Immortal, written by Ciaran McConville, explores the moments after five English Air-Bombers have crash-landed in enemy territory during the second world war. The Play comes to the Watermans Centre in Brentford April 7-9. William Gadsby Peet talks to the founder of Grean Tea productions, Olly Fawcett.
Grean Tea Productions was founded by Olly Fawcett whilst he was still at secondary school. Tired of being told how to act on stage Olly gathered a number of his like minded creative peers to start putting on productions of their own. The company has gone from strength to strength with 2 plays and a number of short films and music videos successfully produced to great public reception.
Grean Tea take are putting on a production of Immortal for the second time at the Watermans Centre in Brentford in April. The play, written by Ciaran McConville, has a real time temporal arc which explores the moments after five English Air-Bombers have crash-landed in enemy territory during the second world war. The men must struggle with the painful decision; leave behind their injured comrade, or risk getting caught? You can buy tickets to the play here.
Tell me about Grean Tea, how did you guys come about?
“Back in 2013 I was still at college and I wanted to start doing my own thing creatively. I wanted to do a theatre production without any adults, as it were, telling us what to do and how to act. I wanted to see how hard it was and so I put together a cast with some of my friends who I still work with and we found this great play called Immortal by Ciaran McConville."
"One of my friends was actually kind of mentored by McConville. Her names Nicole and she’s the director of the show. In 2015 we did our first run of Immortal, in the Arthur Cotterell Theatre in Kingston. It sold out and we had a really great response, it was a brilliant learning experience for us."
"After that we had a couple of months doing other bits and bobs, I diversified Grean Tea with some other things like graphic design and videography. Nicole came to me and said Kieran has another play called Stones which we did in September at the Cryer in Sutton which again was well received."
"At the end of September we found ourselves in a strong position and we really wanted to take the next step to a larger theatre and a larger production. We looked at Immortal again, which we loved doing and felt like we had some more to give. I know Nicole as the director really feels like she can expand the play and do more with it."
"We are now doing three days at the Waterman’s Centre April 7-9 and then were taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this summer. It's massively exciting for us and we’re lucky enough to be supported by the Pure Land Foundation and Bruno Wang Productions who have been absolutely unbelievable with all the help they’ve given us."
"Its all taken off from there really, we’re all very young (under 21) and some of us like myself and Georgia Rolf are doing this full time and making our living off of it. But we all love it and are just enjoying being in the mix and doing something creative.”
This is the second of McConville plays you’ve produced, is there anything in particular that has attracted you to his work?
"Nicole has a huge passion for content as a director, specifically she looks for tremendous detail and focus in a plays story. What we love about Immortal and Stones is the attention to detail in every single character. The way Ciaran writes, you learn about these characters in an hour and you feel like you've known them for years. That's the kind of writing we both love, it's not just about having 30 different characters onstage that barely make an impression."
"Immortal is so well constructed and detailed it could easily be a real life situation from the war. The way he’s told the story and looked at the possible human interactions draws the audience in and makes them feel like they’re watching real life. It's something we have a huge amount of respect for and something we want to try and do justice to because if it's done properly it can be an immense piece of theatre."
How do you guys aim to be different to other theatre production companies?
"We try really hard to produce theatre in a way that is fresh and innovative. Lot's of young people can have an image of the theatre as quite stuffy and old fashioned and we want to challenge that. We always aim to modernise our approach to theatre, with social media and videography playing an integral role. There is so much scope and range given by the new digital era and we're fortunate enough to have a group of multi-talented individuals working for us, it would be silly not to utilise that."
"On the production side we also aim to give young people a large amount of responsibility, they wouldn't normally be trusted with. When you give a 16 or 17 year old a task and say ‘do this, no one will do it for you’, your giving them an invaluable taste of the real world. It’s fantastic practice because, in my experience, they tend to react brilliantly and often with a maturity that might surprise people."
What would you say the biggest challenges you've faced whilst getting established have been?
"The biggest challenges we've faced are that we aren't trained in any of this. The best part of being a new theatre company is the same as the worst; you don't have anyone telling you what to do! Nicole is studying drama at university but other than that we’ve learnt everything pretty much on the job. You make mistakes and you learn from them and that's a huge part of our ethos. We're lucky because we're all really passionate and proud of what we do but we also accept that we are a new company that is always learning."
You have a YouTube channel doing music videos as well, what's that about?
"Like I mentioned earlier we have been lucky enough to diversify in to some other creative outlets I'd always been interested in. I'd been doing some freelance work here and there when I met a videographer called Louis through some mutual friends. We'd talked a few times, sharing advice with each other and then we started talking about how we'd both really like to start filming acoustic music videos for young unsigned artists. The way we wanted to do it was with a real focus on the voice and soul of the singer reflected in the location. We found a really great stripped back, raw, space to film the music in, which puts all the focus on the actual talent of the performer."
"We started a project called Circle Studio's in November, hoping to upload a video every weekend from a different artist and its been going really well so far. We've had a great time finding young artists that we really respected and whose music spoke to us. It's a brilliant set up because a lot of these guys wouldn't be able to afford to produce a music video otherwise and we get to improve our videography skills whilst we're doing it. We've had a lot of fun producing this little music community on YouTube that is mutually beneficial for everyone. We've got some great artists coming on in the future so watch this space!"
Why Grean Tea productions?
"I don't know if you noticed but green is actually spelt incorrectly. I'd come up with the company name myself just because I liked the sound of it and thought it was something a little bit different. It also might have had something to do with the fact I was having a cup of green tea at the time. However I'm quite heavily dyslexic and so when I was signing all the paperwork and setting up the company, I ended up spelling green wrong. It's actually worked out really well because otherwise people would probably think we made green tea, plus we are the first thing that comes up on search engines when you search for us."
Any advice for anyone looking to follow in your footsteps?
"The main thing I'd say is take the advice that people give you really well and absorb that, but don't take everything as the gospel truth. The conventional methods are important, but you can absolutely expand upon them and try and do something unique."
"There's a saying I heard ages ago and it's really stuck in my head and become part of the Grean Tea ethos; 'If your doing something original everyone will try and copy you, if your not doing something original no one will copy you'. You want to be doing something fresh and exciting, that’s how your going to make an impression."
Buy tickets to Immortal at the Watermans Centre here
You can also check out our reviews of the past performances of Immortal and Stones by Grean Tea in 2015.
