Why do we go to the theatre?

In keeping with this weeks theme…

A few days ago, I saw A Dolls House for the 19th time. After the show I went back into the auditorium with a director even younger than I am (shock!) and gave him a tour of the set, explaining all of the ways that we discovered how to utilise it and the detail that goes into the show (he enjoyed reading Krogstads handwritten letter and the I.O.U).

A thought occurred to me as we moved between the rooms: without lights, costume and sound, an auditorium is a very cold, boring, artificial place. Going from the beauty of the show to standing on the set with the working lights up, looking at 400 empty seats, I realised that this really is a make believe world that people buy into in their thousands every day.

There is something about the darkness of theatre that makes you believe in it. If the house lights suddenly came on during a show, there would be a joint cry of dismay: “What’s happened? What on earth are they doing up there? Are they mad? You’re in Norway 1878? Don’t be ridiculous!”

It got me to thinking: why do people go to the theatre? In an earlier interview that I did – see below – Eric Abrefa suggested that it is to be challenged. Is that why? There is something in the action of paying your £20, going into the auditorium, talking about your day with the person you’ve come with (checking your phone if you’re alone) and when the lights go down, you leave your life behind; every thought, every feeling that was yours you now invest in what is being performed for you in the darkness.

Is theatre escapism? I’m not entirely sure where this thought is going, but I suppose it is more of a thought for myself. Besides working on the show, why did I enjoy and want to see A Dolls House 19 times and why am I thinking of seeing it again before the end of the final run? We all know what a bad show is: something we didn’t believe in. A good show, obviously, is a piece that grabs us, that we can buy into…

So are we looking for a reflection of ourselves? To be able to say: “I know how that feels”?

Hattie Morahan: Act II (of II)

By this time in our chat, Elinor has arrived on the beat of 5pm to do Hattie’s hair. There is a system in the ladies dressing room, it runs like clockwork. Stage management arrive at a set time to deliver Nora’s wedding ring. Her costumes are brought down clean and pressed and ready to wear. It is the slow, regimental build to transport us back to Kristiana, 1878. There is a smoothness to the events which comes from Hattie’s laissez-faire approach to it. She’s calm.

As we continue to talk, she begins to apply her makeup and the curlers, which have been warming, are put into her hair. Multitasking seems to be something Hattie and Nora have in common. There’s no indication that she is about to deliver a powerhouse performance that is unachievable by many.

And, so, to conclude…

What’s the journey been like from auditioning, landing the role and getting into production?
The audition I was totally frilled by. I wanted to do a good audition because this is the most amazing part. It was one of those weird things because I knew the world and his wife would be up for it – in fact I knew someone else had been pencilled in to do it who was amazing and then couldn’t. My contemporaries and friends were all going in for it so we kept bumping into one another saying, have you heard yet? That weirdly takes the pressure off of you because I was wondering: what does Carrie actally want? Because there’s all these different people. You just try and give a little idea of roughly what your approach would be and then hearing I’d got it was… amazing. It was exciting but really daunting. Golly, this is one of those parts where all eyes will be on you! A lot of people know the play, a lot of people have seen it before and therefore the judgement is particularly angled and they don’t take it at face value. You just have to shrug that off.

Was there ever any doubt about taking it?
No doubt about taking it… was there something else at the same time? [She asks herself] I knew this was the one I wanted. There was doubt about whether I could pull it off. Most definitely. Can I just wet my sponge?

On the flip side of that, four months later winning Evening Standard and Whats On Stage ‘Best Actress’ and now an Olivier nomination… How does that feel?
Totally weird. It’s jolly nice. The fact the production was so well received – not just critically – but talking to people afterwards and people’s responses when they came out; people were so moved and it really seemed to land with them in a very primal way. That’s what you really want when you’re performing on stage. It’s also a really lovely opportunity to re-examine things, because so often when you’re doing a play you have one opportunity and it’s gone. A week after you’ve finished a run you go, Oh my god! That’s what I should have been doing in that scene – so it was a really lovely opportunity to have another bite of the apple. Actually, all of the anxiety drops away after seven months and you go: lets just do the play. It’s lovely and it’s such an amazing play. It’s a huge honour to get to do it.

You talked about the way it landed with the audience, this is still a play that’s dividing people. How have they responded?
Yeah… so the passage where Torvald has read the reprieve letter which lets him off the hook and he flips from being furious and dismissive to patronising and dismissive of her, there are things that he says where the audience get very vocal. What I find fascinating is imaginging what the audience reaction would have been when it was first performed and I imagine it would have been more uncomfortable then, because there is a man voicing it’s because I’m a man and you’re a woman, which wouldn’t have been flagged up as obvious mysoginy and sexism because they would have been far more integral to how people assumed and thought the world was. So there would have been people in the auduience, well that’s sort of what I think, but is that a bad thing? Now people get very vocal, but I think a bit of that is a sort of a release of tension because it’s so politically incorrect and so rare and feels uncomfortable to have someone voicing those things on stage. In the audience, whether conscious or unconscious, there’s a little element of people having to vocally distance themselves from what he is saying by laughing at it, jeering at it, sounding shocked, to demonstrate their liberal credentials to fellow audience members. I don’t know. It’s kind of weird.

Elinor: I find that most people laugh at that bit because he’s being such an arsehole. People are shocked at what he’s saying, but at the time it probably wouldn’t have dawned on people that this was wrong but now we know because of the time we live in. They need to release that tension.

Hattie: Aren’t we lucky that we can laugh at it! Yeah, you’ve expressed it far more succinctly than I could have.

How does it feel on stage and in rehearsals as a female leading a production?
It’s sort of interesting. I feel like because the director is a woman and there’s a lot of women in the company and I feel very lucky, I’ve never felt any anxiety around my gender or regards to status or being taken seriously, so I don’t tend to make gender divisions in work. I don’t think really on those lines. My main memory of rehearsals was feeling permanently quite exhausted! The play is constructed so that things just keep happening to her so you just play it. You’re like, oh my god what comes next? And then somebody knocks at the door and oh it’s this scene because you’ve just rocked up. You just have to play the mad thing that her life is. After Krogstad has told her what he’s found out there’s this ticking time bomb of, oh my god, the blackmailers going to come back and ruin our lives and it’s me that’s going to hell, so what to do in a moment of crisis? Throw yourself at your really sexy friend and flirt your way out of catastrophe. She has to live in the present. It’s the most odd feeling to go through that play, if you think ahead you get freaked out. I think: whats happening now for the next 5 seconds?

Throughout rehearsals I never knew that you hadn’t trained. Was there ever a prospect of going to drama school or did you think I’m just going to do it?
I started auditioning straight after university. My parents [Anna Carteret and Christopher Morahan] are both in the business and they were keen for me to go to drama school – totally understandably really, because they’ve got years and years of experience and craft behind them and they feel that if you want to stand yourself in good stead you equip yourself with as much as you can and learn your craft. I was young and headstrong and thought, I don’t have that much to learn – total arrogance! I struck a deal with them. I didn’t audition during my final year so I said, let me try and get some work and see how it goes. I was really lucky. I had an agent because I’d done a tiny bit of work before, which was an immensely fortunate positon to be in – I do realise. I was auditioning for drama schools and for jobs and I got one at the RSC. I wrote lots of letters, a mixture of small parts, understudying, ensemble and it was a sort of like a… theatre camp – I don’t really know how to describe it. It was amazing and I think there’s no right or wrong way about it. I look back at those first 5 years of working and a lot of it was sheer determination and enthusiasm and working so hard on auditions – sometimes working too hard in a not very useful way. Trying to learn on the job, sometimes I would hit a brick wall and I look back and think, I had no idea what I was doing at that point. But then you might work with a director you learn a lot from and gradually the more you do the more you learn. I wasn’t one of those astonishing actors where acting was just the most natural thing in the world. I really had to work at it and overcome fear. It was purely who I worked with at different times. If you want to learn you can.

A lot of peple of my generation are coming into theatre with no formal theatre education behind them. What would you say to someone starting out?
I find it very difficult to give advice. So much of it is luck and timing and it really is arbitrary – this is the terrifying thing. Hard work gets you so far and a lot of it is to do with right look, right time… you know? I’d feel hypocritical to say go to drama school beause I didn’t. I think there are ways if you are determined to learn and learn and learn and go and see as much as you can… stand, get cheap seats and just seek to improve yourself by any means, at any stage, then hopefully it’ll be fine. But there are no rules, if only there were! I know people who have gone through drama school and it was fantastic training and other people who have said, you know what, that teacher was really bad, that was alright, I could have learnt that elsewhere, or I learnt so much doing this one job than the whole of drama school. It’s like holding onto a piece of string – I know that’s really not helpful! But I sort of feel if it’s something someone wants to do and they have an aptitude for it and they’re determined and they’re doing it for the right reasons and it’s about achieving excellence and not to become famous or whatever and they want to learn – I think it’s that thing of self-monitoring, try to seek out the work you like and therefore meet the people who’s work you like and try and get experience with them. Keep learning. I don’t think you ever stop learning. You’d be dead if you ever stopped learning.

That’s a brilliant ending line.
I don’t know what it means.

Hattie stars in ‘A Dolls House’ until 20th April at the Young Vic.

Photos courtesy of Helen Murray / http://www.helenmurrayphotos.com

Hattie Morahan: Act I (of II)

Last year I was Trainee Assistant Director on A Dolls House directed by Carrie Cracknell. During rehearsals I began to realise that this was going to be a very special production. What ended up on Ian MacNeil’s spinning set is, in my opinion, one of the greatest stagings of Ibsen and one of the best shows I’ve seen in terms of its cinematic beauty and the mind-blowing performances.

I meet Hattie in the dressing room she shares with the other ladies before she prepares to go on stage (her hair curlers start to be put in as we progress). “I’ve just come from some Olivier’s thing”, she says. I say it’ll only take 15 minutes, but half an hour later we’re still chatting – hence the reason why this talk is in two parts.

I mention feminism and she says: “Start big!”. So we did…

Did you come into A Dolls House with the notion that this was a feminist play and that you were about to take on one of the most controversial women in drama?
I was aware of it – you can’t not be aware of it, but I don’t think it is useful for playing the part. I always try to avoid approaching a character with any particular political angle of my own. In a way I think that your responsibility as an actor is to honour what the writer has written, what Simon [Stephens] has delivered of that material and if you can serve the character as truthfully as you can and make them human and make that transition that Nora goes through at the end as believable as possible, that is when the message of the play hits home. If I saw this play and I felt that I was witnessing Nora’s transition into a spokeswoman or some kind of soapbox, I would lose interest. What’s most powerful and why it is a piece of theatre and not an essay, is because you’re seeing a group of human beings making quite a fuck-up of their lives. There are big question marks at the end and no answers. It’s all about questions, doubts, uncertainty and it leaves the audience to think what are the answers to those big questions about gender roles, responsibility to one another, honesty and partnership.

With no answers at the end, what do you imagine happens to Nora after she’s slammed that door?
We discussed this in rehearsals actually, how much hope there is – the obstacles are stacked against her! We’ve already had a little glimpse of what life has been like for Kristine with no money and it’s been absolutely hard, hard work. She is going to tread a fine line and life is going to be very difficult. I vacillate between if she falls back on her old ways in desperation and does what she knows best and gets money out of men through her feminine wiles or whether she manages to start afresh. Importantly, she is intelligent and extremely resourceful and will survive – but whether she survives in a way that she feels morally comfortable with… I don’t know.

For many mothers in the audience and who have read the play, there is a strong question of morality in what Nora does.
Yes, it gets quite to the nub of what we understand as selfish. To find herself, to become a better woman it involves leaving the children and this happens in the modern day, do you stay at home or do you go to work? Parents that separate: is it more selfish to stay together and be arguing for the sake of the children? How do you be a good parent? Do you honour your own needs before your children? I don’t think it’s an easy decision by any means; it’s incredibly painful and how I justify it in my head is not that she doesn’t love the children, but I think she feels that if she stays she will bring more damage to them because she’s so screwed up, she has nothing to teach them, she is a void, she has nothing of value. It’s a very tough decision that she makes.

When does she make that decision?
I’m trying to play it that she makes it as late as possible, almost as she’s saying it. It’s more dramatically interesting to see people be live on stage. If Torvald had said the right things at those moments, it could be salvageable but he doesn’t and he keeps confirming her worst fears: he doesn’t know her, he doesn’t apreciate her, they don’t know each other and if they don’t, she can’t possibly know herself. It’s a snowball effect of terror… lots of existential terror, basically! The pennies start to drop, I think, at that moment and she suddenly goes, Good grief! I don’t know anything, I can’t teach the children anything, you can’t teach me anything, I need to teach myself – it’s like a weird little flowchart that she literally speaks aloud.

Ibsen said he did not intend to write a feminist play, his task had been the “description of humanity”. Why do you think it has acquired such an incredibly strong label over the years?
I can see both sides of the argument. He’s potentially being a little naïve to say it’s just a humanist play. It’s valid to say that it’s not purely Nora’s story, a woman’s story; it’s the story of a marriage and both of them are complicit in the role-play and one could argue that Torvald is just as much trapped in this masculinity mould that he finds himself trying to fit into. It’s about partnership, honesty and marriage and in that respect it’s become feminist because of the impact, what happened once it was performed, because it was shaking the very foundations of marriage which people considered to be the bedrock of western society. I remember in rehearsals looking at the ‘women question’ and it was coming very much at a time, especially in Scandinavia, when there was a lot being written and a lot of seminal texts challenging gender roles in society and questioning the assumptions behind marriage. So I think it’s sort of part of a movement but people project upon the play arguments which are feminist and where it came in history.

It’s rather strange how women can sympathise with someone who behaves as badly as Nora does.
Well, this is what I think is so brilliant about the play is that there are no easy options, it’s properly complex and messy in the way that real life is. The so-called heroine behaves appalingly and is manipulative and has not only double standards, but quadruple! The typical blackmailer… you can’t write him off as a villain character, he too is a desperate human being who has fallen on hard times. Even Torvald for all his chauvinism, he too is vulnerable. All the characters are rounded and ultimately that is why they win our hearts. If Nora was a perfect victim, pious and good, I think audiences would switch off, it wouldn’t be interesting enough, but because she’s full of all the dirty parts of human nature we all like to pretend we don’t have, people relate to her and say, I know someone like that. It shows the dark side of human nature.

Also worth a watch – ‘Nora’ a short film directed by Carrie Cracknell, written by Nick Payne and starring Hattie Morahan: http://m.guardian.co.uk/film/video/2012/oct/18/nora-ibsen-dolls-house-video

Photos courtesy of Helen Murray / http://www.helenmurrayphotos.com

New writing and the test of time.

I am on the eve of beginning the task of writing my fourth play. I have been living with an idea since early February and now it is time to start. Earlier today, as I reserved my research books at the British Library, I thought of something that I said yesterday: “What is the point in writing a new play if it isn’t able to stand the test of time?”

Yesterday I attended a reading at Sadlers Wells of a brand new play that is in the early stages of development that really excited me. It is a rather brilliant piece of work by a first-time writer about two people starting out in a relationship.

Why does this excite you?, I hear you ask.

The two characters are women. (Silence falls). As we began reading and getting deeper into the play, I realised that I had never read anything quite like it. It was a beautifully simple, unpretentious story that portrayed two women in a light that is extremely rare. Throughout the course of history the portrayal of lesbian and gay characters has always been a little, er, shall we say, ‘worrying’ in the arts. Mrs Danvers in Du Maurier’s Rebecca or Phillip and Rupert in Rope (1948) – Dirk Bogarde in Victim (1961) may be a pleasant exception.

The difference in representation, in hindsight, opened my eyes to the fact that a new play must make a change, either in its technical elements, the way it is spoken and presented or the themes that it takes on. This new play – which I can’t reveal – makes a change. In its simplicity, it’s boldness, it’s stark exposure of the intimate lives of two young women, it has managed to take on a weight that could carry it through the coming years.

So as I prepare to transpose the world that I have slowly built in my head onto something more permanent, I am wondering: if someone was to pick this play up in 60 years, would it still be relevant?

The plays of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen, Lorca, Strindberg and many more are still with us and being performed hundreds of times a year around the world because they made a change and represented something very human that never diminishes – because humanity is ever changing, but what is at our core remains the same.

60 years from now: “Who was Luke Lutterer?“

15 minutes with: Jade Lewis and Eric Abrefa

Race and culture in theatre is something that I have been aware of from a very young age. When I first started doing youth theatre workshops, I was often one of very few white participants (and, even then, I’m mixed White/Caribbean). But what I have found peculiar, is that only a small percentage of black young people have come through into the industry as professional creatives. Acting seems like the common ground.

There are so many aspects of race to discuss, so this could be considered an introduction to a topic I shall probably return to.

Jade Lewis is a director and playwright. Most notably, she was Trainee Assistant Director on Blackta by Nathaniel Martello-White which premiered at the Young Vic in October 2012 directed by David Lan. Eric Abrefa is an actor. In September 2012 he took to the Royal Court stage as Bobby in Choir Boy by Tarrell Alvin McCraney, directed by Dominic Cook.

I meet Jade and Eric early at the Young Vic (where else?) and over a tea we begin to talk…

I suppose the best place to start is to ask how and at what age you both got into theatre?

Eric: Around 15. I had just started GCSE Drama and we did Richard III at the Pleasance Theatre in a BBC Shakespeare festival and I had the opportunity to play Richard and it was just amazing. It was the first time that I’d been on stage and the buzz from that was incredible and I thought ‘This is definitely what I want to do; I want to feel this buzz all the time’. After secondary school I went to Brit School and then drama school.

Jade: Yeah, I’m similar to Eric in that I started with GCSE drama then went to college and did Performance Studies and joined a production company called Mayhem and began acting with them. I got to the end of college and I realised that I wanted to do something in theatre but I didn’t want to perform. I enjoyed performing, but I’d rather let someone who’s better than me do it. Not saying that I wasn’t good – you know? I’d just prefer to see the whole picture rather than me within it. I went to university and studied History – something completely different – but it was something that I enjoyed and loved and that I could use regardless of what I did after. After that I just got into directing.

Are you the first generation in your family to go into something creative?

Eric: Oh, yeah, yeah… my uncle who was a bus driver – I think he still is – …I had just got my acceptance letter into Royal Welsh College and I literally had it with me, going on the bus, and he saw me and he was like, ‘How you doing?’, ‘I’m fine’, he was like ‘I hope you’re not still doing that acting stuff‘, and I just looked at my letter and was like, ‘Nah, no, I’m just going to college now’. Yeah, so I’m the first and hopefully not the last.

How was that received? Were you expected to do something more academic?

Eric: My mum is first generation Ghanaian who came to this country and I’m the first-born here and the culture there is obviously different; they’ve come here to seek greener pastures and, you know, they want you to be the best you can possibly be. They didn’t make that journey for no reason. They want you to be a lawyer, a doctor, something that can bring in money and constant employment. I suppose, they didn’t see it as a good choice of work. My mum never went to university and I had never been, it was us together: ‘Whatever you want to do, do it, but do it to the best of your ability and make me proud.’ I couldn’t settle for a better deal.

What about you, Jade? [All of the above]

Jade: I am the first to get into something creative. I was also the first to go to university. When I said that I wanted to go into theatre, they were like: ‘Whoa, you should be doing a Masters!’ My uncle said: ‘You should write books’ and I was like, ‘No, I’m going to write plays.’ It was a big stand-off. My mum told me to do what I wanted to do, that I’d be good at it anyway. She’s always been supportive like that, and I haven’t really cared what other people have thought because she’s always had my back. She’s one of those mothers – as scary and as hard as she is – she cries when she sees me on stage. She says, ‘You know I can’t come and see your performance, I’ll cry!’ So she never saw anything I did.

In regards to shows that you’ve been involved with – mainly Choir Boy and Blackta – did you feel as though they were stand-out shows because they were an all-black cast?

Eric: What I loved about it was that Tarrell [Alvin McCraney] used five black African-American boys who were in a prep school; so they’re bred and taught to be the leaders of tomorrow and that’s not usual when it comes to anything “black”; there’s usually a stereotype of someone getting stabbed, shot or killed. These boys were the bright boys, so in their society they’re going to make a change, they’re going to be the bankers, the big things that people aspire to be; but within that, they still have their issues and it still had really challenging themes. In theatre, the best thing I’ve enjoyed is tackling strong themes and issues and moral questions and judgements. What is the point in seeing something that you know about already? So, with Choir Boy, I felt it stood out because of how the audience received it. The protagonist, Pharus, was born to be a leader and he’s born to be the leader of this choir, but the thing was that he was gay and that was the issue and how everybody else received it. His best friend, AJ, was cool with it, my character wasn’t so cool with it… So, it was like, ‘Lets see how that plays out’ and I felt that was amazing, rather than, you know, having a play about boys on the street and you can see where that is going. When it comes to “black” theatre, we need things that will challenge us more.

In terms of tackling stereotypes in theatre, Blackta…

Jade: You know, it’s funny because different nights I saw different messages. Sometimes you’d really see the fact that all of these guys are talented and they want to do well and you see the stresses that they have on their backs, not just because they’re black actors, but the profession, how hard it is to get a job regardless of your age or ethnicity, etcetera. With Blackta, I feel there were a lot of issues they were tackling within the piece. These guys aren’t just black actors, they’re people as well and you hear about their family issues outside of this ‘thing’, but at the same time they never leave this ‘thing’ because that is their life, it’s what they live for and I feel that resonates with creative’s and artists because we all want to do what we are passionate about. It’s inspiring to see people who you can relate to because of their passion and their drive, not just because of how they look. I agree with Eric in the sense that it’s not just about urban dramas. Why can’t it just be a simple story where things just happen and it so happens that these people are of a certain culture? To see how that affects it, or in fact, how similar that is to other cultures that are just seen as… ordinary.

Eric: I feel that as soon as we go down the stereotype route, whether it’s TV or theatre, the characters immediately become 2D, there’re no complexities within them. That’s a great shame because when I’m watching Downtown Abbey, for example, race just goes out the window. I’m looking at a culture, I’m looking at a storyline, people’s journeys through this story and I feel that doesn’t really get to us – we’re getting there – but at the moment we’re not there.

Jade: Sometimes Tom & Jerry is more complex than some stereotyped characters. You can explore a lot with Tom & Jerry or other cartoons. Daffy Duck, there’s so much to him – fair enough, he’s black – but you know what I mean?

Eric, you said ‘We’re not there yet’ – how far do you think we’ve come? Within the last ten years, there’s been a big step. Plays like The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water, Generations – and all of these amazing plays with an all-black cast are coming through and they’re getting onto the main London stages.

Eric: Yeah, they are and it’s great and it’s exciting, but now it’s time to be more consistent. We can count on our hands the writers who are doing this. In Britain I feel the culture is way different. If there is something they don’t know about the culture, they write things on the surface. It’s a shame.

When Feast came up [at the Young Vic, directed by Rufus Norris], I was talking about the potential reviews and someone said: ‘They’ll have to be nice about it, because they won’t understand the cultural references’. So, reviewers have to be nice about certain shows. Is that the world we’re living in?

Jade: Exactly. I know Brits are polite, but that’s taking it a bit too far and, moreover, to be honest, what I think is important as an audience member is that you should get something from anything you see. That is the point of the company, the production – yeah, you want to explore something specific, whether it’s Yoruba culture or whatever, but it’s the fact they’re people and have relationships and there’s an aim to the story – anyone should be able to pick that up. But with the reviews… it’s a bit sad. Just be honest. Even if you don’t get it because it’s different, just say that and maybe ‘I didn’t get it because, dot-dot-dot’. Sometimes difference is good. We’re all different.

Eric: And why are you going to the theatre? Are you going because it’s a cool thing to do, sit down, have a glass of wine and watch actors perform or are you going there to be challenged? That’s what I want to know. I hope you’re going there to be challenged.

Surely, shows about race don’t need to be about a murder or any stereotypes. There are powerful messages behind race and there’s a reason there’s race in this country. That’s what Feast showed.

Eric: Feast was incredible. I loved the personification of the three Gods and how it went through the ages. I thought the themes it tackled were amazing and I just hope things like that can come to the surface even more, you know, rather than watching a piece of theatre to be entertained – that’s great, but there’s a place for that – but don’t expect every type of theatre to be that way.

Photos courtesy of Helen Murray / http://www.helenmurrayphotos.com

Two words on a postcard: ‘Hello – Goodbye’

When I was 19, I ran away. The notion first occurred to me as I lay on a beach on the beautiful island of Hvar in Croatia and quite suddenly the very idea of returning to London, my menial-but-well-paid job, my family, my life, everything – threw me into a bout of extreme despair. It was as though the scorching sun and the idyllic surroundings were drawing out my deep unhappiness. I had been living in denial. The money I was earning, the clothes I could buy, the numerous holidays I could go on acted as a blanket to hide my true feelings.

This was in mid-August 2011. By the first week of September, I was on a plane to Sweden with everything I needed – far too much, as it turned out. I had to get away and discover myself (as cliché as that sounds). I spent time in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Paris. It was while alone in Copenhagen, in a small, basement cafe in Frederiksberg that I re-read The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. I had first read the play at college and had not taken much notice of it – I had preferred Streetcar, naturally – but it was at this moment, in this cafe, with my 34krone latte (roughly £3.80 – got to love Scandinavian prices!) that I truly understood the play. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was as though it had been written for me. All that I was running away from, all that I hated and despised about my life and my family was there in front of me.

“I didn’t go to the moon, I went much further – for time is the longest distance between two places.” – Tom Wingfield

This is where my adoration for the play began and it has been a passionate love affair ever since. Of all of Williams’ plays – and I have read almost all – this, for me, is the most real, open and honest (which may explain the similar tone of this blog). For me, reading the play at that moment in my life, when I had done exactly what Tom was desperate to do, when I was alone with my thoughts and left to make my own decisions without being dictated to, it seemed to answer my questions about what I had to do on my slightly dreaded return to London – get into theatre!

The play is homage to a play – the idea and concept of a play, the process of a production. Tom is the director and Amanda, Laura and Jim are actors. Tom also has control of lighting and sound and Amanda provides costume for herself and her daughter. Tom is fated to re-stage his drama. No matter how many times he steps forward to introduce the memories which haunt him, Laura will never escape on the arms of her gentleman caller, nor Amanda redeem her own failed life by finding romance for the daughter she loves but who must always stand as a reproach. The beauty of the language, the staggering symbolism and metaphors always excite me.

In February of this year, I had my first reading of the play. Eighteen months after falling head-over-hells in love with it, hearing the words aloud, to see the characters begin to form before my eyes and to have numerous eureka! moments, my passion for it was reaffirmed. After several weeks spent reading, re-reading and researching at the British Library my understanding of the text deepened and the more I dug, the more I drew similarities with the text and my own life. The wonderful actors (Clare Lawrence – Amanda, Eric Abrefa – Tom, Helen Murray – Laura, Morgan Watkins – Jim) threw light upon the play that I did not have the power to generate.

As a director, a question you are asked often (I’m certain) is: ‘Why do you want to direct this play? Why you?’ There are plays that you may think are socially current, plays that haven’t been performed for a very long time that deserve a resurrection and, most crucially, plays that encapsulate your entire being, that are relevant for an audience of any generation and display the most human aspects of ourselves. The Glass Menagerie is a play that I struggle to find words to sum up, but it is a play that I must direct and to do so I must translate my passion, my life and all of the deeply personal connections with the play that I have.

“… the future becomes the present, the present the past, and the past turns into everlasting regret if you don’t plan for it.” – Amanda Wingfield

Ibsen in the rehearsal room.

For the past three weeks, I have attended workshops on a Thursday evening at the Young Vic led by director Sacha Wares (Wild Swans, Sucker Punch). Each has dealt with the directors relationship with actors, writers and designers.

The most recent workshop focused on the writer/director relationship and primarily working with new writing. I found it fascinating that in her career spanning over twenty years, Wares has only worked with new plays. I couldn’t help but fantasise about my love for late 19th century writing and the infinitely exciting idea of having Ibsen or Strindberg in the rehearsal room.

“No, Mr Ostermeier, I don’t think Nora should shoot her husband.“

From a directors perspective, this evening was incredibly interesting, but I found myself being drawn in more from a writers point of view. I kept fingering through the pages of my Moleskine to get to my volumous notes of a play that I plan to write and scribbling questions: Who’s play is it? What is the centre of gravity? What is the difference between conversation and dialogue? How can you ensure the characters have separate voices?

All of this aided me in thinking about my own work, but it also made me think about myself as a potential ‘writer in the room’. I’ve done it before and in all honesty I made a complete fuck-up of it. I wrote a play set in Stockholm called ‘Somewhere in Södermalm‘ that was staged at Etcetera Theatre in April 2012. I found it incredibly difficult to resign myself to being a passive presence in the room and to be a source of assistance to the director (who happened to be an extremely good friend and who, thankfully, still is). I found myself imposing my vision and making suggestions aloud to the room and not privately to her.

How do you juggle those two mindsets?

I could see and hear the play in it’s entirety in my head and it became impossible to stop myself from biting my lip, shaking my foot or taking a deep breath every time a line was delivered differently to how I had written it. It didn’t help that I had written the play with an actor in mind who was ultimately cast, which made my desire even stronger for the play to be staged exactly how I saw it.

Looking back now, I can’t believe that I was so protective. I suppose it is a problem that all writers have and being a director on top of that makes the task doubly hard. Sacha said that with old plays you know that they work (it’s why they’re still around), but with new writing there is the risk that it may not work and it takes a high level of commitment to be onboard. I think this could potentially be where the urge for a writer to dive in can lie. A desire for the play to work. Doesn’t every writer and director have that?

Listening to Sacha talk about dealing with writers made me want to get back into a rehearsal room as a writer and to challenge my way of thinking.

So, how do you juggle director/writer thoughts? Tell one of them to shut – up! (Note to self).

The Director. Moses or vagabond?

I’ve struggled with starting this blog. It is a similar feeling to beginning the journey of writing a play or a novel – I roughly know where I want to get to, but taking that first step, putting my shoulders under the cold sea water is the hardest part.

I have been involved with theatre from the age of 9 (there are photos to prove it, as terrible as they are) and in those 12 years I have faded in and out and have tried many different things. It was only in late 2011 that I discovered that what I had been searching for in theatre was directing. I did it. It felt good. I’ve stuck at it. It feels great. However I’ve always had a slight unease about calling myself a ‘Director’.

Last month, I took part in a project at the Young Vic called ‘Springboard’ that was led by Natalie Abrahami and was a week of workshops held by visiting professionals. On the first afternoon, David Lan (Artistic Director of the Young Vic) curated an almost 3 hour free-speaking debate on two seemingly simple questions: “What is directing?” and “What is a director?”. Like goldfish, we swam around in increasing and decreasing circles, each strand of discussion leading us frustratingly back to where we had begun. Is a director a leader, ‘the boss’, the beacon of hope or merely someone with a map that lovingly guides the company through the wilderness? Is ‘lovingly’ the wrong word? Does a director have to be a good person?

What on the surface seemed like an easy enough question to answer, brought about a realisation in all of us that the career choice we have made is not as simple as saying: “I am a mathematician”, “I am a doctor”, because there is no definition to explain, or justify, our existence in theatre. It is worth noting that the ‘director’ has only been around for about 150 years. How on earth did they cope the thousands of years beforehand? I dread to think!

In the opening scene of All About Eve (1950), critic Addison DeWitt says: “…minor awards are for such as the writer and director, since their function is merely to construct a tower so that the world can applaud a light which flashes on top.”

Nowadays, can a production be made without a director? Some would say yes, but I think it is not possible. There will always be someone with a strong artistic vision for how this production should be staged and will have a justification for it.

The art of justifying ones self and ones work is something that I am getting to grips with both as a director and a writer and no doubt it will be quite some time (if ever) before I can answer this question: “What is a director?”

Theatre Cold War… Sort of.

Welcome to BinocularWarfare! Despite the East/West German reference, this is a theatre blog.

This is something that I have wanted to do for quite a long time but have always thought: “What is the point in me writing about theatre?” I am a director and playwright working in London and although affiliated with a theatre, I should say that all view expressed are my own.

I will mainly discuss the turbulent world of theatre directing, shows, actors and writers and hold 10 minute interviews with practitioners on various levels in their careers. From directors, writers, designers and actors who are tentatively but determinedly starting out, to those who have established themselves as some of the leading figures in British theatre.

Lets see how this goes, shall we?

Luke Lutterer