The New Electric Ballroom - 2009

More documents

Recommendations

Info

The New Electric BallroomCASTBredarosaleen LinehanClararuth McCabePatsyMikel MurfiAdacatherine WalshCREATIVEDirectorDesignLighting DesignSound DesignCasting Directorenda Walshsabine Dargentsinéad McKennaGregory ClarkeMaureen HughesCREWProduction ManagerCompany Stage ManagerStage DirectorProduction PhotographyTechnical Managereamonn Foxsarah Lynchlee DavisKeith Pattisonbarry O'BrienThe New Electric Ballroom received its premiereat the Kammerspiele Theatre, Munich, Germany,on 30 September 2004. Druid presented the Englishlanguagepremiere at the 2008 Galway Arts Festivalfrom 14–26 July and at the 2008 Edinburgh FestivalFringe from 3–24 August where it won an EdinburghFringe First Award.Interview with Writer /Director Enda WalshEnda Walsh’s play The New Electric Ballroom was talked into existence overtwo intense days in Germany. He discusses collaborations with directors anddramaturges, fractured narratives and how he splits himself in two to directhis own work, with Jesse Weaver.This is Enda Walsh’s moment. In April his play The Walworth Farce receivedits American premiere at St Ann’s Warehouse in New York, produced byDruid and directed by Mikel Murfi. Walsh joined forces with Druid again lastyear when his play The New Electric Ballroom, first produced by Munich’sKammerspiele, received its English-language premiere at Galway Arts Festival,in a production he also directed. The Walworth Farce ran at London’s NationalTheatre in September, while Walsh’s adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The BrothersKaramazov, entitled Delirium, also toured in the UK. To top it all off, Walsh sawhis screenwriting work on Hunger awarded with the prestigious Camera d’Or atlast year’s Cannes Film Festival.Walsh’s work is famous for its finely crafted and deeply layered theatricalworlds, all of which are cast in their own linguistic idioms. His treatment oflanguage is not only an expression of a character’s identity, but also of acharacter’s attempt to crack the formal cadences of an established mode oflanguage. While this is true of his earlier work, most notably Disco Pigs, Walshpushes his experiments with form further in The Walworth Farce, where twovery different plot forms overlap and compete with each other, culminatingin the resurfacing of an Irish immigrant family’s real reason for leaving theirnative Cork. The New Electric Ballroom, a companion piece of sorts, treadsthe same thematic ground, with three sisters in a small Irish fishing villagetrapped in an ever-present past.In a conversation with Enda Walsh in London, where he’s based, we discussedhis success with The Walworth Farce, directing The New Electric Ballroom andhow, as a playwright, he navigates the collaborative process of bringing a playto production.2
Jesse Weaver (JW): Would you usually work closely with a director on a playfrom the beginning?Enda Walsh (EW): I think I always have, in various sorts of degrees. I know withThe Walworth Farce it was a very specific thing because it was so physical. I feltas if it was right to work with Mikel – not from the very beginning, but by reallypolishing the first draft with him. But, I usually [work closely with a director],and when I don’t, that’s when the play falls apart. That’s when I’ll go back andthink, I really took my eye off the ball and I’ll never make that mistake again.JW: What kind of pitfalls do you mean by ‘taking your eye off the ball’? Justnot being in touch with the director enough?EW: Not being clear enough. I need someone, whether it’s a director or adramaturg, to argue things out, to make it clear. The New Electric Ballroom isthe sister piece to The Walworth Farce, and it was done by this German directorcalled Stephan Kimmig for the Kammerspiele in Munich. I worked with himand the dramaturg. The way that they worked was that they just listened to metalk for hours; they questioned me again and again and they just soaked me ofeverything.The dramaturg was called Tilman Raabke, who, I suppose, in the world oftheatre, would almost be my mentor. He would say, ‘just talk – what are yourideas, Enda?’ I would start talking about my ideas, and before I know it, aftertwo days we’ve created the play. Now it’s just a matter of writing it down.We played over all the aspects – we know structurally how it’s going to work,we know the big dramatic moments, we know the images and we know thedetail of the characters and the flavour of the world, as well as the potentiallanguage of it, the sounds of it. And it’s all just from talking to someone whoknows your work and goes, ‘yeah, you’ve done that before.’ I trust him insteering me dramaturgically. The writing is easy, but for me I’m constantlyinterested in the structure of a play and how you move an audience … not justto tell a narrative, A to Z, but to upset things a bit, fracture things a bit.JW: How present are you in the rehearsal room – from the first reading to thetech?EW: I don’t mind being there in the first week of rehearsal, but a lot of the timeI feel that my work’s done. I’ve had all the conversations with the director. Iknow what I want and I’m going to leave them to it. Otherwise I’ll slow thingsdown – I’ll get in the way, and they have to own it.JW: What kind of a hand do you have in casting?EW: I try to have as much as possible. Casting is vital. That’s where it’s all at,because once the play is up and running, I don’t feel as if I own it. I feel as ifit’s the actors’ piece now. With The Walworth Farce, I don’t think it’s my playanymore. I think that the actors have made it now. It’s theirs. That’s whathappens once it’s running and I’m happy with it. My relationship with this isover now. It’s even over before rehearsal when you feel as if it [the script] isthe best you can do. You put on a different hat [in rehearsal], I suppose, whereyou craft it, where you can be quite clinical about it, and not care about EndaWalsh the playwright in his attic writing plays. Forget about him – it’s EndaWalsh the dramaturg now, or whatever.JW: Is it like an internal division of labour?EW: Definitely. I’ve always thought you have to have that. You can’t imaginethat playwriting is some magical thing and this great, great art. It’s really adogged little craft and you need to keep a distance from it to be able to get tothe heart of it.JW: When you’re directing your own work with that internal division oflabour in mind, do you feel as if one role is encroaching on the other?EW: I do. I’ve only ever really done it twice. I wrote this play [Chatroom] thatdid really well at the National. I’ve directed that and I also directed Bedbound.When I was in rehearsal for Bedbound, my father died, so I was dealing withthe grief of that and directing the play. I didn’t have the clarity then to directit, as well as to argue with Enda Walsh the playwright versus Enda Walsh thedirector. With The New Electric Ballroom – the play is done, so I don’t think I’llchange the text. I was really, really happy with it three years ago and I think I’lljust look at it and go, ‘What does this mean now?’JW: How much authorial power do you think actors and directors have inbringing the play to the stage? You have the text that you’ve lived with, andthen it’s brought into this ensemble. Do you still feel the group of artistswho now have a stake in it also have some kind of authorship?EW: The play actually isn’t the production because it’s only a set of words andit’s only imagination, of course – it’s all in your head. And of course you throwa load of people in a room and you physically try to embody these characters.You try to play the themes and you try to play the subtext of it. You try to findthe rhythm of the language and you’re doing the journey of the characters andthe journey of the whole play, the structure of the play. That’s a complicatedthing to hold in one person’s head. I don’t think a playwright does all of it. Thereare all these different journeys: what needs to happen in the rehearsal room,the lighting and the sound and then getting an audience to come in and sitdown. There’s so much on the table. You wonder when a production becomes aproduction. It’s certainly not on the first night, that’s for sure. It can never be.Jesse Weaver is a playwright. This is an edited extract from an interviewconducted for his PhD thesis at University College Cork. The article was firstpublished in Irish Theatre Magazine (ITM) in summer 2008 and appearscourtesy of ITM.3
Page 1: IRELANDKeith PattisonThe New Electr
Page 5 and 6: ENDA WALSHWriter and DirectorEnda W
Page 7 and 8: SINÉAD MCKENNA Lighting DesignerDr

The New Electric Ballroom - 2009

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?