Lampooning the Liars and Hypocrites

MICHAEL DUKE is a successful writer and director for the theatre, but his work for the Edinburgh-based benchtours over the years has opened up a different methodology, as he explains ahead of the tour of his newest piece for the company, The Emperor’s Opera.

Arts Journal: Michael, how and when did you first work with benchtours?

Michael Duke: I started working for them about 15 years ago. I had been working with a couple of their members in a play that I had written for another company, and they suggested me for a project with Benchtours. I found what they were suggesting very intriguing – I had never done anything quite like it before.

AJ: That would have been ‘The Splitting of Latham’ in 1991?

MD: That was the first show we worked on. It was a Victorian melodrama in style, and there was something in it that really worked in terms of the visual elements benchtours like to include. It opened up a whole new area of work for me, and it is one that I have pursued quite a lot ever since.

AJ: What was the appeal of benchtours’ method?

MD: I loved the international feel of the company, and the excitement they had about working from a devising basis. That was the beginning of it, and I have worked on another five shows with them.

AJ: How does the devising process work?

MD: In terms of the structure that we use there is always a project idea to begin with, and we bounce that around between us until a developed idea or the guts of a story emerge, and then we have a development week on it when the performers are involved in what will become a script.

AJ: What is your role as writer in that process?

MD: For the writer the job is to provide text towards a project in which everybody is contributing – a conventional script is almost the wrong way to think about it. Sometimes that might be led by me providing that text, or it may come out of an improvisation or a period of devising that I will then put into text and try to take further.

“Sometimes when you say we explored various things you haven’t actually explored very far from where you started, but on this one I can honestly say that we did”

AJ: Has that process of collectively devising the play rather than presenting a finished script been constant in all of these projects?

MD: That has usually been the way it works in general terms, but every project has had something a bit different as well. With ‘Ship of Fools’ (1992) there was no set script until the first night – I remember in those pre-laptop days running across the road to the office of another theatre company to type up the work as we did it, and sometimes going back with two or three pages of text to discover that they had ditched the idea! That was very much in flux, but ‘The Death of Don Quixote’ (1991), for example, was different, since we began with an adaptation, so there is always some variation on the basic process.

AJ: Does the script then remain fixed after you do get to opening night?

MD: No. I think there is always something to learn from audiences, and we are very open to that. By the time you have finished rehearsing a comedy you tend not to be laughing very much, so it is really useful to see how an audience respond to it, see what works and what doesn’t.

AJ: How does the new play, ‘The Emperor’s Opera’, rate in terms of prepared script?

MD: It is probably the most scripted of any of the shows I have been involved in with benchtours. We needed to have a clear idea of the characters and the way they spoke and so forth, and I would say that around 75% of the text they are working with now was there on day one of rehearsals. Having said that, though, it was a long and complicated process to get to that stage.

AJ: How did that work?

MD: We have had two separate development processes with the whole company over the last 18 months, and this is the third story we have come up with in the course of them. Some material has survived from the first development week, but most of it came after the second one. Sometimes when you say we explored various things you haven’t actually explored very far from where you started, but on this one I can honestly say that we did.

AJ: Can you tell us something about the show itself?

MD: It is set in an unnamed newly independent Republic, and in my head I was probably thinking of somewhere on the fringes of the EU at the end of Communism. I was interested in something that would reflect how we behave here, but seen through a slightly different lens, and through the medium of farce.

“There was a group of us that were interested in theatre, but we were so ignorant that we didn’t have a clue how ignorant we were!”

AJ: Why farce?

MD: Initially I was simply interested in writing a farce. In farce there is always the attraction of lampooning the liars and hypocrites. The story develops from the telling of a lie by a politician that then grows arms and legs. There are several points where he could just admit it, but he never does, and the story gets beyond his control and becomes a national incident stemming from his invention of a non-existent opera for his own ends. We were looking to do something with a lot of playfulness in it, and that would be very accessible for touring in a range of venues.

AJ: But it also sounds as if it has a sharp political edge – do you see your work as political?

MD: I think theatre is political, and any comment you make on the status quo in that public arena is a political thing to do. I am very happy with that – some of my work has been more overtly political than others, but there is always that dimension to it. In this play we have depicted a politician who is incapable of telling the truth, and a lot of the story is to do with political lies.

AJ: You are the writer rather than director on this project, but are also a director in your own right – how did you get into doing both those things?

MD: I knew I wanted to write when I was about 7, but wasn’t sure in what way. I began going to theatre in Belfast in my teens, and by the time I moved to London I was pretty struck by it all – I think I must have seen everything that was on in my first year there. I got my first directing role when I was at Aberdeen University because I lied and said I had done it before! There was a group of us that were interested in theatre, but we were so ignorant that we didn’t have a clue how ignorant we were! I suppose that is not a bad way to learn, if you get through it! You take risks with confidence when you don’t realise how much you don’t know.

AJ: Do you enjoy both elements?

MD: Very much, and as well as writing and directing there is that whole area of writing and devising we have been discussing, which brings another dimension to it. I haven’t done that directly yet with Tinderbox here in Belfast, although it has influenced ways we work here to some extent, but I did use it in community theatre work when I was Associate Director at Dundee Rep. They adapted to it very easily, I found, possibly more so than for theatre professionals.

Michael Duke is currently Artistic Director of Tinderbox Theatre Company in Belfast. The Emperor’s Opera is Michael’s sixth production in a fifteen-year association with benchtours, following The Splitting of Latham, Ship of Fools, Don Quixote, CARNiVALi and Alice, and during this period he has also collaborated with various benchtours‘  company members on projects in Europe and America:  along with Peter Clerke and Pete Livingstone, he worked with Melanie Stewart Dance Theatre in Philadelphia on a trilogy of political satires, Cocktail in the Sky, Perfect and Babel. In collaboration with Melanie Stewart, he also created Underlife and The Gathering; with Pete Livingstone, Nina Kareis and Limfjordsteatret in Denmark he wrote Kinderbett; and he developed Elmer McCurdy Rides Again with John Cobb for Northern Stage in England.  Other long working partnerships include BBC Radio, for whom he has written ten dramas, and Dundee Rep Theatre, where he was Associate Director for six years.  Since returning to work in Ireland, where he was born and educated, he has directed the award winning production of Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme for the Lyric Theatre Belfast, and written Revenge which toured in Ireland last year and was nominated by both the TMA UK and the Irish Times / ESB Irish Theatre Awards as Best New Play of 2004.
 

The Emperor’s Opera can be seen at the following venues in the Highlands and Islands and north east:

Community Theatre, Fortrose, Thursday 5 May 2005
Village Hall, Skerray, Friday 6 May 2005
Arts Centre, Lyth, Saturday 7 May 2005
Birnam Arts Institute, Dunkeld, Thursday 12 May 2005
Town Hall, Elgin, Monday 16 May 2005
Arts Centre, MacDuff, Tuesday 17 May 2005
Public Hall, New Deer, Wednesday 18 May 2005
Deeside Theatre, Aboyne, Thursday 19 May 2005
Village Hall, Tullynessle, Friday 20 May 2005
Lemon Tree, Aberdeen, Saturday 21 May 2005
Glenmoriston Millennium Hall, Invermoriston, Tuesday 31 May 2005
National Hotel, Dingwall, Wednesday 1 June 2005
Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Skye, Thursday 2 June 2005
Spectrum Centre, Inverness, Friday 3 June 2005
Village Hall, Carrbridge, Saturday 4 June 2005
Village Hall, Cairndow, Sunday 5 June 2005

© Kenny Mathieson, 2005