VICE Research & Development Workshop
- Submitting institution
-
Birkbeck College
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 2006
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
-
- Location
- London UK
- Brief description of type
- Workshop
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- March
- Year
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Vice is a theatrical reimagining of a new opera, based on Thomas Middleton’s The Revenger’s Tragedy (1606), for a cast of actor-musicians. This submission represents one output of an on-going long-term project to stage Vice, and comprises the conceptual reframing which was tested through a week of intensive performance workshops (2014).
Swain’s contribution was a director-led investigation into working with actor-musicians to create dramatic languages, crossing boundaries between music and theatre, using his expertise of directing historical, especially early modern plays.
When Swain began working on Vice (2013) it had a cast of 18 singers and 7 musicians (portfolio item 9). Librettist Sue Curtis and composer Jools Scott wanted Vice to be a theatre piece, not opera, but its stage language was over-reliant on conventional operatic staging.
Swain conducted literary research into Middleton’s play, then worked with Curtis and Scott to re-write script and libretto, streamlining the plot and re-envisioning it for actor-musicians (item 4). With funding from Arts Council England (items 5 and 8), Swain convened a specialist team (item 5) to produce 4 sequences, chosen to exemplify the work’s challenges. Over a week, the team directed by Swain, explored and, on the final day, performed them for an audience (items 3 and 6), thus testing:
*a unique contemporary playing, movement and design language, evoking the hedonistic court of the Jacobean play;
*a feasibly reduced cast and band;
*the ability of actors to deliver Jacobean verse, sing to operatic standards, play instruments, move and dance.
This activity proved the feasibility of the new version. With new knowledge generated by this workshop, Curtis and Scott re-wrote the script for 11 actor-musicians and a jazz trio (item 7). The result is a piece of music theatre that can now be produced.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -