It all starts here! Well, it’s been a while in the planning but now we can get stuck into creating this admittedly ambitious project.

It all started about 9 months ago, during a very rare clear up of my bookshelf I re-discovered a whole batch of plays that I had studied during my university days. One of which was Churchill’s Serious Money. I remembered reading it years ago and recalled how I struggled to connect with it. I remember arguing that the play represented no more than a bye gone era of the way the world once was. This was of course during Labour’s glorious boom years, where I like most, thought we were a million miles away from repeating the same mistakes.

Reading Serious Money today I realise that I was wrong; this show is more than just a museum piece telling an old familiar tale of greed. Yes, the message of the failure of the financial world is a strong one but that is merely the structure the play is wrapped in. Serious Money is so much more than ‘it was the bankers fault’. It examines the disintegration of society, the power of corruption, the struggle with personal morals, the fascination with materialism and the animalistic appetite for wealth. After re-reading it I felt that this was a story that had to be told, and in a new way.

With this production of Serious Money I have challenged the creative team to produce a new world for this piece to be explored in. The aim being to create a completely different landscape for this show, compared to previous revivals that have set the piece rigidly in the predictable, vacuous world of corporate finance.

This week myself, Mathilde Lopez, Neil Davies and our new cast embarked upon our research and development week as we work towards producing the show.

We have had a great week, whilst also realising the daunting task ahead. We have spent time exploring the use of space, set ideas, becoming animals, rapping, playing six roles at once and developing many characters. All in all a lot has been achieved, so a big thanks to Phil Mackenzie and Sherman Cymru for giving us the chance to work on the New Artist Development scheme.

This week has made me realise what an exciting team we’ve got (with a couple more to join us next month), complete with an excellent cast combined with Mathilde’s boundless creative energy and Neil’s vivid design conceptions. I can’t wait for rehearsals to start next month and see how the show begins to develop further.

Chapter Arts Centre - April 26 – 30 2011
Aberystywth Arts Centre - May 5 2011

http://www.wakingexploits.co.uk

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