Fringe First award-winning theatre-maker Tom Brennan and double Fringe First winners The North Wall return with an unflinching new play about love, memory and the relationships that shape us. Overtone is a gripping non-linear exploration of a relationship haunted by the past. As past and present collide when a couple spot their former choir director on the street, Overtone examines how formative experiences, power dynamics and blurred boundaries continue to echo in who we are today.
Pleasance Dome (Jack Dome) from Wednesday 5th – Sunday 30th August (not 12th, 19th, 26th) at 14:40.
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/overtone
• What drew you to explore memory and relationships through a non-linear structure in Overtone, and how does that shape audience interpretation?
In Overtone, I wanted to explore a single relationship across a big canvas, through the past and into the present. In the past, we see several scenes across a series of months, where our two teenage characters become close friends during a particularly intense summer.
In the present, we meet the couple again, but they’re in a long-term relationship and are forced to unpick where they are in their relationship, how they got there and how they might be able to move forward.
The non-linear structure of the play felt exciting because the audience get to decode these characters across a vast period of time. They get to play detective and unpick the dynamics and behaviours of the characters from scene to scene. This is service of trying to really understand two people in an intimate way.
• How did the idea of “psychological imprint” guide your writing of the relationship across both timelines?
I didn’t think about this concept consciously, but it’s definitely present in the play. I’m messy. Underneath the surface, we all are. I suppose what the idea of psychological imprint makes me think about is what we are in control of versus what we aren’t in our behaviour. What ghosts in our pasts direct the way we move through the world in ways that we have very little understanding of.
The play is about the mess of two characters insides emerging to the surface, rather than there being loads of external action.
Both Chekhov and the tv show ‘Couples Therapy’ helped unlock this for me. In Couples Therapy, there are these amazing moments where it’s so obvious that the topic of conversation (ie. who took the bins out) has absolutely nothing to do with the reality of the contact of two people. The way the couple talk is a vivid world of past trauma, past relationships and family dynamics all playing out under the surface. It’s about the interruptions, the repetitions, the loops of conversations, the silence.
• In what ways does the encounter with the former choir director act as a catalyst for re-examining the couple’s past?
A few years ago, I heard a song on the radio which I last listened to when I was a child and I was suddenly thrown back into a different space. I felt like I could sense the past, feel my childhood bedroom, smell my primary school classroom. I burst into tears not because the song was traumatic or emotionally turbulent but because it was as if I’d flown through a portal into my past.
When you encounter your past in such a direct way, it can really throw your whole nervous system out of whack. And this can be both helpful, healing and deeply visceral.
In the play, a brief encounter with their old choir director pushes our characters to relive and intensely reassess their pasts. It’s a sensory thing that the characters don’t have control of, nor do they have the language for. It’s the first image of the play and sets everything in motion. I’m particularly interested in the ways that this manifests in behaviour – in the way characters move and relate to each other, rather than the way they consciously address the topic of their past.
• How do you balance intimacy and discomfort when revisiting formative experiences that still echo into adulthood?
I don’t know. That’s a big and complicated question.
But I do know that in my life, discomfort has pushed me to change in positive ways. Being honest about your past, sitting in non-judgemental discomfort can be genuinely useful.
The play addresses some ‘issues’ that I care about deeply. But it isn’t polemic. I don’t want to persuade the audience about the validity of a certain problem. Instead, I want to explore that issue through the contradictions and ambiguities of the characters. Hopefully I also suggest a way through their baggage that feels honest and true to them. So intimacy and discomfort are qualities I would like the play to contain, alongside love.
• What does the play suggest about whether it’s possible to fully “outgrow” the people and power dynamics that shape us early on?
As a teacher and ex-student, I have become very aware of the power dynamics of certain kinds of relationships, especially across different ages. I still remember and hang on the words of old teachers and mentors from years before, and I’m aware that my students hold onto my behaviour and words both consciously and subconsciously. I get it wrong all the time, but its not a role I take lightly.
If you’ve ever tried to make friends with an ex-teacher, you’ll know it can be difficult to outgrow certain dynamics.
Similarly, within romantic relationships, power dynamics can play out in complicated ways. In a long-term relationship, there’s a moment in which the simple intensity of ‘falling in love’ is replaced by a different set of ever-changing dynamics – a different kind of deeper, more complicated love. And its not easy. Who has the power in the relationship at what point? What is being re-enacted from past relationships? Who is playing a role for the other? Who is leading? responding? Who is at risk? Who feels safe? How do you keep it honest and energising?
• How did your collaboration with John Hoggarth influence the tonal balance between emotional honesty, tension and moments of humour?
John makes me laugh a lot. And I want to make him laugh through the play. There’s a lot less gags than some of my other work, but I think the play has a comic vibe due to the way the characters perform for each other and the audience.
John is incredibly encouraging and detailed in his support and so I feel safe to take brave choices. At one level, the play is a simple two hander, but I feel nervous about some of the moments I’m attempting to theatricalise. They have the potential to look naive or insensitive, but they’re choices I feel brave enough to make with John’s support. This is very rare and I’m very lucky.