HER Productions does not believe in low-hanging fruit.
Rather, the bigger the challenge the better.
The ambitious independent Newcastle theatre company led by Charlotte De Wit and Marigold Pazar will offer the third play of its 2024 season in June.
Blackbird is a play by Scottish playwright David Harrower. It premiered at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005 and has been performed to acclaim in London, New York, and several other cities around the globe.
The story revolves around Una and Ray, who had an illegal relationship in their past. The play picks up 15 years later, as Una confronts Ray at his workplace. Their reunion delves into unresolved emotions and explores the complexities of their past relationship, including issues of power, consent, and trauma.
Director Pip Thoroughgood proposed Blackbird to HER Productions.
As he noted on the HER website: "When I first came in contact with Blackbird I was 16 years old. I was on a high school trip to New York and I was watching Jeff Daniels and Michelle Williams rip my heart out and blow my mind and wake me up. When they bowed I thought 'We don't need this, go rest, you're exhausted'. Blackbird has stayed with me throughout my life since then."
A movie, Una, was also made based on the play, starring Rooney Mara and Ben Mendelsohn.
In the HER Production of Blackbird, De Wit plays the leading role of Una, with Phil McGrath in the role of Ray. Pazar and De Wit are the co-producers.
The set for the 70-minute play with just two actors has been minimised intentionally.
"Our set is original," Thoroughgood says. "A lot of people tend to bulk up the space with as much stuff as possible. It's an office breakroom. The script does detail certain elements ... we've gotten rid of all of that.
"It's just focusing on a relationship between these two people.
"I like to strip things back as a director, and focus on the tension between the actors. I often find audiences are able to hide behind all that accoutrement of era or space. So it's getting rid of it all, and just focus on what the story is trying to tell us."
The subject - grooming, in a word - is intense.
"David Harrower, who wrote the play, he talks about it being like a jazz piece - how long can I get these two people in a room until they have to leave," De Wit says. "It really doesn't have a lot of rhythm and beat, it's just a continuous conversation with no beats in it. So having something so vast just focus on these two people in a blank space is really effective."
De Wit rates it as perhaps her most challenging role yet. There are 84 pages of dialogue, including an 11-page monologue for her role.
"The script is written so well," she says. "It's so naturalistic and allows you to easily connect to your own feelings. Although I haven't experienced the same things Una has, I can still really relate to her.
"She's looking for answers, she's looking for resolution, and she's not very planned. So I think I've got a lot of clarity, and I'm excited to get in the room with Ray, because I think that's going to change when I'm with another actor."
Thoroughgood does not shy away from a challenge either.
"I think the brilliance of this play is they share their past in a way that is, quite honestly, romantic and lovely, which is really, like awful," Thoroughgood says.
"It's also really uncomfortable. It means we're lulled into the security that Una would have felt, and we get all the information about where they came from, and both of their perspectives, how they felt at the time when this has happening, when it was coming to fruition."
