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A Bed of Roses

  • Mike Bradwell
  • Full Length Play, Drama, Contemporary
  • 4M, 3F
  • ISBN: 9781780014876

"It seems that most of our churches specifically bar their doors to keep out the very people who God is most anxious should come in. Who is your house open to?"

More information

Description

  • Full Length Play
  • Drama

  • Time Period: Contemporary
  • Target Audience: Adult

  • Performance Group:
  • Community Theatre
Published in volume Inventing the Truth: Devising and Directing for the Theatre

From Bethlehem to black magic to Blue Peter, A Bed of Roses is an acerbic and funny play about middle-class hypocrisy and universal apathy. It was written for Hull Truck Theatre Company in 1977.

Reverend Alex Bridie preaches understanding and forgiveness for his fellow humans. His do-gooding wife Meg practices what he's preaching with prison visits to the soon-to-be-released Trevor. Philip and Wayne avoid real life with TV impressions in the pub, but Philip's fiancée Julie is determined to bring him back to reality – and round to the Bridies' house to discuss their upcoming wedding.

But the Rev. Bridie is forced to rethink his cherished beliefs when his wife brings the newly at-large Trevor and his flakey flatmate into their lives – and into their home.

A Bed of Roses was devised over twelve weeks in Hull in the summer of 1977. The actors were Colin Goddard, Kathy Iddon, Robin Soans, Mia Soteriou, David Threlfall, Heather Tobias and Alan Williams. It was written and directed by Mike Bradwell.
REVIEWS:

"Hilariously funny, extremely moving and physically frightening... a small masterpiece."

 Time Out

Premiere Production: Hull Truck at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, 1977.

Characters

  • Casting: 4M, 3F

Available Material

Name Price
Inventing the Truth: Devising and Directing for the Theatre This is optional. Order Now

An invaluable guide to the difficult arts of devising plays and directing texts, by one of the UK's leading theatre directors.

Throughout a lifetime of experience – as an actor for Mike Leigh, founder of Hull Truck, Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre, and subsequently as a freelance director – Mike Bradwell has forged a reputation as a theatrical innovator and risk-taker.

This book begins by exploring the process of devising a play by working intensively through character and improvisation with a group of actors. Using A Bed of Roses as an example, a play that he himself devised, Bradwell shows how the actors set about inventing their characters, whether within a pre-determined framework or with no strictures whatsoever. He explores how actors can then 'grow' their character, both through solo work and through interaction with the other characters. He also examines the role of the director in moulding and shaping the individual scenes, the overall action of the play, and the development of the characters within it.

The second half of the book describes in detail how the nuanced work involved in devising characters from scratch can be applied to a pre-existing text. Bradwell explains the techniques by which he encourages the actor to take possession of his or her character by investigating or inventing their whole history up to the moment the action begins. Taking as his template Jack Thorne's play When You Cure Me, which Bradwell directed at the Bush, he demonstrates the meticulous work on the text that is needed to keep the characters alive and truthful in every moment of the action.

All together, Inventing the Truth offers practitioners a unique account of the techniques involved in devising or directing plays to the highest standard. Mike Bradwell's previous book The Reluctant Escapologist won the Theatre Book Prize in 2011.

Also included in the book, to aid the reader's understanding of the process, are the full texts of both A Bed of Roses ("Hilariously funny, extremely moving and physically frightening... a small masterpiece" Time Out) and Jack Thorne's When You Cure Me ("Painstakingly honest... acutely observant of the petty rivalries and jealousies that sickness provokes" The Guardian).

$24.95

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