MASS OBSERVATION by Inspector Sands, produced by China Plate
Stefanie worked as an Assistant Director with Inspector Sands as part of an internship scheme in 2012. She had first seen their play If that's all there is in London in 2009, fell in love with it and decided to write her portfolio about the company for her BA studies. Working with them as an Assistant Director was a very rewarding experience and led her to continue her studies to become a movement teacher and director.
INSPECTOR SANDS create theatre that is irreverent, emotionally charged, often tragic, usually comic, sometimes silly and always serious. They have a particular interest in the way that global events and trends are reflected in the minutiae of everyday life. They seek the epic in the everyday and the everyday in the epic.
MASS OBSERVATION was first developed at the Almeida Theatre's Summer Festival and is now being redeveloped under the title The Lounge. It looks at how the UK as a nation copes, or fails to cope, with the process of ageing we are all engaged in.
In its original form, the play starts off on Coronation Day in 1937. A young woman called Marsha (played by Amanda Lawrence) stumbles into a revolutionary rally aimed at shaking up British society and falls instantly in love with the founder of Mass Observation, Tom Harrison (played by Ben Lewis), who barely notices her. In the second half, she is a bird-like figure in a chair in an old people's home on Jubilee weekend 2012. She is unnoticed by Mark (played by Stephen Harper), a young man with a terrible hangover, and a habitual liar, who is there to collect his grandfather after having dealt with a broken-down car and a constantly disappearing mobile phone reception.