News Behind the Curtain: A chat with the Directors of ‘The Maladies’ 06.12.2024

This week saw the Senior Production of The Maladies take centre stage in the Bishop Centre. We sat down backstage with student Directors Lucy and Kim, Upper Sixth, who told us all about the production.

WD: Kim, Lucy, we’re speaking to you after the first night of The Maladies. Tell us about the play and why you chose to create this adaptation.
Lucy: The Maladies focuses on historically accurate elements of mass hysteria across time, through the eyes of a 21st century podcast. Throughout the play you’re switching between these kind of flashback scenes of historically accurate mass hysteria and these podcasters investigating it. And I think we really liked this element of mass hysteria because we really like the creative opportunities that arise from doing something like that.
Kim: We’ve always been fans of hysteria in plays. I think it stemmed from when we studied The Crucible in Drama, and we love the hysteria element in that. So when we saw this play had elements of mass hysteria, but also some interesting modern-day aspects – which you kind of don’t often do in school productions – we thought it was a good way to incorporate the two.

WD: What sort of challenges did you face in creating your adaptation? Did you put your own spin on it, or was it true to the source material?
K: The first thing that comes to mind is the switching between different time zones, which happens a lot in the script. To capture that we used these lighting poles above the stage and around the stage, which emit a flashing of light, which was pretty cool.
L: Also because it was a devised piece originally with only one showing, there wasn’t really much for us to go off. Everything we did with the thrust stage and the lighting were all decisions that we had to come up with.

WD: Am I right in thinking this was your directorial debut? How did you find being in the Director’s chair?
K: Yeah this was our directorial debut.
L: We did help with Beauty and the Beast last year, but that was more ‘Co-Student Directors’ role out of the limelight.
K: It’s cool because we’ve been in Senior Productions and seen our friends in older years directing and this time we got to do it ourselves.

WD: Were there any creative disagreements that you guys had, and if so, how did you overcome them?
K: Not major ones.
L: I feel like we were quite on the same page with the whole vision.
K: The only thing I can think of is the colour of the lights in some of the scenes but I ended up picking the colour for one scene and Lucy picked the colour for the other scene so nothing crazy.

WD: How many hours of rehearsals go into a production as big as this?
K: Quite a lot!
L: Because it’s such a short time span, like it’s December and we held auditions in September and started work on it in October. You’ve only really got a month and a half, what with half-term. So it’s just a lot of hard work from us and from the cast as well, who are incredible.
K: And I think in the last like two weeks, we were spending all of our time on it because, I mean, we obviously were the people that were designing the lighting, the sound, all of the tech, and the costumes.

WD: My understanding is the poster was created by a student as well. Is that right?
K: It was created by Freya in Upper Sixth so massive shout out to Freya.
L: It’s really cool!

WD: What was it like working alongside your teachers? Was that a collaborative experience?
K: Yeah, I think Miss Adams helped us a lot especially when we weren’t sure of something.
L: There’s a lot of support like from the Tech Captains in the Tech Team. I think we have so much freedom being the Directors that we’re able to do whatever we want. But then if we came across a challenge, like how will we do the staging or how will this lighting work, we can always go to them, which just gives you that support and confidence that you need when you’re a Director.

WD: What do you hope people take away from this production?
K: Well, I think a key message of the production is not reducing women to their emotions.
L: Also I think the importance of human connection because, like the characters of Susan and Christina, you have them as kind of this duo that transcend time in all of the flashbacks throughout the play and they just have a really special connection. So I think just highlighting the importance of friendship in difficult, tense situations, is really important.

WD: And finally, any shoutouts you want to give to your cast and crew?
L: Everyone has just been incredible.
K: Particularly Jack (Mr Spicer) and the rest of the Tech Team. They’re wonderful.
L: And Miss Adams.
K: And Miss Adams. Also our wonderful cast who are all so amazing and talented.