Chris Goode’s Stand is a very gentle call to arms. I left the Battersea Arts Centre with a mixture of powerful emotions, from feeling guilty about not going to the last march to save the NHS, excitement and trepidation about the potential of adopting a child, and a sinking feeling that we live in a culture that is actively set up to make it very difficult to stand up for what you think is right.
The production is an Oxford Playhouse commission for which Goode and his team interviewed a variety of Oxford residents about a time in their lives that they stood up for something they believed in. Six actors inhabit the words of six individuals for eighty minutes of warm storytelling that quietly gets under your skin. We meet a dynamic woman who works with refugees (Cathy Tyson is utterly compelling), a climate campaigner, a mother of an adopted daughter, a charming 82-year-old who has spent his life protesting against animal testing, an activist who campaigned to save the alternative community at Oxford’s Jericho boatyard and one of the founders of the Reclaim Shakespeare Company.
Naomi Dawson’s simple, elegant design sees each actor sitting on a high stool in front of a pale blue, curved backdrop, their scripted words on a music stand reminding us these are other people’s stories. Thankfully, Goode has the sense to avoid the shortcomings of many verbatim works that seem to be created for actors to showcase how many accents they can do, which often undermines or judges its subjects in an unsettling way. The company brings humanity, dignity and honesty to their interviewees. Their warmth recalls Goode’s own open and genuine performance style, and this is the key to the production working. The stories are of real people, living normal lives as well as making a stand in their own way. Nothing is shoved down our throats and we’re welcomed to quietly consider our own stories within this world that wants us all to conform.
Following its run at Battersea Arts Centre, Stand is touring to Mayfest, Pulse and other venues/festivals in the UK: http://chrisgoodeandcompany.