After the enormous success of shows 1-4 - Holmes and the Secret Theatre Company are back with a bang - get ready for Show Number 5.
The Lyric Hammersmith is currently undergoing a facelift. Charismatic artistic director, Sean Holmes, has turned this potential artistic setback into an opportunity with a unique, year-long project for the new season: a different way of making theatre, pushing beyond the boundaries of traditional British savoir faire. The concept of Secret Theatre was born.
Until September 2014, theatregoers will buy tickets without knowing anything about the play or its cast, enter the theatre from backstage and, we’re assured, be surprised, amazed and challenged by what this radically alternative view of theatre has to offer.
We loved our previous Secret Theatre experiences. But we’re not going to ruin yours by revealing any more. Instead, have a look at our interview with Sean Holmes.
Way back in July, he told us as much as he could about Secret Theatre without compromising the mystery so essential to its success:
How have the company (10 actors, 2 directors and 4 playwrights) found it so far?
SH: “It’s been good to rehearse together, we are all quite different which makes the group easier. There is a mixture of people. Half of the group is very young, so there is sort of openness and passion, which is infectious. And for those who are more experienced, they’ve worked enough to feel dissatisfied with the structure they’ve come up against and are very keen to make it work. Everyone realised very early on that there is no point in doing this unless we were brave and open.
Holmes is very keen to emphasise that Secret Theatre is not just “different” for the sake of being different. It is based on experience and will draw on European theatrical tradition by working with a permanent ensemble.
Obviously I worked with a certain tradition for 20 years, it’s also built on that, we are not doing something different for the sake of it. It’s about how we can take something further. Actors will be physically more committed, they will be bolder, better. We need to push our sense of commitment. When you do something, it has to be real.
Some of the plays are or will be written by promising young playwrights like Arinze Kene or Hayley Squire. Others are very well know mid-20th century classics:
At the moment the two plays we are doing are not new plays. Both authors are dead, those plays are very well known. Because of that, part of the exercise is to try and break out of the receiving wisdom of how those plays are done. The writers are currently writing the plays with the team in their mind and it’s is going to be very interesting. The greatest playwrights – Chekov, Brecht, Shakespeare – are universal because they were writing for an actor they knew, in a theatre they knew, for an audience they knew.
Holmes flinches when we ask whether his approach has been influenced by the success of immersive theatre companies such as Punchdrunk:
I am deeply suspicious of that spectacle over content. Somewhere you are not asking the hard question. Immersive theatre shows that there is real hunger in people for something different, but ultimately it can only take you so far. What I want is a theatre that is really transformative, really surprising and genuinely intellectually challenging.
Challenging it may be, but Holmes is at pains to explain that his audience are not just playthings:
It’s not about disrespecting the audience at all. It’s about “this is us, this is what we think”.
What | Secret Theatre Show 5, Lyric Hammersmith |
Where | Lyric Hammersmith, Lyric Square, King St, W6 0QL | MAP |
Nearest tube | Hammersmith (Piccadilly and District lines) (underground) |
When |
07 May 14 – 22 May 14, 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM |
Price | £15.00 |
Website | Click here for tickets. |