically rich plays in the tradition of Brecht. He wrote for radio and television as well as for the stage. His first professionally produced play was a radio drama, The Life of Mars, broadcast in 1956. In the late 1950s Arden was associated with the Royal Court Theatre and it was at this venue that Live Like Pigs was first presented in 1958. It was also the place where his stark anti-war and best known play Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance opened in 1959. This play was something of a commercial failure at the time, but has been frequently revived since. During the 1960s Arden produced most of his major stage works; these included The Happy Haven (1960), The Workhouse Donkey (1963), a play about municipal corruption in Arden’s native Barnsley, Armstrong’s Last Goodnight (1964), which drew parallels between contemporary political events in the Congo and events in medieval Scotland, and LeftHanded Liberty (1965), a play about freedom and the Magna Carta. “ When I wrote this play I intended it to be not so much a social document as a study of differing ways of life brought sharply into conflict and both losing their own particular virtues under the stress of intolerance and misunderstanding. John Arden Playwright In 1972 Arden and his partner Margaret D’Arcy had a major argument with the RSC about the staging of their Arthurian play, The Island of the Mighty. The quarrel culminated in Arden picketing the theatre and vowing that he would not write for the British stage again; he was true to his word and never did. A member of the Royal Society of Literature, Arden also wrote several novels, including Silence Among the Weapons, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1982. He settled in Galway, Ireland, in 1971 and died there in 2012. Upon his death Whatsonstage chief critic Michael Coveney described him as “one of the very few 20th-century dramatists you could mention in the same breath as Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht without the parallels sounding too far-fetched.” “ The Sawneys are an anachronism. They are the direct descendants of the ‘sturdy beggars’ of the sixteenth century… the apparent chaos of their lives becomes an ordered pattern when seen in terms of wild countryside and nomadic existence… The play John Arden Playwright “ “ Forced to move from their caravan site, the Sawneys, an unruly family of travellers, unwillingly arrive at their new home on a council estate. Living next door are the Jacksons, eager to establish themselves as middle class. At first the busybody Mrs Jackson is eager to befriend the new arrivals, but when she is driven off the property with a tirade of insults, she quickly realises this will not be possible. As more travellers descend on the Sawneys’ home and threats of eviction are made, the Jacksons and the local residents become increasingly entangled with their new neighbours. The play is both hilarious and moving in its portrayal of what happens when these two opposite worlds collide. Live Like Pigs was first presented by the English Stage Society at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 1958. “ Today, quite simply, there are too many buildings in Britain, and there is just no room for nomads. John Arden Playwright “ These two families represent two different, incompatible ways of life: the Jacksons are good, solid, respectable, impeccably conventional members of the aspiring lower middle class (or at least think they are); while the Sawneys, who are moved against their will, are essentially nomadic vagrants, the last descendants of the Elizabethan sturdy beggars now barely existing on the fringes of a society which has no place for them. Tonight’s cast SailorLewis Day Rachel Clem Hall RosieEllie Kehoe ColPaddy Partridge SallyCatriona Ford BlackmouthHaris Sultan The Old Croaker Sylvie Walsh Daffodil Siena Anderson Mr Jackson Billy Lucas Mrs Jackson Ruby Hendry DoreenSarah Whitelaw The Official Christian Cardwell The Doctor Maariah Hussain The Police Sergeant Fraser Barton Narrators Hanna Panni, Bhavani Bhardwaj Tonight’s technical team Lighting and Sound Pete Dutton , Shelby Deal, Isla Milwain, Samantha Tullie, Lily Orton, Gowri Kanakath, Elliot Lack Staging Shelby Deal, Pete Dutton, Tony Deacon Backstage and Costumes Emelye Gill