How to Hold Your Breath

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Zinnie Harris on Oresteia: This Restless House | 2017 International Festival , retrieved 2023-01-15 Maison Antoine Vitez / Centre International de la Traduction Théâtrale". Maison Antoine Vitez (in French) . Retrieved 2018-10-15. Similarly, in The Duchess (of Malfi), her adaptation of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the duchess is given the final word as Webster’s text is rewoven to examine the control and violence of men towards women. [5] In her version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Julie is a character with actions of those of a child who is scared of and has been coerced by her father. [6]

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This success has fostered a wider increase in women’s representation in professional drama. Harris’ plays provide opportunities for women actors in their thirties and forties to take leading roles at a time when work typically starts to thin. This representation has even extended behind the curtain, with the Johannesburg production of Meet Me at Dawn being supported by an all-women design and production team. Several actors went on to win awards for their roles in the play, including Pauline Knowles, who was awarded Best Actress at the 2016 CATS awards for her Clytemnestra in This Restless House.Now in the realms of fantasy, the play appears to become a magical Faustian fable, yet still just about rooted in reality. However, Harris steers the play in another direction where reality fractures in a journey that increasingly becomes a nightmare. Society and the economy disintegrate around them as the women’s trip turns into a desperate bid to flee as illegal immigrants to safety in Africa. Harris has directed for a number of theatres, including the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Traverse Theatre, The Tron Theatre, 7:84 and the Royal Lyceum Theatre. In 2017 she directed Caryl Churchill's A Number for the Royal Lyceum Theatre and was awarded Best Director in the 2017 Scottish Critics CATS awards. [24] Recent directing work includes The Duchess of Malfi, Christmas Tales, Scent of Roses for the Royal Lyceum Theatre where she is currently directing her new version of Shakespeare's Macbeth with the title Macbeth (an undoing). [25]

Zinnie Harris | National Theatre of Scotland Zinnie Harris | National Theatre of Scotland

Then suddenly Europe is plunged into a massive financial crisis. The banks fail; credit cards and debit cards are useless. People lose everything; they begin to migrate south. At this point the nightmare gets even more nightmarish. By flipping the North-South divide on its head, Harris confronts us with uncomfortable questions: what if Germany became like Greece? What if we all depended on aid from Africa? What if everyone wanted to migrate south? What if? Could we survive the perilous boat journey across the Mediterranean? Professor Zinnie Harris FRSE - The Royal Society of Edinburgh". The Royal Society of Edinburgh . Retrieved 2018-03-14. Alongside her original plays, Zinnie Harris has adapted and reworked a number of plays from the western dramatic canon revising female characters from those plays for a more contemporary and sympathetic eye. [2] Harris’ original play, The Scent of Roses, had its world premiere at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in 2022, [22] followed by a revival of Further than the Furthest Thing at the Young Vic in London the following year. [23] Directing work [ edit ] Peake slices across the stage like a laser beam. She is an actor worth crossing the country to see. But the characterisation on which she has to work is slight. She is 1) an insulted woman; 2) an all-too-plausible specialist in “customer dynamics”; 3) a victim of European meltdown, desperately trying to reach the new economic beacon of Africa. In the most dynamic scene she is perched at the top of a vertiginous slope, trying not to slide down towards the outstretched arms of a drowning crowd.

References

Everything happens on the same junk-covered set, with no sense that Dana and Jasmin are actually travelling anywhere. Coupled with Dana’s hallucinogenic visitations from both Shaeffer’s increasingly agitated Jarron and Peter Forbes’s amusingly prissy, quasi-angelic librarian and Featherstone almost seems to be interpreting ‘How To Hold Your Breath’ as taking place in its protagonist’s head. But to what end? If none of it is really happening, the geopolitical stuff loses value, as does Jasmin, whose heartbreaking, ugly late monologue about her baby is one of the play’s stand-out moments. Clearly it is at least real on some level, but Featherstone muddies it enough to sap the play’s momentum, while the relentlessly dour tone squishes the considerable sparkle in Harris’s dialogue.

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Harris has written a number of shorter plays; The Garden for the Traverse Theatre (2010); The Panel for the Tricycle Theatre London for the Women, Power and Politics Season (2010); and From Elsewhere: The Message / From Elsewhere: On the Watch for the Tricycle Theatre as part of The Bomb: a Partial History Season (2012). She was Associate Director at the Traverse Theatre from 2015 – 2018 and the current Associate Artistic Director at the Royal Lyceum Theatre. In 2020, she adapted The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith for a new musical, to premiere in 2021 at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. The production was directed by Timothy Sheader, choreographed by Liam Steel, set and costumes designed by Katrina Linsdsay with puppetry designed and direction by Toby Olié. [21] Dana is so upset that, the next day, she almost misses a presentation about “the customer experience” that she has to do for work. The nightmare deepens. Dana’s sister, Jasmine, tries to help. But she has her own intimate concerns. The pair eventually set off on a journey across Europe. The names Berlin, Budapest and the Adriatic drift through this symbolic itinerary. The nightmare deepens. More and more. Yet just as the devil persecutes them, so they acquire a guardian angel in the shape of an ever-helpful Librarian. Always on hand to offer a parody of self-help books, he has suggestions for every occasion.Thankfully, there is always Peake to watch. The strange thing is that, with her tightly trimmed blonde hair, she bears a passing resemblance to Sarah Kane and the play itself has strong echoes of Kane’s Blasted, currently being revived in Sheffield. But Peake also has the priceless ability to lend her character a much-needed internal tension. With her expressive features and unwavering gaze, Peake suggests at different times a chirpy, bright-eyed resilience or a terrified surrender to despair as she endures her travail-filled travels. Oresteia: This Restless House - International Festival | The Lyceum | Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh". lyceum.org.uk. 22 August 2017 . Retrieved 2018-10-12. Harris places her protagonist in an Odyssean role as she traverses the storms brewing in European society. Maxine Peake, Hamlet Star and no stranger to leading roles, commands this position with ease. Strong support comes from Christine Bottomley, whose delivery of a monologue about the death of her child is awful and mesmerising,

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Zinnie Harris (2015 UK)". Berwin Lee London New York Playwrights Inc. 15 May 2013 . Retrieved 15 October 2018. Embark on an epic journey through Europe with sisters Dana ( Maxine Peake) and Jasmine as they discover the true cost of principles in this twisted exploration of how we live now. Among these adaptations, This Restless House (2017), Harris’ version of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, imagines Clytemnestra not as someone capable of murder, but as a woman more like herself with no intention to kill. [3] Her upcoming play Macbeth (an undoing) (February 2022) revisits Lady Macbeth as a ‘complex woman intoxicated by love, power and maternal longing; a woman out of time, fighting against the constraints of medieval patriarchy.’ [4] With impressive artistry, Harris uses a seemingly innocent encounter to wrench upon concepts of modern day morality. Ideas on immigration are turned on their head, as the characters look for aid and support from countries south of Europe. In a similar vein to Harris' previous Royal Court production, N ightingale and Chase, women are at the heart of her story with Dana and Jasmine as representatives for generations of forgotten voices. Throughout the unfolding horror of their journey sharp wit sparks aside melancholic monologues.Sloane Square’s Royal Court is London’s theatre du jour. Challenging productions, new British talent and atmosphere of radicalism ensure it’s every thespian’s first port of call, despite the well-heeled, un-groovy location. Oresteia: This Restless House | Citizens Theatre". Citizens Theatre. 2017-08-15 . Retrieved 2018-10-15.