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Che Walker
Che Walker is the writer of The Frontline.
Che's acting credits for the stage include Biloxi Blues at Salisbury Playhouse, Danny and The Deep Blue Sea and Fly Me To The Moon for Interchange, Home Truths at Guildford, Old Rose and Pitchfork Disney for the Glasgow Citizen's Theatre and Sunshine at Southwark Playhouse. His Television work includes Holby City, Judge John Deed, The Vice, Between The Lines, Dangerfield, Eastenders, The Bill and The Office. Che has also written two plays for the Royal Court Theatre, Been So Long and Flesh Wound.
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Che Walker and Matthew Dunster's Perspective on The Frontline
Che & Matthew on the Globe audience
Che & Matthew on the overlapping dialogue
Che on the music in the play
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Che Walker's Adopt a Writer interviews
Bulletin 1
These comments are the writer's thoughts or ideas as s/he goes through the writing and rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the season progresses.
Origins
I had the original idea for The Frontline about eight years ago. I was waiting at a bus stop in Camden, looking at this incredible scene, and I thought, ‘Forget it, there’s no point in even putting one word down because who is going pay for it? It has to have a huge cast. It’s never ever going to happen’. And then Dominic [Dromgoole, the artistic director of the Globe] insisted that he wanted a play with a huge cast and epic resonances, and I thought ‘Now’s my chance to write that play’.
The first draft
I was part of the Othello cast in 2007 and I had a break between Acts 2 and 5, so I wrote The Frontline from the attic of the Globe. I wrote it by hand in my doublet and hose with a beard, frilly shirt and long hair, and then I’d go home and I would type it up and refine it. It was surprisingly short. I finished it by June or July. We had a reading because I was worried about the play; it has so much overlapping dialogue that it’s almost impossible to get the hang of it as a cold read. Dominic paid for me to write it but hadn’t committed to staging it, but he came to the reading, sat in the front row and he laughed the whole way through. After it was over, he came and said, ‘Well done, I love it. We’ll definitely do it’. That reading was the first draft.
The writer-director relationship
Matthew Dunster [the director] was Dominic’s suggestion. I’d never met him before but he’s got a great reputation. I went to meet him and was immediately impressed and thought ‘He’s the guy to do it’. We met up and read the script, going over and over it, asking questions. Matthew suggested cuts and rewrites; some I took on board and some I didn’t, but I had to justify my choices. We talked about the set, ideas for the phone booth and then we had auditions.
Casting
The Frontline actors also had to be in King Lear. So in the auditions, Matthew, Dominic and I were in a room with these poor actors who had to read my play, then read King Lear. It was terrible, as sometimes an actor would be perfect for King Lear but wasn’t quite right for it, and vice versa. Luckily, we had an extra seven actors to choose from as there were only fifteen parts in King Lear.
Bulletin 2
These comments are the writer's thoughts or ideas as s/he goes through the writing and rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the season progresses.
Beginning rehearsals
The script has been worked on constantly throughout the rehearsal process and undergone a lot of rewrites. In week one of the rehearsals, Matthew, the cast and I read the script in very thorough detail; we were making changes all the time and there were lots of discussions about who the characters were, where they came from, and where they were going. Matthew wouldn’t let anyone take anything for granted; he was very searching in the way he would probe the actors and get them to make the characters real. If a character goes offstage, he would ask the actor, ‘Where have you been for the last ten pages, what did you do?’. We spent two weeks doing this – which is quite a long time – but I think it was very beneficial and I actually learnt something from it: patience. I don’t have much of that. I would have had them up on day two, and it would have been a mess.
In rehearsals
In week three, we started exploring how to use the crucifix [the staging going out into the yard] and where to put people, and it became apparent that with all the overlapping dialogue, a lot of rewrites had to be done. I’d done two rehearsed readings of it, but at that stage, it’s almost like a radio play; the actors are sat around delivering the lines, and so when we were reading the script, we thought it was going to be fine. And then when I saw it, I realized that it wasn’t playable. You suddenly realize when you can see it that you need to tighten up all these spliced conversations.
From page to stage
Weeks three and four involved a lot of blocking, figuring out the space of the play. When I wrote it, I just wrote all the conversations separately and then spliced them together, so Matthew was trying, for a while, to take the individual scenes and remove them from the overlapping dialogue. However, he quickly realized that that didn’t work; we had to have everyone else in there feeding in their lines. It’s like he needs to be a conductor, as there are certain lines you want the audience to hear. When it works, it spreads the words and action across the theatre. The audience is constantly having to refocus their attention, so it’s exciting and invigorating and does feel like a Saturday night in Camden.
The finished script
I’ve continued to do a little bit of tweaking. I’m on draft twelve now – it never ends. I think there’s very little difference between being an amateur writer and a professional writer. The main difference is that the professional writer always redrafts, always cuts, always edits, but amateurs just go, ‘Bang! There it is! I don’t want to touch it, it’s perfect!’, which is why they are amateurs. But also, you suddenly see actors are having problems in the rehearsal room, and sometimes it's because the writing isn't right and you need to improve it. So I've done a fair bit of fixing. The actors ask me about their characters but you have to let them be free. There's a point where your child is going to go out, and you're not going to know what they're going to do, and you have to trust that you've done the work and that you've raised them in a certain way.
Bulletin 3
These comments are the writer's thoughts or ideas as s/he goes through the writing and rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the season progresses.
The length of the play
We’re hoping the play will run at two hours, but I’m pretty sure that the timing will change when we get onto the stage. Last year in Othello, I noticed that the running time leapt up by ten or fifteen minutes from when we ran it in rehearsal to when we went on stage. I have a personal theory: I think it’s because the sound in the Globe theatre takes longer to reach the audience because it has got to travel through the open air, hit the wood, and resonate back to you, which inevitably adds to the running time. However, I can't back that up with any scientific evidence!
On location - the Globe
The Globe building very much affected my writing. I really wanted it to have a direct presence. At one point Erkenwald [John Stahl] speaks directly to the audience, and for the first twenty pages, Beth [Golda Rosheuvel] is just screeching across it, so I wanted a sense of it being public. And, of course, the Globe is an open air theatre, so the setting needed to be outdoors, not in a room. Although there was one scene that I wrote to be played up on the balcony, there’s a certain point where you think, ‘I’ve just got to tell the story I want to tell, and not think too much about the groundlings or the levels’. Also, I have put in more songs than if The Frontline was being performed in a black box theatre (which it hopefully will, at some point).
On location - Camden
As a company, we did a field trip to Camden. I had one of those horrible moments when I thought, ‘What if Camden’s just really quiet?’. But Camden didn’t let me down. We found this extraordinary woman who’d barricaded herself in a phone booth, very much like Carlton [Huss Garbiya] does in the play; the actors were sensitive to her situation, but she talked to them about her experiences. John Stahl [Erkenwald] wandered off and found a hotdog seller and just leant against a wall next to him, while Kurt [Egyiawan] who plays Salim, a Somalian, even found some Somalian drug dealers. So they all went off and did their own things. However, there was actually a shooting the night we were there, which is obviously terrible and tragic, because but it was interesting because I think it focused the company. When they came back to the script and they were like, ‘This isn’t fantasy. This is real. People are dying’.
Bulletin 4
These comments are the writer's thoughts or ideas as s/he goes through the writing and rehearsal process – they are simply his/her own interpretations and frequently change as the season progresses.
The set
The set is very harsh, very dark, very black. You have a kind of Banksy mural – the one with the girl with the balloon in her hand, huge, 20ft high – and then you have a crucifix jutting out of the main stage, and two gangways, and its brilliant. It’s quite daunting and forbidding, but at the same time, the colours and big murals suggest celebration and creativity as well, which is one of the themes of the play; people are very creative with language at the same time as struggling to remain human within in this very concrete, very unforgiving environment that has been created. There’s a tube sign at stage right but it doesn’t say Camden, even though the play is set in and inspired by Camden. I’m keen to create somewhere else. It’s very interesting as Matthew is from South London, and when he first read the script, he thought it was about Brixton.
Music and dancing
We’ve got an organ, an electronic piano. There was a big discussion about these instruments because of original practice, which I think is very interesting, but it’s hard to apply it to this play because The Frontline is set in 2008. Are we going to do come on with ancient recorders and bugle horns?! There are songs with dance numbers and we’ve got some amazing singers; though some people are less experienced singers than others, they all sound great. We’ve also got a jig at the end. As Erkenwald says, ‘We’re gonna have a lovely jig to send you home with’. It’s a magical moment. I love jigs, and it was another example of writing specifically for the space.
Tech week
Tech week is next week. I’ve been in for quite a lot of the rehearsal process, although not as much as I would have liked to be. I do feel like I’m missing out on the fun but Matthew’s so brilliant. Every time I look around the room and see something, I think, ‘Spot on, perfect’. Also I think with a sensitive writer, there is a point at which he or she has to withdraw, just for a couple of days, and let the director make it his, let the company do it.
Costume
I haven’t been in all of the costume fittings but it’s a very crucial element and I have to say I saw a couple of things today and I’m going to pick my moment to say I don’t think that’s quite right for the character.