Narrator: It's all change for the Royal Shakespeare Company's theatres in Stratford-upon-Avon. The 1932 Royal Shakespeare Theatre has now closed and the first stage of Planning Permission to transform the old building has been granted. While the work is underway, the temporary 1000 seat Courtyard Theatre, which opened last July, becomes the RSC's main stage - and while it's there it's also functioning as a sort of working prototype for the new auditorium of the RST. Artistic Director Michael Boyd's award-winning production of the Henry VI trilogy was first into the space - and he's delighted with it.
Michael Boyd: Well, part of me just can't believe that I've got it: that it's there, that we were able to open The Histories cycle there as part of the great Complete Works Festival and that it's arrived in time to be introduced to the public in a sort of festive context, rather than 'Right, we're shutting the doors of the old theatre now, you can go down the road now and this is what we've got now.' Already, before we had our last performance in the RST, everyone in that audience had been to The Courtyard and really loved it.
Audience member 1: I think it's time for a thrust stage, I think that's wonderful.
Audience member 2: It's not just a space, is it? It's the height and depth and everything, you know. Yeah, brilliant. I mean, there were ladders, they were clambering up ladders, flying over there, you know, Talbot. Brilliant. [laughs]
Narrator: Tom Piper, the RSC's Associate Designer, has worked with Michael Boyd on many productions, including Henry VI. He's really excited by the possibilities The Courtyard Theatre presents.
Tom Piper: I mean, there are lots of studio theatres and smaller thrust theatres. There's the Swan, there's the Donmar Warehouse, there's the Crucible in Sheffield and Chichester. I mean, there are. It's not like we are the only space that's doing this but I think where we're more unique is the more courtyard nature of it and the balconies and that kind of intimate structure - and I think that what I find exciting is we have managed to create a theatre in which, you know, nobody is more than 14 metres away from the stage, you know, and that used to be 27 metres in the RST.
Narrator: Maureen Beattie is in the RSC's Histories company, whose parts include Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester in Henry VI and Mistress Quickly in Henry V Part 2. Now, she really enjoys working on a thrust stage, and particularly The Courtyard's thrust.
Maureen Beattie: It’s like there's a great big hand behind you which, kind of, just wonderfully pushes you on there when you step in front of the audience - and it happens anywhere in the auditorium, it's not just coming from, as it were, the backstage. I absolutely adore it and I love the fact that you can, sort of, be there and when you want to say something under your breath like an aside, if you like, to the audience, you just turn round and there is somebody sitting right there.
Narrator: The Courtyard was the work of Ian Ritchie Architects with theatre consultants Charcoalblue to develop the theatre space. Their designer, Gavin Green, came to the project with just six months to complete the design process, followed by delivering the complete theatre in just over a year.
Gavin Green:Phillip Tanner with Michael and Tom Piper had worked up 22 different versions of the auditorium before we came onboard. They knew they wanted a thrust space, they knew it was to be a thousand seats. They had looked at tiering the auditorium, which is something that's never been done for a thrust space. There are lots of small, galleried courtyard spaces; there are lots of wide amphitheatre thrust spaces of a thousand seats but nobody's tried to do the two together. We worked up eight different auditorium proposals, some with three galleries, some with two galleries, some with ten columns - double columns, single columns - worked them up in 1:25 scale models with Tom and his team, worked them up in computer models to try and make sense of what the room felt like, and it was through that process that we developed this, sort of, eight-sided form that then unravelled itself to create the basic footprint of The Courtyard.
Michael Boyd: One of the things that's wonderful about it is that actors have no hiding space. It demands an emotional and, I think, an intellectual honesty from performers. It's got great emotional scale as a space; it's a very epic space - but the fact that we've reduced the distance from the worst seat in the house to the stage by a half, compared to the RST, also allows you to actually go surprisingly small, and intimate.
Tom Piper: As a designer, you know, all of the detail that you put into the clothes and into the props and into the world is visible to everybody, whereas in the past you used to design things knowing that for some people they weren't... couldn't even see the actor's eye, let alone the jewellery or the level of finish on the slashing on a doublet or something, whereas now you're in a more democratic world where everybody can see all the detail.
Narrator: But there's much more to a theatre space like this than how close the audience is to the actors. There are many other things that will determine whether or not it will be a great theatre space. Gavin Green.
Gavin Green: Trying to find the right balance between a group of people sat together who felt isolated or a group of people who felt part of the audience as a whole, and to ensure that if one section of the audience start laughing, actually it carries on throughout the room.
Michael Boyd: One obvious thing that happens is that I'm watching, from the stalls, stage right, Clive Wood talking to Richard Cordery, and just past Richard I can see the lady in the green coat in row three opposite me, Richard can see me behind Clive, and Clive can see the lady in the green coat behind Richard so he can't really pretend that it's real and not theatre but at the same time he can't fake his emotions, otherwise the lady in the green coat will notice his face being empty and I will notice Richard's face being empty - but there's an honesty of engagement that allows Clive, at any point that he wants, just to turn round and address me directly, or Richard if he wants to just swerve a little around Clive and address me directly and for both of them to do the same to the lady in the green coat, the other way round. It breeds this sort of fellowship between me and the lady in the green coat. I'm interested in her reactions and sometimes she might be really moved by something and I get the virus. We're much more connected. We start behaving together, which is great for theatre.
Maureen Beattie: Asides are the most effective when you actually speak to one person but you're speaking to everybody through them, you know, you're using them as a kind of conduit, if you like. In The Courtyard as a member of the audience you are just so aware of being a member of an audience that there's something going on, on a psychic level, where people just begin to come together and form a kind of a group reaction. That kind of electric energy is so thrilling when it really, really works.
Narrator: One of the exciting things about The Courtyard is that it's a work in progress, allowing directors, actors, designers and theatre-goers to find out what really works - and this of course can be translated into plans for the redevelopment of the main RST. Theatre-goer Graham Stanbridge.
Graham Stanbridge: We think it's wonderful. It's sort of crude in places: one or two of the sightlines aren't as good as we'd like. We saw something there where someone was standing on the edge of the stage, which meant that no-one could see past them from our particular corner but it's like, instead of being in the RST - which is the old proscenium arch theatre: plush seats and, you know, gilding and all the rest of it - it's like going into a factory and we thought that, with The Histories, Michael Boyd made wonderful use of that facility - guys coming down out of the ceiling and everything. Absolutely wonderful. Yes, it's going to be great.
Narrator: Tom Piper again.
Tom Piper: An audience has to learn a new way of responding in a space like this. No longer can you guarantee that you'll always be able to see the person [talking], much as in a film you deliberately are given, quite often, a cut away where you don't see the person talking, you just see the reaction of somebody. That happens increasingly in The Courtyard where the exciting thing is actually seeing how other people react to something. Everybody can choose their own narrative of whose particular story they want to follow. If you try and always get to watch the person talking you get a very frustrating time bobbing your head around, continuously trying to see around other people but I think once people get used to that idea it's much more interesting, it's much more fulfilling.
Narrator: The old Royal Shakespeare Theatre drew much of its inspiration from 1930s cinema design. The proscenium arch divided the actors from the audience, almost like a cinema screen.
Michael Boyd: Yes, they're really there, so you know they're there and they might forget their lines or something but you're not really encouraged to be in the same room with them and empathise with them in a very profound way and you are invited to be a bit passive in the way you receive the work whereas in the thrust format you're invited to fill in some of the scenery that's not there and you're invited to own up to being part of the situation.
Narrator: Some regulars are more aware of this potential involvement than others, and they choose their favourite seats with care. Even though The Courtyard is so new, the true regulars have already tried enough seats in the house to work out where their favourite seats might be.
Audience member 1: The edge of the stage: right front hand side as you look at it.
Audience member 2: But it has to be the second row back because if you sit in the front row you may get involved in the production a way you don't actually want to.
Audience member 1: Which I'd be okay with.
Audience member 2: Ah, but we're not, so we like to be slightly retired from that.
Narrator: With a thrust stage, the audience is bound to be amongst the action, and it gives designers like Tom new opportunities for invention all around them.
Tom Piper: There is a world that you can create that the actors sort of come out of. For the History plays, for example, it's a big curved metal structure with a big tower in the middle of it with the spiral staircase and double doors, and this tower becomes every castle that the plays demand: the double doors become the gates of hell, the gates to the Tower of London, or the gates of Parliament. Especially when you're doing Shakespeare on a thrust stage, in the sense that you're much closer to the conditions that Shakespeare wrote under in that you've got a stage, you've got traps, you've got the ability for the heavens above that things can come from but you don't have very much scenery. It's all in the words. It's a much more three-dimensional and vertical world, so that people come from the heavens and then they descend down through traps into the hell.
Narrator: And this is something they hope to take even further for the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Gavin Green: In The Courtyard, we were quite restricted about the level of flying and the scenic capability because we only had a set ceiling height. We couldn't afford to go into the basement. In the RST redevelopment we're still in that stage where we haven't fully firmed up those plans but there was a strong desire to be able to go below the stage to take scenic items down below and then also have a flying zone above the thrust stage. In the existing RST, and any other proscenium theatre, there's a fly tower, and we're trying to bring that technology to happen over a thrust stage which, again, is something that's not been done before to the level that we're currently exploring.
Narrator: The new RST is due to open in 2010 and in the meantime directors, actors and designers are clamouring to work in The Courtyard Theatre, which is proving extremely popular. Michael Boyd reworked the Henry VI trilogy for the new space. This summer will see entirely new productions take their place there.
Michael Boyd: We've just started Richard II now, and it's a play that was unknown to me before this, really. I certainly hadn't done it, so this is the one that's being directed for the first time for The Courtyard and, yes, of course it's brilliant for all of us, not just me but for the actors - coming right on the back of doing the Henry VI plays and Richard III. I suppose we feel we understand the space more and we're able to make decisions a wee bit more quickly, and perhaps a wee bit more courageously.
Narrator: Maureen Beattie is the Duchess of York in Richard II.
Maureen Beattie: The first time I walked into The Courtyard, I just got the most incredible feeling of excitement, of just walking through that door from the Front of House area. I mean, an audience coming to see the theatre are hopefully a bit keyed up and geared up to want to have a great evening anyway but I think the feeling is even more so... you know, everything that surrounds The Courtyard actual theatre space itself is very open, very welcoming, very ecumenical, all that. You know, there's none of that feeling of 'Oh, theatre's not for the likes of me.' I feel that's very, very important.
Narrator: Richard II starring Jonathan Slinger, opens in July [2007]. For more information about that, or the transformation of the theatres, go to www.rsc.org.uk. This is a Podcats production for the Royal Shakespeare Company.