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Posted on September 28th 2015
All My Sons - Study Day
We were very fortunate to get Bruce Guthrie, associate director of Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, to come and talk to students about the production and answer their questions.
We screened a film of Howard Davis' 2010 production (on which Mr Guthrie was associate director) before holding a platform talk.
Mr Guthrie (left) is pictured with Chris Brown of HGAED.
Here's a review of the event by student Hollie Wild.
As part of our tragedy unit we’re studying King Lear and All My Sons. Yesterday we fortunately got to watch a screening of All My Sons (2010 Howard Davis production) with David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker as Joe and Kate Keller. We also got to participate in a platform talk with the associate director Bruce Guthrie who gave us insights into the production and made us more aware of the staging in the live show. I found the talk by Bruce Guthrie incredibly helpful because it made me really think about how the story had been set and he pointed out key themes for us, that in the live show you would pick up on, but in the screening which we saw could have potentially been overlooked.
A prime example is when George comes over to the house to see the Kellers and Kate says that Joe ‘hasn’t been sick in 15 years’. At that point the whole stage pauses except Kate because she is blissfully unaware of what she had just said, which on the stage would have been obvious but on the screen wasn't. We also learnt staging tips from Bruce as well as learning some of the techniques he uses before the rehearsals even start, for example splitting the characters into sections and putting their dialogue into different headings to see what the characters each say about themselves, what other characters think and say about them and also what the absolute facts are about that character to put it all into perspective and to really examine each character and who they truly are in the production. This helps the actors playing those characters know emotions and certain ways they should act to fit themselves into the role more comfortably.
Overall I really enjoyed the production of All My Sons and talking to the director really put the play into perspective and made me think about stage directions and other key elements of production that I might not have realised before.
By Hollie Wild
