I get asked what I’m trying to achieve with my work as a
writer and as a director . My belief is
that theatre has a great deal more to reveal to audiences than that which is on
offer today. I also believe that
technique is being lost because the majority of those teaching writing and
directing do not understand the medium themselves. Many start teaching with
their only experience of live theatre being what they themselves have been
taught at college. I am therefore trying
to reach back into my early formative experiences watching great writers and
directors at work and apply that in a contemporary context.
There is some terrific theatre being produced today but
there is also a great deal more derivative dross. I am particularly exercised by the plethora
of what are erroneously called “physical theatre” companies. Most of the work that these are producing is largely movement and effect based entertainments with no underlying psychological
heart and requiring simplistic emotional responses from an audience. Let’s get this straight, “physical theatre”
in its proper sense does not need trapeze artists, jugglers, music and
dance. Physical theatre as proposed by
Jerzy Grotowski is a form that relies on a deep, visceral commitment by the
actor to the text. It is really a way of
understanding how to project narrative through an actor’s body and connect it
to an audience. It requires vocal technique of a high order and physical
strength as well. As drama schools spend more time teaching their students how
to sing and dance the less time there is to understand this deep seated
performance technique and, consequently,
the fewer young actors who understand how to find and project a character.
“Theatre - through the
actor's technique, his art in which the living organism strives for higher
motives - provides an opportunity for what could be called integration, the
discarding of masks, the revealing of the real substance: a totality of
physical and mental reactions.”
Jerzy Grotowski
I do not criticise current theatre practice, I only lament
that there is so much more that theatre has to offer. If theatre could reach down and touch it’s
roots then it’s strength would be recognised as the real alternative art form
to film and television that it should be.
There is something that theatre and theatre alone can accomplish and
this is the genuine reaching out, heart to heart, of an actor to his or her
audience.
As a director I want to find these actors who can commit
themselves totally to a text and to its performance. As a writer I want to construct narratives
that require this sort of performance energy.
My particular interest is dialogue. For me the definition of theatre is the
projection of a narrative through the interaction of characters on a
stage. This means dialogue. Let film and television tell a story through
images. Let radio tell the same story
through monologue and opera and musical through song and music but let live
theatre unwind a thread of narrative through a continuing interaction through
speech and silences between several characters.
I have written elsewhere how hard it is to write dialogue
and how to project it as an actor but, for me, this is the fundamental skill of
the writer and the actor and for the director, he or she must draw the
audience, unspeaking, into this convolution of words. The director must arrive at an understanding
of the text in harmony with the actors.
They must agree on interpretations which the director wil then attempt
to place on a stage so that the audience can become involved in the discourse.
The problem nowadays is that bookers underestimate the
ability of an audience to understand theatre of this type and complexity and
look for simple stories told in simple ways.
Not that that isn’t enough in some cases but theatre has so much more to
offer. Ironically, it is the publically
funded venues that fear the power of this sort of theatre. They have to reach targets and so daren’t put
on anything that could challenge or, possibly, create an adverse reaction. So I urge all bookers to make room for Real Theatre and give your audiences a taste of how theatre could be.
