How do we find direction?

Director of our latest show - The Incident Room - Amanda Perry shares her experience ahead of curtain-up this May

Director Amanda Perry

I don’t like true crime. Or so I thought, as I was ploughing through possible plays for our spring production. I came across The Incident Room, a contemporary play about the police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper – and immediately discarded it. And then something made me pick it up and start reading, and I was drawn in: it is beautifully written, with pace, wit and fantastic characters. Even though I knew ‘whodunnit’, I was hooked. How did they catch him? Or, more to the point, how did they not catch him for so long?

I was also struck by how different this was to usual plays. True crime may be popular on the bookshelves and in TV docudramas…but on stage? It turns out, it translates very well. Rather than sensationalising events, it focuses on the investigation: a gripping procedural that’s often unexpectedly funny.

Director Amanda Perry watches on as the Downsview Players read through The Incident Room

Welcoming new Players to the stage

Among a fantastic cast of twelve, we are delighted to include newcomers to Downsview Players, Melissa, David and Scott. Melissa, who hadn’t acted since her schooldays, is carrying the central role with impressive calm authority. David, returning to the stage after a 25-year break, has taken to it as if he never left. Scott was due to begin rehearsing The Incident Room in Cheshire until work called him to Croydon – and he has slipped nicely into the same role, with the added advantage of being the only northerner among us. For the southerners, accents have improved all round – helped along by a ‘research trip’ to York that some are keen to repeat (less so our treasurer).

From the pages to the set - creating our Incident Room

The set is repurposed from our November production of The Unfriend, and still includes a sofa and a toilet. We are (reasonably) optimistic they will find a new home before opening night. Although our stores are out of action after a tree fell on the garage last autumn, we’ve managed to bring to life an Incident Room from 1977, including a dusty old cassette player unearthed in the lighting box. The brown, orange and magnolia colour scheme was met with suspicion, but the cast have, at least, stopped mentioning it.

We’ve even ventured into location filming, our ‘film unit’ taking us to local woods and parks in forensic suits, setting up police tape and dispatching reporters in trench coats and trilbies. This raised a few eyebrows among dog walkers, and some may believe there’s been a very underreported local incident.

A story that still resonates today 

In watching it all take shape, I have been reminded how The Incident Room still resonates. Much has changed since the 1970s – in policing, in attitudes, in opportunities for women. And much hasn’t, when it comes to under-resourced public institutions, the immense pressure to get things ‘sorted’, and the competing egos involved. It is a story that lingers, and a production that I genuinely think is worth seeing, whether you like true crime – or whether, like me, you thought you didn’t.

The Incident Room will be on the 7th, 8th and 9th May at Downsview Methodist Church Hall, SE19 3XH.

Book tickets now!