Oli Dunbar and Corey Weekes are the writers of Vision Production Company’s debut show Rapsody, the 2022 recipient of the Pleasance’s Charlie Hartill Theatre Reserve, which will play at Pleasance Courtyard this Edinburgh Fringe.
“We were both coming out of drama school, freshly graduated, and we both rapped ourselves,” says Oli, “we thought you don’t really see that in theatre. So Corey proposed this idea of Rapsody to me, and at the beginning we didn’t really have any idea what it would be about, but we had the same sort of energy of it being set somewhere like a hostel, somewhere where the characters hated their environment and came from a class similar to ours.”
“So we just went off that feeling, and that’s how it developed over time. In the lockdowns, we started writing it, and then did a little R&D last summer, which gave us the chance to finalise the script.”
The script turned in to the story of four young people living in a hostel, “three of them come from working class backgrounds, and one of them comes from a middle-class background,” explains Corey. “It looks at how the entrance of someone from the middle upper class, changes the group. When we were making the show, the first thing that we wanted to explore was the idea of people using rap music as a way to say things that they wouldn’t be able to just speak to someone.”
“So it’s all about hopes and dreams, and whether those hopes and dreams will be fulfilled, or whether they’ll be crushed.”
Both Oli and Corey are excited to be bringing a show with rap music at it’s core to the Fringe, “way before I was acting, or writing plays, I was just rapping,” says Corey, “There have been plenty of times where I’ve been in the park, everyone’s listening to each other rap, and people are saying some deep stuff. There are things friends will never say to each other in a conversation, but they put it in their music, so it’s about breaking down barriers through the music.”
Oli is passionate about working class theatre makers having their voices heard, and is grateful for the opportunity the Charlie Hartill Theatre Reserve award has given them, “I think there’s just a lot of people coming from privileged backgrounds trying to talk about the working class, and it shows in the writing, it shows in the performance, so with Rapsody, it’s raw, it’s coming from a place of authenticity, and I think The Pleasance understood that, and yes, we’re grateful for them to give us this platform, it’s good to be on this scale going up to the Fringe, definitely.”
Corey adds, “a lot of the work out there, that is anything to do the working class is not usually created by the working class, and so it’s a lot of stereotype, it’s a lot of poverty, and that’s not what we’re doing.”
“At the same time though, this is an honest depiction, we show the good, the bad and ugly, because that’s just how life is. It’s one of the ones where people come away from it, some people might hate it, some people might feel like it doesn’t really fit their political agenda, but if that’s what they feel, it is what it is, because this is the story we are telling.”
Corey knows that hearing rap music in a theatre production will be unusual for audiences, “sonically, a lot of people will hear rap music and just assume what the subject matter is before they actually listen to the lyrics. So we’re trying to show that whatever medium it is, whether it’s theatre, film, or whatever, rap music is storytelling in the same way.”
“I feel like we are leading by example,” says Oli, “when we eventually go on tour around the country and even at Edinburgh, we can show kids who are similar to us, this is a definite option as a career.”
Rapsody, by Oli Dunbar and Corey Weekes, is at Pleasance Courtyard Wednesday 3rd – Monday 29th August 2022 (not 16th) at 17:20
“I think there’s just a lot of people coming from privileged backgrounds trying to talk about the working class, and it shows in the writing, it shows in the performance, so with Rapsody, it’s raw, it’s coming from a place of authenticity”
