Welcome back, Oxford. While you were away preparing for the next academic year, or busy attending the Edinburgh Fringe, the facebook Oxford University Drama Society (OUDS) portal was readying for your return. However, amidst all the Supplementary Cast Calls and promises for location bids, some things stayed the same: conspicuously, the same titles, writers and genres still dominate the listings. As far as first impressions go, this stagnant Oxford drama scene probably offers Freshers exactly what they’d expect. My expectations, however, as an incoming third-year, have changed. Having noticed that this term’s promised programme seems to be stuck in a creative equivalent of Groundhog Day, one must ask: why has student drama lost its creativity?
Courtesy of the controversial book-to-screen productions recently teased this summer, ‘adaptation’ has been a hot topic. While Emerald Fennell appears to be offering gothic erotica in her version of the classic Wuthering Heights, Jamie Lloyd’s inventive and youthful Evita, starring Rachel Zegler, made the pavement outside the London Palladium the place to be. Given the comparative monotony of student drama, can any of the productions truly be classed as ‘adaptations’? How can a student budget imitate the creativity of professional productions, which sometimes still miss the mark themselves?
The shortcut way to adapt a story, in any form, is to give it direct political resonance. But explicitly aligning oneself with a political stance is not always worth the risk. Politicised art has been plastered all over our newsfeeds this summer; or, rather, the censorship of this creative activism has.
Earlier this summer, a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Manchester was cancelled, with the Royal Exchange was forced to scrap its entire five-week run of a modern retelling of Shakespeare’s play, in a dispute over references to the Israel-Gaza war and trans rights. If this is what professionals in the creative industries face, how is student drama to manage taking a stance?
As a literature student, I incline towards a controversial performance. Last spring, I recall my frustration at a student production of The Merchant of Venice: while the show had enough courtesy to warn audience members about the antisemitism within the play through posters leading towards the auditorium, the production itself failed to expand on that central issue. With the backdrop of ongoing conflict in Gaza, it was almost uncomfortable that the show pretended it had no contextual relevance.
The Israel-Gaza war has been a budding platform for artists to perform their politics, and for activists to literally take to the stage. Yet, on the small stages of the Pilch or Keble O’Reilly, students are reluctant to take creative risks and adapt plays in the same politicised way that other professionals are willing to.
It takes a lot for a student drama to adapt itself in this way and address politics. In Oxford and the creative arts at large, imposter syndrome is never far away. Even still, student drama depends on all participants – from actors, musicians, costume designers and audience members – to view it as a worthwhile and legitimate cause. For a whole university’s creative community to caveat and curtail their voices because their stage is ‘too small’ a platform, or their pen ‘too insignificant’ a tool, would be a tragedy, indeed.
It takes a lot of nerve to write your own plays. In recent OUDS memory, the success of entirely student produced shows has been fleeting. The Mollys, a production company which facilitated original scripts for comedies, garden plays, and musicals, was created as a remedy for this issue. A similar student-founded company, Lovelock Productions, debuted their new play BLANDY at the Fringe in August, and promises to tell both new and old stories. Though, seeing as the student founders of these two companies are soon to graduate, there is no natural successor to carry the baton of student originality.
Even still, why are student writers, and political themes, so scarce within the Oxford drama scene? Well, unfortunately, money does make the world go around. A show is a product to sell. While personal insecurity and fear of censorship are significant players, they are not isolated as factors from the word loathed by every creative: finance.
Last year Cherwell reported on the challenges that hinder the creativity of student drama. Finances accrued through simple technology like microphones and lighting are huge investments, and sacrifices, that productions must make. More foundational decisions are also impacted by budget, such as which shows are put on at all. Shakespeare is a staple name on college posters – last term saw the influx of garden plays, and already in Michaelmas we have promises for Twelfth Night, Love Labour’s Lost, and Richard III.
It’s therefore no surprise that the most popular names are the most basic. There is a strong financial incentive for these plays because they are in the public domain and have no rights to purchase. When many essay writing subjects reward originality, but assign a plethora of secondary reading, it is understandably daunting to go with your gut and create an original interpretation. But in the drama world, when the finance, casting, and reputation of your production are also on the line? It’s terrifying.
Oxford’s drama scene needs, therefore, to be braver, but this involves not just the dramatists. I believe that the biggest blocker to fresh and thoughtful productions is the audience’s own ego: they fear not understanding the adaptation, that it’ll be too complex, or that they aren’t well-informed enough about the cultural or political subtext. But the risk of being disappointed or misunderstanding a production is meant to be part of the chance that a viewer puts in a show, and a show cannot thrive unless it has that trust from its audience.
Hope, however, is not lost for the future of Oxford student drama. Amongst the overdone Shakespeare is a new adaptation – truly deserving of the term – with Love’s Labour’s Lost reworked as a musical and scheduled for the T S Eliot Theatre in eighth week. It also promises in its OUDS announcement that they will commit to a diverse cast, and encourage Freshers to participate. This adaptational success shows that a production does not need to be loud or controversial to be thoughtful and value originality – it is through basic decisions like this that you keep drama fresh.
So come on, Oxford, I dare you. Whether you will be in the audience, in the wings or on the stage this term, it’s time that we proved that student drama can put on a real show.
