Kelmscott Productions Ltd

Telephone: 0208 291 6287

Mobile: 07798816571

http://kelmscottproductions.com

http://www.possessedamusical.com

http://possessedamusical.blogspot.com

Agent: Micheline Steinberg Associates

Agent Tel: 0207 631 1310

micheline@steinplays.aol.com

Mrs William Morris - The Blue Silk Dress, 1898, by Dante Dante Gabriel Rossetti (fragment, above left).

(Left) Photo of

Jane Morris, 1858, by

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

The blue plaque marking

Jane Burden's

birthplace.

Anna Francolini who plays Jane.  (Photo by James F. Hunkin, Spotlight website).

Joseph Millson who plays Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Photo by Katie van Dyk, Spotlight website.)

Matthew White who plays William Morris, a.k.a Topsy. (Photo, Spotlight website.)

Elizabeth Renihan who plays Lizzie Siddal. (Photo, Spotlight website.)

___________________________________________

Experience theatre in the making: a Workshop Performance

Sunday 27th April 2008 at 6pm

Oxford Playhouse

11-12 Beaumont Street, Oxford OX1 2LW

Tickets £10      Ticket hotline: 01865 305305

Book online - click: www.oxfordplayhouse.com

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Beauty like hers is genius.  Not the call

Of Homer’s or of Dante’s heart sublime, -

Not Michael’s hand furrowing the zones of time, -

Is more with compassed mysteries musical. . .

                  “Genius in Beauty” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

___________________________________________

Playwright and lyricist Teresa Howard writes:

The Pre-Raphaelite artist, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, saw Jane Morris’s beauty as a form of genius.  However, little is really known of this nineteenth century woman, except through the poetry and paintings she inspired.  I decided to write a play about her life and lift the veil of mystery covering this hidden muse, compassed in music, as Rossetti believed she was.  

The journey that this project has taken me on, with composer Steven Edis, has been remarkable.  The musical play eventually became known as POSSESSED.  The next stage will be a public Workshop Performance at Oxford Playhouse on Sunday 27th April at 6pm.  This will only be for one night and will last 75 minutes, without an interval.  From a two hour show some of the scenes will, of course, have to be cut in order to do this but the whole story will be told.  There will also be a chance to meet the company and discuss the show afterwards. 

This is my first musical collaboration with Steven Edis.  Steven’s composing and arranging credits are abundant, but he is best known for his work at the National Theatre and RSC for director Trevor Nunn, Regents Park Open Air Theatre and numerous pantomimes at the Hackney Empire. We have a brilliant young director called Helen Eastman, who has recently been directing productions for English Touring Opera and in the West End, and developing new work at the National Theatre Studio.  As the current Producer of the Onassis Progamme in Oxford she has strong links with the Oxford Playhouse.  We are lucky to have a spectacular cast including Anna Francolini (Jane), Martin Lamb (Mr Carter), Joseph Millson (Gabriel), Elizabeth Renihan (Lizzie Siddal), Matthew White (William Morris) and Natalie Wright (Bessy).

Multimedia designer Peter Dunphy is producing projected images for the show with Karl Roberts at JABOD.  Peter worked on the film Pan’s Labyrinth and so I think there will be some exciting things in store for us on the night.

Getting an original musical from the vision in your head to a full scale production takes many stages.  POSSESSED has already had a 35 minute showcase as part of the Greenwich Theatre/National Theatre Studio season of “New Futures” at Greenwich Theatre in June 2006, directed by Clive Paget from the National Theatre.  Anna Francolini and Peter Polycarpou took the leading roles.  This showcase gained the attention of the Arts Council and a number of producers, including Tish Francis at Oxford Playhouse.  

Tish Francis has been instrumental in supporting this new Workshop Performance at Oxford Playhouse during her last season there as Artistic Director. She told me that she had always hoped to find a play about the Pre-Raphaelites to stage at the Playhouse and “particularly about Jane because of the Oxford connection”.   Her support of the show at such a crucial time in its development is the kind of help all writers dream of.  Without artistic directors able to take risks on new work there would be no new plays and certainly no original musicals.  The Oxford Playhouse has been the main sponsor of the showcase along with Westhill Corporate Finance and ASRA Web Design.  Tish, and also the theatre’s new Artistic Director, Michelle Dickson, have been an enormous help getting the showcase on.

Oxford is the perfect place for Jane’s story to be told on stage for the first time. She was born in Oxford on 19th October 1839, as Jane Burden.  At that time her family were living in a cramped tenement in St Helen’s Passage, one of Holywell’s most poverty stricken areas.  The five tenements in the passage had no running water or sewerage facilities and were known as ‘several unwholesome dirt heaps’.  Jane met William Morris and Rossetti in Oxford while they were painting the murals for the Oxford Union.  She posed for some of these paintings at the artists’ lodgings at 13, George Street.  Her face still looks down from the gallery above the library.  She married William Morris at St Michael’s Church in Oxford on 26th April 1859.  For some time both Morris and Rossetti rented a beautiful old manor house nearby called Kelmscott Manor. This house was restored by the Society of Antiquaries, and remains a shrine to the Morris family.  It is open to the public and further details can be found at www.kelmscottmanor.co.uk

In October 2007 the William Morris Society erected a blue plaque in St Helen’s Passage to mark Jane’s birthplace.  The plaque describes Jane as a Pre-Raphaelite muse and embroiderer - but how did a girl from the slums of Oxford end up inspiring the work of both William Morris, the Arts and Crafts Designer and his friend the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti?

I spent many months researching the lives of Jane, Lizzie Siddal (Millais’ model for the famous Ophelia painting), Rossetti and Morris at the British Library, reading letters and tiny hand written notebooks in my search for the real Jane and the people who surrounded her.  It soon became clear that although Jane grew up in the slums of Oxford she was no ordinary girl.  The image of her from writers like Henry James who described her as ‘strange, pale, livid, gaunt, silent’, began to recede as I read further. The silent muse started to come to life and a vivid love story emerged which needed to be told.

One of the real difficulties with writing a musical based on a group of historical characters is deciding what is the most important part of the story to tell about them. It became a musical rather than a straight play because of the heightened emotions in the story. It needed music and the characters needed to sing about what they felt. The hidden element of Jane’s life was what interested Steven and I more than the artists and this is why we chose to make her the protagonist. However, ultimately the musical has to stand on its own, whether the characters are real or not. We have often been asked what drew us to this story and when you have seen it you will know.

Jane’s genius was her ability to act as a channel for the inspiration of Rossetti and Morris, without her who knows how different their work would have been.  As Julia Forster writes in her book, Muses, “To create a work of art is to create a relationship with something beyond ones ego or ones immediate reality, and to be a muse is to plug into that powerful, divine, universal, oceanic and invisible energy which surrounds each and everyone of us.”  Jane was discovered at the theatre, in Oxford, by Rossetti in 1857.  It is apt that we have been given the chance to tell her story again at Oxford Playhouse on Sunday 27th April 2008.

POSSESSED

a new Musical Play about

Jane Morris

Book and Lyrics by

Teresa Howard

and

Music by

Steven Edis

(Below) Poster and front of house flyer for the Oxford Playhouse Showcase.  Photo of Jane Burden taken by Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1858,  overlaid with the Marigold Design by Morris and Co.

Image devised by Charles Girdham.

(Above) Anna Francolini as Jane with Peter Polycarpou as William Morris a.k.a. Topsy. (Photo from the Greenwich Theatre Showcase, June 2006.)

(Below) Tristan and Isolde taking the love potion.  Stained glass window made by Morris and Co.  for Harden Grange, Yorkshire, designed by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Image used in the Possessed’s multimedia effects.

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