Impossible Plays: Adventures with the Cottesloe Company

by Jack Shepherd, Keith Dewhurst

Overview

Bill Bryden's Cottesloe Company, which flourished at Peter Hall's National Theatre, was the English theatre's only true ensemble of the last thirty or so years. Impossible Plays tells the story of the company and the many actors and musicians connected to it.

Co-written by Keith Dewhurst, author of eight plays for the group, and Jack Shepherd, a founder-actor, it explains the ideas behind the company's work and how the work was staged, and provides an idiosyncratic, lively and deeply personal take on the company.

"The search was always to find a popular theatre, a form of theatre that would draw into it people from all backgrounds, not just the cultured and the educated."

Beginning with a Royal Court Theatre Sunday night performance in 1970, the story of one company's aim to create a popular theatre form includes such milestone productions as The Mystery cycle of plays and Lark Rise to Candleford. With photographs by John Haynes, Michael Mayhew and Nobby Clark, Impossible Plays is a glorious and timely tribute to one of theatre's most innovative companies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781408147283
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	05/29/2014
Series:	Plays and Playwrights
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	256
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Keith Dewhust wrote eight of the plays produced by the Cottesloe Company, including Lark Rise to Candleford.
Jack Shepherd, a leading actor of his generation, was one
of the founding actors of the Cottesloe Company as well as being a
playwright. In 2005 his play Man Falling Down: A Mask Play was staged at the Globe Theatre, London.
Jack Shepherd, a leading actor of his generation, was one of the founding actors of the Cottesloe Company as well as being a playwright. In 2005 his play Man Falling Down: A Mask Play was staged at the Globe Theatre, London, followed by Holding Fire! in 2007.
Keith Dewhurst was born in Oldham and studied at Cambridge University. In addition to his writing for stage and screen, he has been a yarn tester in a cotton mill, a football journalist (touring with Manchester United during the 1998-99 season), an arts columnist for the Guardian and a Television Presenter. He has written 16 stage pays, including 'Rafferty’s Chant', 'Pirates', 'Brecht in 20', 'Corunna!', 'Kidnapped', 'The Miser', 'The Magic Island', 'The Bomb In Brewery Street', 'One Short', 'Luggage', 'Black Snow' and 'Animals of Farthing Wood' many of which were premiered by the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. He has also written 18 TV screenplays and 2 films, 'The Empty Beach' and 'The Land Girls'.

Editorial Reviews

'A vivid, nuanced and intimate account of the National Theatre's only true ensemble, Bill Bryden's Cottesloe Theatre company. Playwright Keith Dewhurst and actor Jack Shepherd tell an inspiring story of the company they helped to make. Anyone who cares about popular theatre, Britishness, the alchemy of theatrical space, acting as a group process and performance as a midfield football match, needs this book.'
Michael Kustow

'The Bill Bryden Company produced an extraordinary cannon of highly original
innovative work at a time when British theatre was stagnating... ensemble
at its best... and sometimes at its not so best.'
Richard Wilson

'The Cottesloe gang were an extraordinary troupe: a company within a company that created a style of theatre that was vigorous, popular and life-enhancing. The work they did deserves permanent recognition.'
Michael Billington, The Guardian

From the Publisher