The Luminous Q&A

RedCape Theatre’s time-travelling show The Luminous blends Victorian thriller and contemporary friendship in a genre-busting UK tour this autumn.

Set in a modern book club, three women delve into a Victorian melodrama, where they discover stories of an anonymous killer. Written by Catherine Dyson and starring RedCape founders Cassie Friend and Rebecca Loukes, the show combines physical theatre, dark comedy, and gripping writing to explore the power of storytelling. See below for an exclusive Q&A with RedCape Theatre.

How did you approach developing your characters, particularly given the dual timelines and contrasting settings of Victorian London and the present day?

We all play multiple characters in the play, which obviously need to be distinct from each other. The fact that we’re playing with different styles and time periods was actually really helpful in making these distinctions. For example, because the characters in the Victorian world are all part of the fictional book, ‘Luminous’ that the women in the book club are discussing, and because they talk about the book being a kind of lurid potboiler, this gave us licence to have fun with the Victorian characters and make them quite melodramatic and larger than life. Then there are the characters in the hospital scenes, which operate more like a Greek chorus ensemble. But all the elements of the play are interconnected, and the multi-rolling is very deliberate. So as the story unfolds, we begin to see that the experiences of Mighty, Mags and Alice are mirrored in the other characters we each play in the other worlds.

RedCape Theatre is known for its blend of physical theatre. How did incorporating physicality into your performance influence your portrayal of the characters?

We always start with creating from the body and we began our process by improvising and physicalizing images from our research and playing with objects in the space – seeing what shapes and pictures we could create.  This physical work then influenced how the writing and the design of the show developed.  Now, in the final stages of rehearsal, we’re returning to the physical work as we bring the script to life.  For us, the writing and physical visual worlds are always interconnected.

The relationships between Mighty, Mags, and Alice are central to the story. How did you work on creating the chemistry and tension between your characters?

Our characters were developed over a long period of time, and we did a lot of improvising around them alone and together. Mighty and Mags are the original members of the book club, and have a shared history and ease around each other, which is totally disrupted by this unexpected newcomer, Alice, coming into their space. There are various hierarchies and power disparities between the three of them, and they drink a lot of wine over the course of the evening, so we had fun playing with the shifting tensions and allegiances!

How did you navigate the transition between the contemporary and Victorian settings within your performance? What was the most challenging part of blending these worlds?

The most challenging part of moving between the worlds was most definitely the transitions on stage. We had to figure out the rules and language for moving between the worlds so that they are part of the fabric of the play and not just scene changes. As we got further into rehearsals and became more confident with the material, it was an opportunity for us to think about when and how the worlds start to infuse and invade each other.

What inspired the concept of merging a Victorian thriller with a contemporary tale of friendship? How did you develop the narrative to intertwine these two worlds? 

One of the original inspirations for the play was the match women’s strike of 1888. The women in the Victorian match factories were working in terrible conditions and the phosphor which the matches were dipped into poisoned them. So, we became very interested in that era and the lives of those women. We were also looking at other protests from different time periods in which women have been central, including the Greenham women’s movement and more contemporary protests around women’s safety. We were interested in bodies (women’s bodies in particular, but not exclusively) as sites of power and vulnerability. That’s also where the world of the hospital, which is the connective tissue of the play, came in. So, we knew quite early on that we wanted to tell a story that crossed different eras, exploring themes from over a century ago which still resonate today. 

The show uses elements of dark comedy, physical theatre, and gripping storytelling. How do the set, lighting, and costume designs contribute to creating the unique atmosphere of the play?

These design elements are essential to helping the audience to navigate what is quite a complex story. We’re lucky to be working with a fantastic design team -Tina Bicat, (Stage/Costume Designer), Adrian Croton, (Lighting Designer) and Dougie Evans (Sound Designer). The design elements work in synthesis with the script and physicality and create very distinctive worlds in the show, and they also support the blurring of those worlds as the play progresses.  We had fun playing with creating the Victorian world of the book, the contemporary book club setting and the world of the hospital and finding out what the visual and sound languages are for each of them.

What was the thought process behind the decision to use a book club as the framing device for the narrative?

We thought this could be an interesting way to explore female friendship and a dynamic way of accessing a portal to a story in a different time. We were really interested in the idea of a book club as a way of exploring the relationships, and we talked to lots of people who told us how it’s a really unique and special environment for making connections with other people. The discussion of the book becomes a way to explore the relationships between the characters. Especially as they disagree about it!

What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in bringing this time-travelling, genre-busting story to life on stage?

We started talking about the ideas for this piece several years ago when we were working on another project, and, in the meantime, we’ve made and toured other RedCape shows, as well as pursuing our own independent jobs and projects. We had to bide our time with this one as it’s a bit bigger in terms of scale and complexity from our more recent projects, so we had to make sure all the elements were in place and to secure the funding that we needed. Once we were ready to go, the exciting challenge for Catherine as a writer was to bring together all the many threads and tendrils that had sprouted from our original idea and weave them into a fully formed script. The three of us live in different parts of the UK and are all working parents so it can be tricky getting together. The challenges have been ones that I’m sure are familiar to many creatives in our industry, where money and resources feel ever tighter. We’re so thrilled that we’re finally getting to make and share this show, and be on stage together which is where we’re happiest!

The Luminous comes to the Corn Exchange on Wednesday 25 September, 7.30pm. Book your tickets here.