Ed Wren isn’t much for following standard rules of decorum. For instance, you don’t usually depict harrowing tragedies using methods that found in the realm of children’s amusements – puppets, slapstick buffoonery. Neither do you take your own deeply personal family secrets and put them on display as public entertainment. But Wren did both in his debut play, The Ordinaries. The production went on to take top NSDF awards for sound and design as well as special mention in the catagories of lighting, new writing and poetic invention.

For Wren it was less a play, more an exercise in making sense of the anguish his little sister suffered due to a troubling episode in her childhood. “It was a way to deal with demons,” he says. “Along the way we realised it had wider implications. It could serve as a wider social commentary.”

In the play – without revealing too much as it is currently being performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and highly worth attending – a family strives to project normalcy in the face of a deep, dark family secret. Silence about their hidden past has untoward effects on their young daughter, played by a rag-doll puppet.

Puppetry has connotations of frivolity and play, but here it is decidedly adult. Using these methods of expression according to Wren, “helps detach people from the subject.” Tim Burton as a major influence of this dark/light melding. The play is penned in a singsong poetic metre that creates a story-time, fairytale atmosphere. It transfigures the grim issues at hand. “Storytelling softens the blow,” he says. “We use the poetic nature, instead of stark realism. Fairytale descriptions here create juxtaposition with the subject matter.”

While Wren hails from a family of amateur puppeteers, it was actually his creative partner Claire Harvey who trained in the art. She introduced it into the theatrical production. The pair met and collaborated on The Ordinaries in their last year at the University of Winchester when they formed their River People Production Company and were tapped by NSDF.

In Wren’s opinion, getting to NSDF provided the catapult out of the insular town of Winchester to theatre’s mainstream. It also sharpened the already skilful pair. While many dread critiquing sessions such as the student productions face post-NSDF, Wren and Harvey relished the opportunity to be scrutinised by experts. “The discussions at NSDF gave us faith in what was good about the show; the negative comments told us what needed to be improved,” says Wren.

Now at the Fringe Festival, The Ordinaries has a new ending based what Wren and Harvey gleaned from their experience at NSDF. Says Wren, “It was a rite of passage.”

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