The notion of acting and directing was always one that I expected to be demanding but in fact wasn't - at least not in the rehearsal room. I had a pretty clear idea of how I thought the scenes could be moved and the dynamics of the two main characters were something that Aston and I were able to extract naturally as we got deeper into it. The emotional shape of the drama was embedded in William's script, albeit ambiguously at times, and Graham and Ray's trajectories grew organically from the interplay of character. That part of things was really quite easy. Directing and acting were almost one and the same thing.
I had a well-defined audio-visual concept in mind too. So, in the theatre, it was just a matter of taking the techs through that. What I didn't anticipate there, though, was just how much I needed to be outside the play at that stage, fine-tuning the performances, bringing all those elements into harmony. There are simply some things you cannot judge from inside a scene. Sometimes it's timing. Sometimes it's the forcefulness of delivery. Sometimes it's just making sure the actors are all bringing the same sense of style and energy to a change or tableau. In watching the video of the performance, I think that the audio-visual concept of the show is strong and cohesive. The performances I wish I could just bring into focus a little bit more. It's all those details that when you sit and watch, you can draw an actor's attention to, bring little moments together so that they click. Like, point out the unconscious actor tics that distract from the character. Smooth away the awkward bits that just don't work. In watching myself in particular, I am able to like some of the choices but I also want at times to shout out, 'No, no, no! Let's do that differently.'
The other thing I didn't anticipate was the meeting of this play with this audience. When I first read this script, I thought it was interesting, evocative. By the time we'd finished, I loved it - loved it for its completeness, its utter evocation of a micro-society, for its implications about humanity and society and masculinity, for its creepy, relentless power. What neither I nor the audience could love it for was as a feelgood night of fun at the theatre, no matter how much theatricality I tried to invest it with. This is a dark and disturbing piece of drama, with hard-to-like characters. It is profoundly ironic, constantly keeping you at arm's length from the drama, insisting you guess and second guess at the actions unfolding before you. That's not an easy offer for a community theatre audience. Not that such an audience needs to be condescended to, but the play remains an awkward morsel to digest, in particular alongside the other productions in CTC's 'New Blood' offering.
One last thing. A friend of my was appalled at the alterations I made to the script in order to relocate it to Melbourne in the 1970s. Personally, I felt those changes were minor and did not undermine the intent, feel or language of the script. As a writer myself, I have always held the opinion that scripts are not works that exist in their own right. No-one reads a script except as a template for performance - and performance always introduces interpretation and alteration, deliberate and accidental. It is in performance that a script becomes relevant and meaningful. I'd say a performance almost never stays utterly word perfect and of course characterisations/staging can differ wildly from whatever a playwright might have conceived. Obviously HW conceived of his story as occurring in London at a particular time but I would hope he would have been pleased to see its scope expanded to another time and place in a way that made the story and characters relevant to an audience watching nearly 50 years after it was first performed. While I don't think a handful of name changes is disrespectful to the play, I am more than happy to consider taking this video down if friends, family or associates of Heathcote Williams feel that I have corrupted the work.
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