Culture Vulture Rich Jevons meets up with Buglight Theatre’s Keeley Lane at Leeds’ Roots & Fruits Cafe to discuss their new production of The House Behind the Lines before its premiere at Bradford Playhouse in January.
RJ: Could you tell us about the new research into World War One and what interests you in that?
KL: Doctor Clare Makepeace did her dissertation on this particular area of study and it’s called Sex and the Somme. Her focus was on young men using brothels in WW1 and has looked at the archive. She wanted to specifically find out about soldier’s cohorting with prostitutes.
The visits to the brothels were actually sanctioned and encouraged and there were legalised brothels in France at the time. The research is very male-led, there’s nothing from the women, which I find interesting. The statistics are that there were 150,000 men in the British army who were admitted into hospital with VD. It’s very rarely talked about which is another thing I find fascinating. These men had to fill a life-time of experience into a few days on leave because they might die the next day.
Can you describe some of the scenarios or characters you’re going to be using in the play?
Richard Galloway and I have both worked before with Jono Gadsby at the Bradford Playhouse. So from this research we went away to play with this, not to script it. We’ve created loose scenarios for now because we are going to be having two more actors in. We didn’t want to create characters for them because we need them to imprint themselves on the characters.
The brothel’s Madame Elizabeth who I’ll be playing is a very unconventional Madame and is very academic for a woman at the time and from quite an eccentric family. She’s very forward-thinking and has travelled a lot with her father and so when she comes upon this place – without having a place called home – this is her sisterhood. She’s quite powerful but she plays it down, but when she needs to she’ll assert her power. Molly is French but she is British branded so she will appeal to the men more. The idea is that we explore VD through her as the active men would come to get VD to get a month off service.
The two males are British: there’s a young man quite bitter about the war and he falls in love with my character. Then there’s the MoD guy controlling the brothel, he comes in and tries to assert his power and turns it into a blue brothel for officers and those with more money.
What appeals to you about your experimental take in R&D including improvisation?
Buglight started because Richard and I as actors were fed up of waiting to be cast in something so we created our own theatre. But we’re not confident writers so Jono suggested that we just play with it and see what happened. From that we’ve created some really organic moments that wouldn’t have happened if it was scripted.
What are your overall aims and intentions with the piece?
We obviously cover a huge range of themes within the play: sexuality, violence, war, camaraderie, power relationships.. We’re not trying to pass judgement – but this did happen and it’s about making it okay, it shouldn’t be a taboo. As one private put it: “Feel not disgust, dear reader, or think unkindly of them. I who know all their circumstances, what they have borne, cannot find it in me to condemn them and you have no right to.”
Buglight Theatre’s The House Behind the Lines plays at Bradford Playhouse on 15 and 16 January and is supported by the Arts Council England.