The Direction of Theatre

I need to confess that my theatre beliefs come from my background as a theatre director. It influences my point of view and ignites a big struggle within as I write my entries on this blog.

I need to confess this so that my handful of readers understand where I come from... where each of my entries draws inspiration.

At the same time, I try not to write reviews from the point of view of a director. That's as boring as reading a theatre review from someone who is a writer. A review is a reflection of an experience that happens once and once only and as an audience member. And I don't need to bore you with the rantings of a director. I do that with my director friends late at night over various types of ales.

However, after The Nightwatchman experience, I have a need to vent. Vent as a director. Maybe this will create a new type of entry in my little blog. A commentary of reflection.

It's been three days since I took myself off to the Griffin presentation and it has upset me so. It upset me because here is a playwright that captures a miniature of life and hurls it into the pages of a play and breathes a life that expands through the action of a theatre production.

What makes Keene so glorious is that his work is for theatre and theatre alone. They wouldn't work on film, on television or a book. His writing is for theatre.

But what the director did to this play was a travesty. It was deadly direction. It was timid and cowardly. It was clinical.

I am unsure whether she misunderstood its potential, but one wonders what she did with the actors over the course of four weeks rehearsal. What exploration did they have? What theatricality did they explore?

Before I go on, I probably need to explain something... the plagues that are infecting this beautiful art from in Sydney. The plague of realism and the plague of gimmick.

Today, I will talk of the Plague of Realism. I often talk in my reviews about 'realism' and I probably need to clarify what I mean by it.

So often I head down to my local theatre and see a show, listen to the words and walk away so disappointed by the production. Because in my imagination I feel something so different to what is presented to me. This occurred on Wednesday evening.

Let me take a central problem with this production.

The main character is an old blind man. The audience has it clearly established from the beginning that the man is blind... leading questions and moments where he finds himself talking to no one but himself.

In Act Two he confesses to his daughter the pain of his blindness:

"I went blind very gradually, of course, so I've forgotten much of what it was like to slowly... to slowly lose the world. The details, I mean, the small details...

"At first it was as if someone had placed a fine guaze bandage over my eyes. Everything was less distinct, but I could still see. Then, gradually, the world became more and more ghostly. For a time it seemed to me as if I was seeing... only memories. Memories seem to have a different light, a softer light perhaps, as if time, like some kind of... leech.... drains them of colour, of life, of reality."

Such stunning words.

For a director this play offers so many opportunities to play with the concept of blindness and to play with it theatrically. To play with the concept of memory, of sight, of seeing. What is to see? To understand? To look? To study?

The decisions made by the director for this production was to force the actor to keep playing blindness through the entire play. Why?

We know he is blind. That is why he is leaving the house that he has lived in for most of his life.

Why not play with the theatricality of it? There are beautiful moments when he talks to his dearly departed wife. Why have him stumbling around and banging into the walls and chairs. Have him standing proud, seeing clearly in moments when he reflects and his mind flickers to other times. Or even a physicality. Play around and explore the concept of blindness. Reality doesn't have to be so clear-cut. Reality is the starting point, not the finishing point.

Sometimes I feel directors need to constantly qualify the thematics of a play. Hammer it into the audience as though they were sheep unable to fill in the gaps with their own imagination and life experience.

This was certainly apparent in this production. The man is blind. The man is blind. The man is blind!

But what if? What if there is a small moment when he looks at us. Looks at the table. Picks something up and places it perfectly down. Capture the audience with something that is not realistic. They might then be caught in the headlights. What happened then? He is looking at us..... Or maybe there might be a moment when we think he is alone, but someone is listening.... deliberately. Or maybe they can't hear him. I don't know, but I bet it would be amazing to have a crack at it in a rehearsal room with such a fine cast of actors.

This is just a couple of instances of deadly realism that destroyed this beautiful play.

Peter Brook talked of this in The Empty Space:

"Deadliness always brings us back to repetition: the deadly director uses old formulae, old methods, old jokes, old effects, stock beginnings to scenes, stock ends; and this applies equally to his partners, the designers and composers, if they do not start each time afresh from the void, the desert and the true question - why clothes at all, why music, what for? A deadly director is a director who brings no challenge to the conditioned reflexes that every department must contain."

Why? Why? Why? Indeed.

As I sat there on Wednesday eve, I had to control my exasperation at the blindness of the director. Why a set that is black? Because black is blindness? Why not white? Why not a rainbow? Why darkness during a scene where they can't find each other? Why not blaring light?

Why the sound of crickets and birds all the time? Do I need to be hammered over the head that we are in a garden? They say it in the play.... constantly. And besides there is a huge lighting fx at the beginning and the end to again tell me I am in a garden. Why not silence as we look upon William Zappa's face? What is he listening too? Maybe it's birds? Maybe he is feeling a breeze on his face? Who cares? Let the audience work to understand. Engage them.

I believe that directors in Sydney need to start giving more credit to their actors, their designers and most importantly to their audiences.

The Plague of Realism is getting deadly and the cost could be losing a whole generation of potential theatregoers. Theatre is unique and a celebration of that uniqueness in the rehearsal room and on stage could be the difference between an industry that flounders or flies.