Setting the Stage for the Queen of Crime

How the stage for And Then There Were None is designed

„I’ve been a huge Agatha Christie fan for ages. So, when Lexi told me she was planning to direct one of her pieces, I immediately told her I wanted to design the set,” recalls Martin Scheibe. “What I like about her as a writer is the clearcut simplicity of her stories. At the same time, my goal is to stay away from creating a too ‘cosily English’ stage. We’re going for a bold design in mainly black, grey, and white.” And some surreal surprises, he adds.

Creative back and forth

A sketch of Agatha Christie by Martin Scheibe

On a visit to his studio in Altona (Martin is a professional costume designer, artist, bag designer, and a generally creative soul, hence the need for a space to work on his numerous projects), his enthusiasm is indeed palpable. A pencil drawing of the stage shows the first details: a large double door leading out of the lonely villa, various seating opportunities for the 10 characters of And Then There Were None, and, of course, a bar.

Director Lexi von Hoffmann, who is calling in on this rainy December day, remarks that in the draft, said doors might be positioned too far “stage right”* to obstruct the theatre’s backstage staircase. No problem, replies Martin, and thus the doors are moved. “It’s a creative back and forth between Martin and me, which I love,” says Lexi. “In the beginning, we talked about the story arch. I mentioned a few things the story requires, and then he came up with his own ideas.”

The first draft

Which brings us to the 10 miniature soldier statues that play an important part in the play, always indicating the most recent murder by falling off a shelf, one by one. “Regular china figurines like the script calls for would, firstly, be too expensive, and, secondly, too small to be visible from the audience,” Martin explains. His genius idea: using Ken dolls (you know, Barbie’s boyfriend; or not-boyfriend) dressed in uniforms sewn by the set designer himself. “I’m really looking forward to making those!”

Second-hand shopping

The doll idea sets us off to a quick stop at the second-hand shop “Stilbruch” just around the corner. While the toy section doesn’t carry any Kens at this moment, it can’t hurt to have a look at the rest. A large floor vase and some dried palm leaves to create some bizarreness, perhaps? Lexi agrees, and so, the joint choosing begins before the two of them poke their heads in the clothes department since Martin has offered his support to costume designer Barbara.

Would these work on stage? Lexi and Martin think so.

Even in the hustle and bustle of the store, it’s obvious that the director and stage designer share a very collaborative approach. “In the case of And Then There Were None the setting plays a central role. The action takes place in one room, which is why the atmosphere of the set will largely inform the audience of what goes on,” Lexi explains.

How exactly that is done, you will have to see for yourselves between 14 and 24 February at Theater an der Marschnerstraße. More here.

Madeleine Lange

*a theatre term used when describing the right side of the stage from the perspective of the actors on stage

What’s Another Year?

A look back at FEATS 2023

Here we go again. Another Whitsun weekend and finally another FEATS! The first competitive festival since 2019, hosted this time round by FEST Frankfurt in nearby Bad Homburg. While the Hamburg Players were not officially invited to the main stage due to the rotation system, we still had a top spot on the reservation list. As it turned out, we were indeed asked to jump in for a withdrawing group. Our plan was to revive a few scenes from our February production Love/Sick by John Cariani. The perfect solution, it seemed, because each of these hilarious scenes about the joy and failure of love and relationships works on its own, even without the context of the complete play. Unfortunately, when the FEATS deadline came and went at the end of 2022, we were still waiting for rights for this particular one-off venture and therefore, sadly, had to pull out.

Everybody Gets A Second Chance

Of course, in a twist of fate, we did get the rights in the end, which meant that when the festival was just around the corner, the Hamburg Players decided to attend with scenes from Love/Sick as part of the FEATS Fringe, a section of the festival scheduled in the afternoons outside of and unrelated to the main stage evening shows. Martina Plieger and Harald Djürken had already planned to visit Bad Homburg anyway, which meant that ‘their’ scene ‘Lunch and Dinner’ was the one we went with. In addition, it was a bit of a redemptive opportunity for them: during the February run, the two of them had only been able to perform together publicly at the dress rehearsal and the premiere – but then had to drop out one after another due to illness.

Our 2023 FEATS Fringe cast and crew

In a spur-of the-moment idea our chair Valerie Doyle, who rarely misses FEATS, suggested to add another scene: ‘The Singing Telegram’ in which Harald played the Telegram Man; Valerie offered to take over the counterpart herself. Okay, why not double the fun?! As Valerie was also heavily involved in our regular June production (The Children), she basically sat down to learn her lines on the train to Bad Homburg! All the while, Julie Spanswick had joined the Fringe crew as stage manager.

A Walk In The Park

The Hamburg Players were scheduled for Saturday 27th May at 4:30pm – the last group to perform that day. Excellent, more time for preparation! On the performing day we had an early call at the Bad Homburg Youth Hostel (the location of the Fringe) to check out the space and clarify what we needed for the performance. The Fringe team was absolutely lovely and helpful. After a relaxing breakfast in the sun and a stroll through the centre of town - Harald constantly running lines with both Martina and Valerie - we took a walk through the Kurpark. Martina and Julie checked out an outdoor sculpture exhibition while Valerie and Harald conquered a bench to rehearse their little scene.

Bad Homburg’s Kurpark

The Show Must Go On

Taking into account that it was one of hottest days in May, our hopes for a large audience were very low. But, to our surprise the room was quite packed when we arrived and more people were showing up, including our FEATS friends from Brussels, and even the festival adjudicator came to watch us perform. All the pent-up tension was suddenly gone. After Julie introduced us we managed to do our two scenes without any big hiccups – and the audience loved it. We received a standing ovation and were, needless to say, absolutely thrilled!

After the Fringe show

Help!

There is no way that a festival like this can be pulled off without a large number of volunteers – people who are in the theatre from the early morning till late at night. The Hamburg Players will face the same challenge when it’s our turn to host the festival again in Hamburg in 2025.

When this year the organizing group (FEST) encountered problems to find enough helpers, the entire FEATS community pulled together and many members from the participating groups jumped in to offer a helping hand. So did Julie, Martina and Valerie. They handed out badges for the performing groups during the day, provided general information for people showing up at the theatre or sold programmes and raffle tickets at night. In addition to the work on stage this is also very fulfilling and truly reflects the spirit of FEATS.

Julie volunteering at the hospitality desk

The Winner Takes It All

Back to the main festival: it certainly was a good one. The setting and topics of the plays varied greatly from suburban utopia to a fancy hotel; from the magic of northern lights to houseguests from hell. But how does the old saying go? Save the best for last! ‘Theater de WAANzin’ from Ghent performed their entry Desperados on the final day and were absolutely brilliant. A story about four middle-aged men dressed up as cowboys and imitating what cowboys do while reflecting on life using hilarious props as substitutes for guns, fishing rods and horses. The group won three awards in the end including best production. With the award ceremony, always the highlight of the festival, FEATS 2023 came to a glorious end. It was a wonderful weekend in the historic city of Bad Homburg. We are really looking forward to FEATS 2024 in Antwerp – of which we have fond memories from when we last visited back in 2018

Harald Djürken

What's in a colour?

The director of our upcoming show Sense and Sensibility, Lexi von Hoffmann, is a woman of a vast array of talents – you have to be when you decide to lead a cast of fifteen plus a crew of even more through months of rehearsals – one of which is: sewing! Which came in more than handy when her assistant director came up with a brilliant, but work-intensive idea…

Fabric, fabric, fabric

One of the challenges in producing a Jane Austen play are the many characters and their shifting relationships. How do you make sure that the audience can keep track of who is who and who is connected to whom? This becomes especially tricky when there are actors playing several characters... 

Assistant Director Jess Albiston – a visual artist besides being a terrific AD – came up with an inspired idea: colour-code the costumes! Let all the Dashwoods be in shades of beige; all the Ferrars in purples, the happy Middleton/Jennings clan in cheerful yellows, and the mysterious gossips in grey (not quite fifty, but various shades...).

The fearless Barbara Möller who finds our costumes for us rifled through our costume collection and found some that fill the bill, but not all that we need by far.

So, I have been spending my time inundated in greys to make costumes for the gossips, and am now happy to be moving on to purples for the Ferrars, to be followed by yellows and one beige creation.

My apartment is covered in pins that have escaped the material and bits of yarn and material, but progress is being made! 

Lexi von Hoffmann

Meet the Gossips

“Did I tell you, I saw Lady Fagg and all of her five daughters last week…”

They may not appear per se in the classic novel, but the four Gossips (every character deserves to be capitalized, no?), thought up by playwright Kate Hamill to guide the audience through the plot of Sense and Sensibility, very closely reflect Jane Austen’s description of societal conventions in Regency England. But what does it mean to be a gossip, and where does the term come from?

The private affairs of others

Originating in Old English (spoken roughly between 450 and 1150) and meaning basically godparent, it later adapted to signify a familiar acquaintance, friend, or neighbour. This is also the time when it got gendered: those acquaintances, friends, and neighbours were the women of the village who gathered at the bedside of a woman in childbirth, and whiled away the time with idle talk. By the 16th century a gossip was pretty much as we know it today – a person who talks about the personal or private affairs of others, or the talk itself.

Unwritten rules of dos-and-don’ts

Regardless of the word’s origins, the act of talking about others has been with us since the dawn of humanity. And although we tend to see it as malicious and something to be avoided, anthropologists have suggested that it developed as a form of social bonding – humans needed alliances to survive. But as groups of humans grew larger, it became impossible for each individual to know the characters of the others: who’s reliable, who’s a cheat, who would be a good mate. Gossip provided the information necessary to maintain the alliances.

Even today, gossip transmits social norms and guidelines for behaviour, allowing new members of a group to learn the dos-and-don’ts, those unwritten rules that every social group has in one form or another. At the same time, it provides a conflict-free rebuke to individuals who have broken those rules. Gossip about inappropriate acts allows the wrong-doer to correct their behaviour without the necessity of a confrontation.

Now, our Sense and Sensibility Gossips are a bunch of good-natured, curious country folk with simply a little too much time on their hands. And that’s usually what allows for pretty good storytelling…

Amy Lee

Read a deep dive of the origins of the word “gossip” in our programme, which is available in the theatre foyer during our run at Theater an der Marschnerstraße from 2 to 5 and 9 to 12 November 2022. Tickets are available here.  

A day in the life...

… of the Hamburg Players at the Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies FEATS 2022

Cast, crew (minus one - we’re so sorry!) and director of Contractions

Timetable for Rehearsal Hamburg Players Crew + Cast Sunday 29th May

08:30 Collect Badges at Kulturhaus Mersch + Briefing

08:45 – 09:00 Unload van (set and tech)

09:00 – 09:15 Tech Coordination Meeting

09:20 – 09:15 Cast + Crew Assemble + Safety Briefing

09:30 – 11:30 Rehearsal at theatre

11:30 Go back to Luxembourg City – Cast to relax, and if they wish, run lines

17:00 Cast to meet once again in Mersch with tech crew to go over sound cues

18:00 Call time, everyone at theatre

19:30 Curtain up for Contractions

Crew

Wear Black clothes + Shoes

Black shoes must be closed i.e. no open toes or flip flops

Stage Manager is Queen – all instructions/proposals to go through her.

Cast + Director

Stage Manager is Queen – all instructions/proposals to go through her.

Order of Rehearsal will be given by Stage Manager

All people not involved in rehearsal activities to stay in auditorium

That, dear readers, was the rough schedule for all Hamburg Players participating in this year’s Festival of European Anglophone Theatrical Societies (FEATS) – which after a two-year hiatus was finally back to in-person performances in front of an actual audience!

Over the Ascension weekend 2022, nine English–speaking theatre groups from five different countries met in Luxembourg to present twelve one-act plays over the course of four evenings. This time round, FEATS was organized by the New World Theatre Club Luxembourg without the usual competition (i.e. no awards) but rather as a celebration of live theatre itself.

Contractions tech rehearsal in Mersch on Sunday morning

The Hamburg Players’ contribution to the festival was a two-hander by Mike Bartlett called Contractions. You could call it a corporate satire dealing with shrinking privacy and the ever-growing power of companies over their employees.

Cast:

Manager: Jocasta Godlieb

Emma: Naomi O’Taylor

Directed by:

Valerie Doyle

Crew:

Stage Manager: Julie Spanswick

Lighting: Thomas White

Sound: Thomas White

Director’s Assistant: Jessica Albiston

Stagehands: Camilo Daza, Harald Djürken, Nele Giese

Because it’s such a pretty shot: Luxembourg City by night

L'art pour l'art

The Hamburg Players count themselves lucky to have amongst their midst many talented people – some with amazing singing voices, others who are able to write music on the spot, and some who, brush and palette in hand, paint pictures. Like Mathilde Berry, who plays Helen Carver in our production of Design for Living, who is also a prolific visual artist. In addition to envisioning the set design, she contributed various art pieces for the stage – amongst them a recreation of a Matisse painting which plays a role in the beginning and the end of the play. Roping in Jessica Albiston and Lexi von Hoffmann, these three crafted various paintings, sketches and sculptures which can be seen on stage.

The “Mathilsse”

First, there’s Two Dancers by Henri Matisse as recreated by Mathilde, hence we like to refer to it as our “Mathilsse”. Interestingly, the French artist made this - one of his earliest experiments with cut paper - as a study for the curtain of a ballet.

Another example is a portrait of one the main characters, Gilda, inspired by Christian Schad’s Halbakt from 1929. After photographing actress Clara Kasten in a similar pose like the original painting, Mathilde then transformed the photo into a digital painting on her iPad. “I printed the outcome in various sizes of paper to decide on the final size of the canvas. With an acrylic medium and heavy body golden paint, I gave structure to the print on canvas, adding wavy brushstrokes to give a feeling of an original painting”, she describes. More pieces were made, not all of them necessarily in anyone’s studio but rather with the help of a printing service.

Characters coming to life

On the walls in the Paris set of Act I in Design for Living, you’ll find a lot of sketches – in the play they’re done by the artist Otto, one of the main characters - in real life, Jessica Albiston drew them.

"Anytime I start drawing portraits, especially if they're a product of my imagination, and not copied from a picture, I think about the story of the character. Who are they? What would their names be? What would they be thinking in that pose?” Jess explains. “I often start with a picture in mind of what I want the drawing to look like, but while drawing and seeing the characters come to life, their stories change. At the end, when I look at them or everytime I go back to look at them, I feel like they're their own characters, that they have their own stories and lives that go beyond my imagination, and I believe that's why every piece of creativity offers each individual the freedom of interpretation." 

When things don’t go quite as planned

A backstage shot of three sculptures (originally planned to be on stage in Act III).

The process of making sculptures – some of them spraypainted findings from Oxfam, others made exclusively with modelling clay – took place in Lexi’s flat. “At some point, my dining table had turned into a little exhibition area,” she remembers.

However, things do not always go according to plan. Turns out that lavish evening gowns and little handcrafted statuettes aptly titled “Man with Spear” (as seen here, together with “Seagull” and “Silver Camel in the Desert”) do not really go together well when put in the same scene. Luckily, in the theatre we always have the dress rehearsal to find out and adapt.

Though, in this case, a decapitated sculpture and a torn costume didn’t really leave much choice…

Halloween Radio Play

The leaves have turned golden and the days are growing shorter, and the Hamburg Players have a very ghoulish treat for you. This Halloween, we are presenting a special new format with six Hamburg Players performing classic macabre stories in the style of the horror radio serials of the 1940s and 1950s, the golden days of radio.

Click above to head over to our YouTube channel, where our bewitching host will guide you through 3 acclaimed horror classics from Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft and W.W. Jacobs.

Enjoy it with the video’s imagery or just listen to the stories on their own for an hour of dark entertainment that will be sure to get you into the Halloween spirit. And don’t forget to turn the volume up and the lights down for a hauntingly good time!"

Ah, sweet mysteries of music

“Ah, sweet mystery of life…” Wouldn’t we all want to solve it, the mystery of life? The song of the same title reverberates through Annie Wobbler, at scene openings and closings. Lucky for us, the Hamburg Players have in their midst quite a few talented musicians - two of whom, Trevor Ferdy and Harald Djürken, were quickly roped in to arrange, sing and record their versions of it. Read on to find out how they did it in times of social distancing:

Harald getting ready to sing and record in his living room

“Most importantly, when arranging the song versions, I needed to be faithful to the era depicted in the scene,“ says Trevor, which in this case meant imitating the sound of the 1930s for one scene, as well as the ‘60s and early ‘80s. “I like imitating other songs, just for fun. It's nice to try to match the musical elements of a key piece of music that represents a genre well.”

Trevor at work mixing and arranging

But how do you go about creating music when the parties involved cannot meet up due to a pandemic? Thank God for the internet! “First of all, I created a skeleton piano track for Harald to record his singing to. He emailed me his recording, so I could then place it into a more spruced up version with instruments of an orchestra in it,” is how Trevor describes it.

That being said, the whole process proved to be slightly more challenging than he lets on. In particular, considering that both musicians were only able to stay in touch by phone, Zoom, or email throughout most of the production.

That’s what the vocals look like on a screen

As a singer, finding the right key and tempo while not being in the same room with Trevor was not without its difficulties, as Harald recalls: “I guess especially for the jazzier version, we would normally have improvised together once we understood what direction was needed. In the end, I recorded the vocals just with a metronome as a playback. It sometimes took us a few days because we were worked on the music in the evening or on the weekend. So, a few hours together in a room with a piano would have clearly made things easier. But even so, we were able to record, send and re-record music while in two different places. And it worked!"

Part of the soundtrack to “Annie Wobbler” on Trevor’s computer

You can hear Trevor’s and Harald’s cooperation in our production of Arnold Wesker’s Annie Wobbler between 1 and 11 September. More info and tickets here.

Rehearsing Annie Wobbler during lockdown

Remember December 2020? We do! It was when rehearsals for Annie Wobbler, our next production, began. Considering it is a one-woman show, we figured that despite the contact restrictions already in place we were pretty much all set to get it up and running for February 2021. Little did anyone know…

“Unlike anything I’d ever done”

Rebecca Garron. Joanna Thorn, and Jason Couch

While the two directors, Rebecca Garron and Jason Couch, went to work with Joanna Thorn, who plays all three female characters in Annie Wobbler, it slowly became clear that Covid protocols would need to remain in place for a while. So, instead of getting together the entire crew, rehearsing one-on-one it was.

“The rehearsal process was unlike anything I'd ever done before. For starters, I've never been in a play where there were more directors than actors involved!” Joanna recalls. “Theatre is a communal pursuit and normally cast and crew are together during rehearsals. Despite it being quite a solitary time, I really enjoyed being able to workshop and play around with the characters and themes of Annie Wobbler and then bring these ideas together in the periods where the lockdown was eased.”

An impressive feat of ingenuity by the team

As you can imagine, planning, let alone actually doing, on-one-on rehearsals proved to be quite a challenge, not having set and costume designers, the props department and the prompts in the same room. “I was enormously impressed at our team's ingenuity and commitment in such a difficult situation – but it was hard and slow-going,” says co-director Rebecca. “Without everyone in the room, the creative juices flow much more slowly and you miss the give and take of the production process. It felt very isolating for everyone involved. What can I say? Theater is an eminently social art!”

Under the circumstances, the crew made up for it as much as possible by meeting up via video conference – and despite his protestations at never having used Zoom before, Jason did fare more than well during online production meetings. “But it wore me down”, the co-director concedes. “Don’t get me wrong, it was really great working with Joanna! But the creative process was much less fun without having instant feedback from the team. Theatre, I've realised, is more of a social event for me. Which is why I really hope people will be able to see this play as live performance soon.”

Ready to go on stage

Directors, cast and crew finished rehearsals and production preparations in March and cannot wait to brush up scenes and tweak the show. How and when you can see Arnold Wesker’s Annie Wobbler depends on when restrictions will allow for the crew to get together. Watch this space or our social media channels for more info.

Photos: Herwig Lührs

Life member Sue Williams

Sad news have reached us from Graham Williams, husband of life member Sue Williams (nee Emerson):

It is with great sadness that I have to let you know that Sue passed away at sunrise on Tuesday April 20th. Her daughter and I were with her at home when she passed and it was peaceful in the end. The secondary breast cancer had spread to her liver and probably beyond and she faded quite quickly in the end. Her funeral will be held on Friday May 7th at our local church here in Lydbrook at 2pm - we tried to get it at one o'clock and then we would have had One o'clock from the house, one of the plays we were in back in our wonderful days with the Hamburg Players. We had hoped to come over in February or then May to see those of you who know us and to see the latest production but it was not to be because of Covid. Her daughter and I comforted Sue with recalling some of the tales from her days on the stage for which we still have Sue's Pathak award on a bookcase.

Our deepest condolences go out to Graham and family.

Sue contributed so much to the Hamburg Players, on the committee and on stage and backstage. She enthusiastically welcomed and encouraged many new members to the club.

She will be missed.