Fifty years of protest, backlash, witch-hunt, liberation and crisis in a one act play, figures is a comic, touching and dynamic piece for six women and a live band.
Fifty years of protest, backlash, witch-hunt, liberation and crisis in a one act play, figures is a comic, touching and dynamic piece for six women and a live band.
A musical play tracing the lives of six American women in the second half of the 20th Century, from the illicit comforts of the home-front in World War Two, through the McCarthy witch-hunts of the ’50s, the protest movements of the ’60s and anarchic punk scene of the ’70s, to the conservatism of Reagan’s America and late ’90s anxiety at the approach of a New Millennium.
Featuring the music of Benny Goodman, Frank Sinatra, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, Madonna and Tori Amos. Accessible, simple to stage and fun to perform, it wears its historical context lightly as it presents both the extraordinary and commonplace with humour, passion and humanity.
Figures was originally written for six women on the American Theatre Arts programme at Rose Bruford College and is very much informed by their research, interests and musical tastes. It calls for the cast to engage fully with the logistics of the design and its physical implementation. Each actor should take responsibility for a decade and the presentation of that decade on stage: its fashion, music and events of political and culture significance.
In the original production I was indebted – as I so often am – to our Musical Director, Andrew Friesner, for his inventive arrangements of the songs the text references. The producers of any subsequent production should feel free to select tunes they feel most appropriately serve the characters and time periods. I would highly recommend the use of a live band.
”i don’t wanna die for the cause
i don’t wanna be a hero
don’t wanna be a martyr
all i want is for people to wake up
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Figures (rehearsal script)
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