What came first, the story or the site? It’s a question being asked more and more as the world of theatre witnesses an increase in site-specific shows, such as Fourth Monkey’s latest production, Project Colony. Artistic Director of Fourth Monkey Steven Green believes “if it was a fad it would have died out by now. I think when looking at young or new companies, a lot of people can’t afford theatre spaces – can’t hire spaces and spaces are closing – they’re not as accessible as they were. It’s stepping outside the normal confines of traditional theatre.” Co-Director of Project Colony Hamish MacDougall prefers to call this form of theatre, “site-responsive. I think it should be that your site complements your play and vice versa,” and Co-Director James Yeatman agrees: “during the devising process we always knew that we had to make a show that would honour those two things.” Yeatman explains, “in the story, this traveller arrives at a colony which is cut off from anywhere else, so this place completely fits the bills because it’s in the middle of nowhere. We have two very different spaces: this very strange underground space and this big white barn space. The division in the story has to match the division of the space and it’s always been our mission to think about how the space responds to the story. It’s about the old and the new.”

Project Colony is a production devised by Fourth Monkey’s one year company, inspired by Franz Kafka’s novella, In The Penal Colony. Essentially, MacDougall and Yeatman devised “a foundation script, then obviously the original novel was referred to throughout the whole rehearsal process, as the actors improvised and devised around that,” explains Green. “This whole project is mental: we were devising with nearly 60 people. The story has four people in it [which] allowed us to explore more than if we had a cast of four and did a straight adaptation. It’s allowed us to pull apart what Kafka’s trying to say with it,” says MacDougall. “This torture machine is the centre of the island; to the old regime it speaks the truth and creates justice. Every adaptation I’ve seen of it on stage solely focuses on the machine, but not on the island and the two parties which are practically at war.” MacDougall’s consideration of this made Trinity Buoy Wharf seem like the perfect fit for an adaptation of In The Penal Colony, and having visited the site myself I can agree with Green that “it’s almost like you’re on an island. It’s desolate, remote.”

However site-specific work “always throws up its own problems,” Yeatman tells me. “The main problem with this space at the moment is the absolute bitter cold.” I would recommend audience members to wrap up warm, because, despite the spectacular view, Fourth Monkey’s space at the Trinity Buoy Wharf is most definitely subject to a vengeful breeze blowing across the Thames. Green also notes that “it’s completely different to them doing something in a studio space. How much can we rely on the audience to behave and not have people wander off into the River Thames? It’s simple things of that nature.”

Besides this, it’s been a challenge for the actors to play such a big part in the creating the show as well as performing it, considering Fourth Monkey Theatre Company first and foremost provides an alternative training to drama school, by learning through performance. Yeatman feels “a real responsibility to these performers in some ways, because they are training and they’ve got to be thrust in front of a paying audience in a way you wouldn’t at drama school. I think it’s a good way to learn that type of thing.” But however terrifying the process has been, MacDougall thinks “it pushes you to the limit in a good way. Devising requires a lot of skills: improvisation, thinking on your feet, thinking about how you take an idea and express that theatrically – this has pushed all their creative buttons. It creates instinctive thoughts and, personally, I think that as an actor that’s your biggest asset. I always say to them, an actor has to bring something with them into the room; there’s no point if you’ve got no instinctive idea.” At the end of the day, Green hopes putting on a performance in this way and on this scale will give these actors “a profound bravery moving forward. Hopefully there’s a lot there that they’ll find useful when they go on to do stuff afterwards.”

Altogether, working in this collaborative manner with a large cast “brings it back to what the company is all about in a way: the ensemble. Which means we can do that in a really honourable, truthful way; ensemble playing just brings the space alive and I think the space should be alive… Because of the practitioners these guys are working with now they’re getting more and more of a physical language as well,” says Green. Green has been able to take a back seat on this project with MacDougall and Yeatman co-directing, and observes “they complement each other in terms of the way the piece moves forward. Watching them together, James is painting the big picture and Hamish is picking out the details.” MacDougall and Yeatman find it harder to identify what they bring as individuals when I ask them the same question: “James and I have been friends for ages; we’ve worked together a few times. We may be very different directors but we have very similar interests at heart. We always met an hour-and-a-half before rehearsals started and had a discussion to work out what one another was doing. There’s more clarity with the cast because of it I think.”

“We were in a position last year where this space became an option for us, and it seemed like this immensely meteoric thing to do,” says Green. Two directors leading a company of 54 actors in training through a three month devising process around a Kafka novella for a site-specific performance? Meteoric sounds about right. “It’s tricky because what we’re going is expanding Kafka’s ideas I suppose, and we don’t want to do it in a dishonourable way,” MacDougall explains the problem of adapting Kafka in this way. Green considers Project Colony to be “an extension of the novel… at the same time, something which is very much their own.” MacDougall pretty much sums up the process for the actors when he says, “I hope they’ll look back on it and think how brilliant it was. We made that.” And equally, Yeatman hopes Project Colony will lead the audience “on a journey somewhere to find a place you might have never been before, and discover a story.”

Project Colony is playing at Trinity Buoy Wharf from 2-27 April. For tickets and more information click here: http://www.fourthmonkey.co.uk/

Whilst dropping in on rehearsals for Project Colony, I also watched them film a Fourth Monkey Harlem Shake. For hilarity, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YherUyzSPYc

Alternatively, the trailer for Project Colony can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PgT5EbPDM4

All photography by Richard Lakos, www.richardlakos.com

Staged in a bathroom, Jack Thorne’s recent Soho Theatre hit Mydidae is an intimate exploration of a young couple’s relationship on the anniversary of a shared personal tragedy. Commissioned by DryWrite as its first full-length play, it was produced at Soho in 2012 and now transfers to the Trafalgar Studios for a West End run. A week before the new run begins, Jack Thorne told Eleanor Turney more about the production and his experience of writing.

Tell me a bit about your background – how did you get into theatre?
Well, it’s not a particularly wonderful story! Boringly, I wanted to be a politician, then I wanted to be an actor. Then I went to uni and discovered that I didn’t like politicians and I didn’t have it in me to me an actor, so I decided I wanted to be a director. I couldn’t afford the rights to put on someone else’s play so I decided to write one, and then I discovered that I really liked the writing and not so much the directing bit at the end. I wrote a lot of plays and sent them off to a lot of people; eventually the Bush put one on and it’s gone from there.

How did you start writing professionally?
After that first play, I kept directing and quite enjoyed it, but I wasn’t especially good at it. I loved writing more than anything else and slowly that become what I did. I write for telly and film as well because I like working with other people. I really like collaborating and I like the whole process of putting on a show. I like making stuff with other people. Although I am quite shy and prefer my own company, really, I like what other people do when we collaborate and I think I’d miss that if I was just writing on my own.

Can you describe your writing and re-writing process? Do you like to be in the rehearsal room?
A script always changes in rehearsals, and when you’re working on a telly or film script, the amount of drafts you go through is extensive! You’ll always be changing things. But I’m not that keen on being in the rehearsal room – it’s a bit overwhelming. I love other people doing their thing but I don’t think I’m helpful in the rehearsal room. I’m there at the beginning, but I’m not really a rehearsal room writer. I’m picky about the directors I work with and they’re brilliant – much better than I would be! I’m always there if they want me, I just think that when I’d finished Mydidae, I knew who the characetrs were in my head; I knew them back to front and I don’t think that’s a helpful thing to take into a rehearsal room. The rehearsal room is about actors discovering who those characters are and the director helping them to do that. Having someone there who thinks that they know all the answers isn’t helpful! Having the writer there to ask “what did you mean by this bit?” isn’t that helpful, they need to work that out for themselves.

What advice would you give to young playwrights?
Keep trying, don’t give up. They might be lucky and be a Polly Stenham or an Anya Reiss, or it might take a bit longer. I wasn’t an overnight success, and I’m not sure that I’m truly successful yet myself. Keep plugging away. Also, find a person you trust who’ll read your stuff. It doesn’t have to be a theatre professional, it could just be a friend who gets what you want to do. You need someone on your side but who is interested in making you better, someone to force you to think about your work. But you also need someone to be there when you get rejected and to support you when everyone else is telling you that you’re rubbish. I still get far more rejections than acceptances. You have to be resilient, and having an ally is invaluable.

And what can audiences expect from Mydidae?
It’s changed a bit – not for the new venue, although that will shape matters in terms of direction – just in terms of things that weren’t quite right in the script that I can now fix! Theatre is a living breathing thing and it can change – that’s a brilliant thing. Having the opportunity to take a step back has been brilliant. Audiences can expect a couple of phenomenal performances – that might sound like someone flogging his stuff but I feel incredibly lucky with the performers we have in this show. I really think that young actors should come and see it, because these actors are just that good. What these two create on stage makes me very proud to be a part of it. It’s an intimate, natural play about the things that lure us into the dark. It’s a play about little things, but there’s a lot of little things, it’s pretty dark but also, I hope, hopeful.

Mydidae plays at Trafalgar Studios from 5 to 30 March. For tickets and more information, visit www.atgtickets.com/trafalgarstudios.

Image: Jack Thorne

South London and Shakespeare. Historical bedfellows of course, given the Globe’s south-of-the-river patch of land, but now the Peckham Theatre Company is bringing Othello, Shakespeare’s classic tale of love and betrayal, right up to date with a modern South London resetting. Director Anthony Green has been overwhelmed by “a barrage of positive feedback, both verbally and online,” as audiences express their fascination with this project. But what is it about Peckham that makes for the perfect performance of this age old classic?

For regular theatregoers, the concept of resetting Shakespeare isn’t exactly a novel one. So what prompted Green to set his version in a mysterious world of Western military security companies and private armies? Put simply, his determination to find and focus on the narrative’s optimistic fight for love, rather than dwelling on the loss of it. In this sense Green likens the project to the London 2012 Olympic Games with their shared spirit of positive opportunity. Speaking personal, Green talks of how there was “no outlet for theatre in [his] hometown of Blackburn” and coming from that background, “this Olympics-inspired project means creating a legacy and a voice for young people”. Indeed, Green’s production is performed by a cast of young actors in the intimate 120 seater CLF Cafe of the Bussey Building in Peckham, which has already played host to the Royal Court’s Theatre Local.

An actor with 16 years’ experience, Green is embracing directing “as an additional expression of [his] art” and with this production, his art is finding expression through posing the question: “‘can love win?’” This is in fact so potent and “a question so integral to [his] Othello that it is even the tagline on the flyer”. Green has focused specifically on Desdemona’s attempt to win Othello’s love back amongst the traditionally male-dominated cast, yet Desdemona continually faces Othello’s struggles against his insecurities. Green is striving to give Shakespeare’s writing a tangible relevance for modern audiences through the eternal concept of love prevailing. After all, more of us than will readily admit have tried to secure love again after separation or loss. Her desperate emotional plight paves the way for the extreme physical fights which ensue between the male characters. Clearly, the testosterone is in full force at these moments and whilst it wasn’t Green’s intention to incite this energy, he admits that “it is inevitable with male cast of eight, and only an additional three females”.

Marcello Marascalchi’s work as Othello’s fight director has sculpted and choreographed this energy into something more finely crafted and arresting for the stage. Having previously gained experience working for the Royal Opera House and the Royal Court, Marascalchi has enhanced the fight scenes with knives and actors are dragged across the stage, “in order to create a very real sense of violence”. Tension, violence, love: these opposing themes and strands of the narrative coexist, each providing context for the others and highlighting the violent edge of Desdemona’s – and Othello’s – passion. Green and Marascalchi have created a man’s world for a modern audience, one in which women’s power is of sexual intrigue and challenging relationships. “Focusing on the relationships woven between the characters of Othello, [Green aims] to steer audiences away from the interpretive notion of domestic prey” and instead towards the very human yearning for love, in direct contrast to – but fully justifying – the violent fighting that precedes and surrounds it.

These fights have all the more impact in the CLF Cafe’s narrow performing space. Up close and personal to the action, audiences have nowhere to hide. “A traverse setting additionally aided the lighting of the production from a low roof, and complemented the minimal set,” Green adds, his focus attuned to the emotive. A production which particularly explores the localised battle of Othello against his own demons, the staging of Iago’s famous soliloquies was another result of the unusual performance space. Iago, desperate for revenge and having destroyed Othello’s relationship with Desdemona, directs soliloquies to individual audience members, inviting them to consider both their natural empathy for Othello’s loss of love and the invitingly horrific charisma of Iago. An intriguing study in the complexity of character, Green is obviously keen to offer more than meets the eye in this production.

A directorial debut full of violence, emotion and challenges, Green speaks of his young cast with pride. The company grew out of the spirit of the Royal Court’s Theatre Local and is clearly inspired and enhanced by this legacy, rather than beholden to it. As for Green himself, from a young man growing up “stifled by the lack of local theatre company”, there’s a clear exhilaration inherent in the opportunity to “direct his artistic expression through an additional channel”. So for an Othello that’s as violent, vengeful and vexing as you could hope for, Peckham is the place.

Othello plays at the CLF Cafe at The Bussey Building, Peckham until 22nd February. For tickets and more information, visit http://www.othellopeckham.com.

Image credit: Adam Levy

The UK premiere of Pulitzer Prize finalist Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries is being staged at The Gate until 16 February. Mariah Gale and Felix Scott’s performances have already been highly praised in this intense 80-minute two-hander, described variously as a “crazily watchable anti-rom com” and “a fiercely honest story of modern America”. I chatted to Leverhulme Bursary-winning Director Justin Audibert about working on the show, his advice for young directors and what the future might hold.

Let me say now that the answer to that last point involves discussing the sex lives of the over 65s; a statement which I hope goes some way to demonstrate Audibert’s lively character and that he’s an interesting director. Trained on the Theatre Directing MFA at Birkbeck University, this 31 year-old has got his foot firmly in the door. He is Resident Director at the National Theatre Studio, holder of the 2012 Leverhulme Award, Associate Director at the Finborough and an education practitioner for the RSC and Told By An Idiot. So it’s no surprise he’s been heralded as “one to watch” on the back of this recent production.

Audibert is drawn to plays that “question why human beings do the things that they do”, and sees all art as a great reflector of the choices of humanity. He looks for writers who “create dialogue that has something to it, a wit or a character”. Upon first read of Gruesome Playground Injuries he was impressed by the sharpness of the writing and the way it “zings off the page”. He was also excited by the challenge of having to show the two characters moving from age eight to 38. A lot of rehearsal was spent “filling in the blanks” of their relationship between the ages, work that manifests itself in the show’s transitions.

In Audibert’s words this play is “a time hopping dysfunctional love story between two damaged people”. The rehearsal process was spent untangling this love story, and examining the nature of pain. Audibert describes himself as a text-based director, taking a Stanislavskian approach of discerning character’s objectives and obstacles and “looking for the clues with the actors in the text”. He learnt from Katie Mitchell’s book The Director’s Craft to seek the events in each scene – events that make everything shift for the characters. Working in this way he and the cast “made a set of choices that gave us an agreed set of parameters through which we were going to tell the story”.

He describes being a director as having “a desire to tell stories clearly”; it is the director’s job to coach the actors “so they feel as confident, happy and committed as they possibly can while they’re on stage, and have a clear sense of why they’re telling this story”. The big questions Audibert identified in Gruesome Playground Injuries are “why do we sometimes have relationships that are bad for us, and why do we love people that are damaged?” To help explore these in rehearsal he worked with movement director Joe Wild. Looking at the physical signifiers of age, and also of pain and injury, was combined with the focused text work. One of the major questions examined movement-wise was “the difference between pain in an immediate sense and long term decay”.

It’s certainly not an easy subject to work with, but Audibert explains how the rehearsal room always maintained a fun atmosphere: “anytime we got a bit stressed we’d play a game, run around the room like idiots or eat cake”. He speaks fondly of the process of working with his entire team, and says the show wouldn’t be what it is without the input of all involved. Lily Arnold’s design, for example, hugely influenced the acting and choices made. Audibert has a very clear understanding of the director as collaborator, as the facilitator of “a dialogue between artists” and shares the following piece of advice about his craft: “Mostly directing is about speaking the different languages of the people you work with accurately… If you do that, you have a happy team and a happy team makes good work.”

Another major piece of advice he offers young directors is “ don’t get yourself in financial debt to work” and “there’s no such thing as a big break, you just have to keep working at it”, which is wonderfully refreshing to hear. Reading this advice, you may pin Audibert down as a sensible, non-risk taking director. You’d be wrong. His dream production to direct is “a version of Spring Awakening set in an old people’s home with all OAPs”. Why? Because it’s a play that touches him every time he reads it, and “nobody talks about the sex lives of people over 65”. A very valid point and I agree with him that it would be a fascinating process where a young director could learn a lot. He also wants to direct King Lear, seeing it as the “greatest parable of humanity of them all”.

Gruesome Playground Injuries plays at The Gate until 16 February. For tickets and more information, visit http://www.gatetheatre.co.uk/whats-on/gruesome-playground-injuries.aspx.

Image credit: Justin Audibert in rehearsals for Gruesome Playground Injuries by Ludovic des Cognets