Peter Cieply directs the UK premiere of a brand-new production of award-winning Black US playwright, librettist, and television writer David Harrison Rivers’ This Bitter Earth.
The two hander features Martin Edwards (Mister Paradise – Trafalgar Studios, The Long Walk Back – national tour) as Jesse and Max Sterne (To Kill a Mockingbird – Manchester Royal Exchange, Conscious Uncoupling – Vault Festival) as Neil. The design consultant is Isabella Van Braeckel, with lighting design and co sound design (with Peter Cieply) by Chuma Emembolu, and movement direction by Gareth Taylor.
This Bitter Earth is at White Bear Theatre February 21 to March 11 2023
You’re directing This Bitter Earth at the White Bear Theatre, what can you tell us about the show?
This Bitter Earth is about an interracial gay couple navigating a relationship at the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement. Neil, a White activist from a privileged background, meets Jesse, an introspective Black writer, reluctant to join any cause.
As tensions mount amid the killings of Black people across the US, and as Neil becomes more and more involved in activism, the two young men must find their equilibrium in ever-more-turbulent times. The story’s time setting also encompasses a period when hate crimes generally, including against LGBT people, were concurrently rising, and the play explores that intersection as well. Wrestling with issues of race and class, love and loss, it is a haunting reminder of the strength it takes to find one’s voice and live out loud.
What was it about David Harrison Rivers’ script that impressed you most?
Harrison is brilliantly intelligent, and he writes emotionally rich characters and powerful stories. This Bitter Earth offers tremendous scope to play, because it’s both a political and timely cri de coeur and a tender and moving love story, and because its structure is fragmented, and that invites creative and imaginative leaps. It’s a puzzle that can be solved a lot of different ways.
It’s had several runs in the US, has anything changed for this UK premiere?
For several of the past productions, Harrison did some rewriting between them, and then the play was finally published last year, so there have been a number of versions. Harrison has been wonderfully generous in working closely with me to develop our own tailored script, drawing from several different drafts.
I have not seen any of the previous productions, so I can’t say for sure that no one has done some of what we’re doing, but I do believe our production is going to be pretty unique. I’ve also tried to take into account that British audiences may not be as knowledgeable about all the BLM and other events that are referenced, so I’ve built some things into the production to help, and we also are including detailed dramaturgical notes in the program to give context.
Tell us a little about the cast, what are you looking forward to about working with them?
Martin Edwards and Max Sterne are bloody geniuses who deserve immense fame and fortune. I’m so blessed to have them, they have been with the project from the beginning when we workshopped it, and I can’t imagine this show without their lovely warm chemistry and visceral connections to their parts and to the story. They’re a total joy in the room, smart and funny and generous and fearless.
And what do you think will be the biggest challenge in staging this production?
The story is fragmented and non-linear, so we’ve worked with the brilliant movement director Gareth Taylor on finding a language to weave through the shifts and hold it all together, to rise to that challenge. I’m by nature much more based in realism than abstraction, so it’s been great for me to move a little out of my comfort zone, and very exciting to find new ways of telling the story.
What would you say to anyone thinking of booking to see This Bitter Earth?
It’s a complicated, sexy, political play that is at its heart a deeply moving love story, told in an exciting and immediate style. What’s not to like?
This Bitter Earth, directed by Peter Cieply runs at White Bear Theatre From 21 April to 11 March.
