💥 Discover this must-read post from Culture | The Guardian 📖
📂 Category: Theatre,Bradford,Stage,Culture,The Unthanks,Music,Books,UK city of culture,Festivals,Javaad Alipoor
✅ Key idea:
nThere is no clear match between broadcaster Fiona Moseley and theater director Javad Alipour. Shortlisted for the 2017 Mosley Booker Prize, Elmet is a lyrical and violent tale of land, family and revenge in semi-rural Yorkshire. Alipoor is known for its complex multimedia shows that explore digital technology, internet culture, and geopolitics. But it’s the paradox that motivates them to work on a theatrical adaptation of Bradford’s year as a City of Culture. “I couldn’t see how it would all come together,” Mosley says. “But this turned me on.”
Alipour read Elmet’s book during the pandemic and was struck by its “moving story.” As fans of his company’s work might expect, this is not what he calls the “first way” to adapt. Rather than focusing on plot and dialogue, he maintains the novel’s evocative narrative style and emphasizes the theatricality of the show, as the actors move in and out of character. It’s all refracted through the perspective of teenage Danny, who lives in the woods with his quietly angry sister Kathy and the hulking, almost superhuman Dad, whose sense of right and hunger for violence puts them on a collision course with a greedy local landowner.
In this version, memory is the central theme. During rehearsals, I watch the company build a scene in which Danny (LJ Parkinson) recalls a charged exchange with Cathy. As Parkinson speaks, Jennifer Jackson as Cathy appears from behind as a dream figure. The company begins by incorporating delicate movements with a delicate folk song by the Unthanks, who will perform the music on stage throughout the show. The effect is haunting, even in this early draft.
Alipour and his collaborators exploited the idea of Elmet as a tragedy. Mosley has not thought of the novel in this way, but he agrees that it “hits all those beats” with its crescendo toward seemingly inevitable destruction. For Alipore, it was important to think about “what it means for a tragedy to happen somewhere like this” – as Bradford has often been defined by its poverty in the mainstream media. “There’s something about making a tragedy out of that,” he says. “It makes people look at this with new eyes and not tell ourselves a story that’s just about toiling somewhere.”
One of the most striking things about Moseley’s prose is the way he evokes a family home in the woods. This is a place where “the soil was alive with tattered stories” and “the ghosts of the ancient forest could be discerned when the wind blew.” Mosley and Alipore grew up in York and Bradford respectively, and in one of their first meetings, Mosley recalls they talked about “being from Yorkshire and being immersed in Yorkshire, but maybe not in the typical sense, being immersed in the place but also being able to get out and look in”.
Mosley has since left York for Edinburgh, where she is working on her third novel, and Alipore and his company are now based in Manchester. In different ways, place has been central to their work. Mosley’s second novel, Hot Soup, depicts the vibrant Soho neighborhood under threat of luxury development, while in shows like Rich Kids: A History of Tehran’s Shopping Malls and Hidden Objects Since the Foundations of the World, Alipour explores the Iranian side of his heritage.
The name Elmet refers to the Celtic kingdom that extended across what later became the West Riding of Yorkshire. Alipore points out that this area retains a distinct mythical quality today: “The boundaries between urban and rural are not what they are elsewhere, and our sense of rurality is not the polite sense of what that means in Cheshire or the home counties.”
He says there is in Moseley’s book “a sense of being penetrated by nature”, something this production will convey through language, movement and music. Alipoor describes the original songs written by Unthanks as another character in the drama. The band’s sound is based on the traditional music of North East England, reflecting the folkloric elements of the story and its connection to the land.
Bradford’s year as City of Culture so far has included ‘Rise’, a multi-format outdoor show that attracted more than 20,000 people, and ‘Future Memories’, a dance performance by Akram Khan’s company featuring more than 70 local participants. Alibor sees Elmet as another opportunity to change the narrative around his hometown.
“What we’re trying to do for audiences who don’t normally come to see contemporary theater for a variety of reasons,” he says, “is make a show that takes some element of their lives, portrays it imaginatively, makes it big tragic and big epic — and also shows why theater, as a form of storytelling, can do something that nothing else can do.”
💬 Tell us your thoughts in comments!
#️⃣ #Epic #Capital #Elmet #tale #violence #greed #haunted #Yorkshire #meadow #stage