The National Theatre Studio is housed in a 1960s concrete ‘brutalist’ building that stands on a corner opposite the Old Vic Theatre in Waterloo. From the outside it looks like an anonymous office block but it develops some of the most exciting and distinctive creative work currently going on in English theatre. The Studio functions, as its director Lucy Davies put it, as the
National Theatre's performance laboratory, a risk-management enterprise where a script can, as the dramatist David Hare said, be road-tested before actually hitting the road. Indeed, the great thing about working on a script in the Studio is that it can be done without the pressure that comes from knowing that the clock is ticking, and that you are hurtling towards an audience before being ready to meet them.
Much of the most artistic and commercially successful new writing seen on the National’s stages over the last few years has been created through workshops at the Studio, including Nicholas Wright’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s
His Dark Materials trilogy, and Alan Bennett’s latest play,
The History Boys . In the summer of 2005, it was the location for six weeks of
workshopping Helen Edmundson’s adaptation of Jamila Gavin’s epic novel
Coram Boy , scheduled to be produced in the Olivier Theatre in November, and directed by Melly Still.
The decision to use young
women to play the parts of boys was initially taken by the director because she felt that they would be able to sing like the boy trebles required by the story but would also have the experience and stamina required to cope with the performance. She needed to test out this casting decision in the
workshops. The actors and director spent many days working on details of the text and continually showed the results to the adaptor, who was present throughout, so that she could
rework the script where it was thought necessary. It was a highly collaborative process involving improvisation, rehearsal, and lengthy discussions involving actors, director, adaptor, and on some occasions Tom Morris, the National’s associate director who is responsible for developing new work.
