One man. 14 characters. And a hybrid mix of theatrical styles. For the last 22 years, Tref Gare’s solo performance, King’s Player has been performed to acclaim in the UK, New Zealand and Australia.
“ King’s Player is set in medieval Denmark, where Shakespeare’s Hamlet occurs– somewhere around 13th century,” says Tref. Set against a background of plague, death, squalor, a vagabond actor is given his big break, a chance to be inducted among the elite—to become a King’s player. The myriad styles running through the show triggers an imagination and gets the audience to paint pictures. “It’s just me, one costume and my hands. Through my performance, I plant enough seeds for the audience to keep their imagination alive.”
The play emerged from a lot of research. “During the medieval period, performers were designated either ‘noble’ or ‘vagabond’. Vagabond minstrels were technically ranked alongside thieves and prostitutes and lived a life very much on the fringes of society. While they were generally allowed to enter the town with their entertainments – they were not allowed to sleep within those walls and could be thrown out on a whim. ‘Noble’ minstrels were attached to a royal or noble house and had the patronage of that house – so they had much greater freedom of movement. I was struck by the similarities between the social position of medieval performers and modern ones.” Tref says that In India, like everywhere else, there are stars (‘Noble minstrels’) who are revered and move amongst the powerful elites, and there are the vagabonds who occupy a far less savoury position and are generally considered to lie very low on the moral scales. “Actors then and now float between those two extremes and that fascinated me.”
To research further, Tref travelled to Italy and France, and researched the different forms of medieval theatre. “I looked at examples of market shows, pub shows and royal court performances. After a year, I returned to London and proudly presented my play to my theatre producer friends. They read it, politely sat me down and said in sombre tones: ‘Tref, never ever ever produce this play it is truly awful.’ And they were unfortunately totally right! It was terrible. It was turgid and didactic and downright disgraceful as a piece of theatre and luckily it was never produced.”
As part of the research, Tref looked at examples of royal court performances. “Multiple people had pointed me to the scenes in Hamlet where a travelling troupe of players performs for the king. I looked further into it and started to think, well wouldn’t it be funny if this player was the guy who was hired by Hamlet, if he was this vagabond minstrel, not particularly good at his job but in the right ( or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time. And that is how the player’s story began. I went back to the drawing board and started small gradually evolving the piece through improvisation in front of tame audiences – after a year of work-shopping, improvising and extending I had what is the core of the piece you see today and began to tour.”
Tref began his theatre career in 1983 and has worked across different styles, including theatre, musical theatre, puppetry, mime, film and television. In 1990, he started Eclectic Pelican, to create and tour actor-driven, hybrid physical theatre. “As an actor for hire, which is what most actors are, you’re always waiting for someone to be give you an audition, to give you a job. A costume. A script. That is a very powerless and insecure situation to be in. To my great good fortune though, while in London, I met with a motorcycle accident which turned the direction of my career around. I got hit by a Mercedes Benz and injured my leg fairly badly. As part my recovery I was told I would need some physical therapy for my leg.” Coincidentally, he spotted an ad for a mime class. “I thought ‘that looks like a fun way to get my leg back to health’. That class opened my eyes to the possibilities of physical theatre, led to enrolling in full time mime and physical theatre school, which in turn led to completing further training in two other physical theatre schools in France and Italy. One of the main tenets of that training was that you are a maker of theatre – you are no longer a waiter for someone else to make some work for you. You are in control.”
King’s Player plays today at 8 pm and tomorrow at 3 pm and 6.30 pm at Jagriti Theatre, Whitefield. Tickets are available at the venue and at bookmyshow.com
