Prometheus Theatre Company

TAPE by Stephen Belber 
Performed by Prometheus Theatre Company during a dress rehearsal (hence why there is no audience.)

We were in this weeks issues of the STAGE (page 47) looking all handsome.

We were asked by ‘Nick Hern Books’, the performing rights holder for Stephen Belber’s ‘Tape’, to write a small article on our experience working with the text. It will appear soonish on their website helping other theatre companies find rare and unknown plays. Here it is:

“My friend Jamie and I were both trying to make it as actors. We weren’t doing bad, but we weren’t doing good. We’d wanted to do something together for years and Jamie recalled a text he’d bought after seeing the Ethan Hawke-Uma Thurman film adaption on television one night many years before. We didn’t make any kind of decision to put on the play-we merely wanted to read it through a few times for own enjoyment. The text literally jumps off the page. Its quick, it’s snappy, it’s banterful. it follows very real very coherent thought processes seamlessly. it is a marvel of timing; precise, well measured. one minute conversational, the next profound. The characters are rich and incredibly well formed-everything is there for you in the text. The relationships are beautifully layered and complex. Jamie and I have been doing this play for over a year now, with our newly created Prometheus Theatre Company, winning three drama festivals including the British All Winners Final, and many Best Actor titles beside, and we marvel every time we get back in the rehearsal room at the multitude of new levels we keep finding and peeling back. As a mediation on the nature of friendships, and the all too easily blurred line between that and relationships, it is a work of almost infinite depth, honesty and truth. It makes for an extremely compelling, disturbingly insightful and painfully tense look into a classic triangle with the added dimension of a ten year interval that allows the masterful Author to review the contrasting ways in which different character types respond to life changing events. it literally is all laid out for you as an actor. Any misinterpretation lies solely with the ego of the performer as all the answers are given to you in the text.
 
We certainly feel incredibly indebted to Belber himself, and his fine work. We have developed as analysts of character and performers of human behaviour because of his incredible insight and masterful storytelling. For that, and the success his text has allowed us, we can only stand humbled and thankful, in awe of this great writing, and try our best to lift it off the page as is intended by the writer himself.
If you’re interested in finding out more about ‘Prometheus Theatre Company’ then please find us on Facebook: “www.facebook.com/prometheustheatrecompany” or Twitter: @PrometheusTC”

- Duncan WigmanCo-Artistic Director of Prometheus Theatre Company 

Picture from our 2010-11 multi award winning production of Stephen Belber’s Tape. 

Photo credit: Rosie Hardy

So this will act as a kinda blog un till we figure out exactly how Prometheus will work.

We’ve just finished our 1st year, so expect a long recap blog of everything we achieved this year in the next week or so. 

In the meantime why not check out our Facebook and Twitter.

Peace.