Taking Stock: The Theatre of Max Stafford-Clark E-Book

Max Stafford-Clark

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Inside accounts of the making of some of the most influential theatre productions of the last four decades. Max Stafford-Clark has been at the cutting edge of theatre in Britain for more than thirty years. Taking Stock draws on diaries, photos and interviews to recreate the evolution of nine of his most famous and influential productions: Fanshen by David Hare Epsom Downs by Howard Brenton Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill Rita, Sue and Bob Too by Andrea Dunbar Serious Money by Caryl Churchill Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker The Steward of Christendom by Sebastian Barry Some Explicit Polaroids by Mark Ravenhill Macbeth by William Shakespeare The result is one of the richest, most intimately informative books on the making of theatre. 'a rare opportunity to get inside the mind of one of British theatre's most original practitioners... a fascinating view of an incredibly diverse body of work' - British Theatre Guide 'a splendid portrait of the vicissitudes of the collective life' - Times Literary Supplement 'fascinating... By pioneering the workshop method of rehearsal, where actors and director all contribute ideas before sending the playwright off to pen the text, Stafford-Clark made a major innovation in the evolution of British drama... He also tells a good story' - Aleks Sierz Independent 'a terrific read... an absolute treasure trove of insights, tips, reminiscences and lessons in the 'process' of how a new play comes into the world' - Rogues and Vagabonds

Leseprobe

TAKING STOCK

The Theatre of Max Stafford-Clark

PHILIP ROBERTSANDMAX STAFFORD-CLARK

With photos by John Haynes

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

To William Gaskill,

the admiral in whose fleet we have all sailed

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prelude

THE TRAVERSE THEATRE, 1966–72

Part One

THE JOINT STOCK THEATRE GROUP, 1974–81

The Case Studies

Fanshen (David Hare)

Epsom Downs (Howard Brenton)

Cloud Nine (Caryl Churchill)

Part Two

THE ROYAL COURT THEATRE, 1979–93

The Case Studies

Rita, Sue and Bob Too (Andrea Dunbar)

Serious Money (Caryl Churchill)

Our Country’s Good (Timberlake Wertenbaker)

Part Three

OUT OF JOINT THEATRE COMPANY, 1993–

The Case Studies

The Steward of Christendom (Sebastian Barry)

Some Explicit Polaroids (Mark Ravenhill)

Macbeth (William Shakespeare)

Afterword

Appendix

Plays directed by Max Stafford-Clark, 1965–2006

Select Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Copyright Information

Illustrations

Fanshen and Epsom Downs

Cloud Nine

Rita, Sue and Bob Too

Serious Money and Our Country’s Good

The Steward of Christendom

Some Explicit Polaroids

Macbeth

Max Stafford-Clark

Photos by John Haynes

Preface

This book began its life in the late 1990s when Philip Roberts approached Max Stafford-Clark to ask if he could look at Max’s fabled Diaries with a view to producing an edition of them. At this point, Max was in denial that any Diaries existed, and little headway was made.

Two years later, Philip took possession of six large carrier bags, which contained Diaries covering the years since 1974. These were read, a lot of material transcribed, and a narrative excavated in order to try to tell an extraordinary story. It was at this stage that the joint decision was taken to develop a series of case studies of important productions. What emerged were three groups of three, relating to Joint Stock, the Royal Court, and Out of Joint.

Given that Max has, at the time of writing, directed over one hundred and thirty plays, it is inevitable that a good deal has necessarily been omitted from this account. Yet the plays chosen here show the development of a life in directing, as well as the evolution of some of our most important writers.

Philip interviewed actors and writers from the whole span of the Diaries. He transcribed and edited them. He is also responsible for the Introduction, the section entitled ‘Prelude: the Traverse Theatre, 1966–72’, and the Introductions to each of the three parts.

Max, apart from writing the Diaries themselves, then wrote the narrative of each of the nine case studies, both placing them in context and adding a retrospective and contemporary commentary. Overall, we hope that the book offers unusual, if not unique, insights into the rehearsal processes of some of the most important plays of the second half of the twentieth century. We also hope that this collaborative effort illuminates the working life of a theatre director, and also throws some light on the development of British text-based theatre since the sixties.

PHILIP ROBERTS and MAX STAFFORD-CLARKNovember 2006

Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to the following for agreeing to be interviewed: April De Angelis; Stuart Burge; Ron Cook; Graham Cowley; Stephen Daldry; Matthew Evans; Sonia Friedman; William Gaskill; Lloyd Hutchinson; Stephen Jeffreys; Tricia Kelly; Lesley Manville; Mark Ravenhill; Ian Redford; Rob Ritchie; Nigel Terry; Timberlake Wertenbaker.

The authors are obliged to Methuen Publishing Ltd for permission to quote from: Rob Ritchie (ed. and introd.),The Joint Stock Book: the Making of a Theatre Collective, 1987; Andrea Dunbar, Rita, Sue and Bob Too with The Arbor and Shirley, Introduction by Rob Ritchie, 1988.

Yvonne Carroll of the National Library of Scotland was most helpful in dealing with enquiries about the Traverse Theatre Archive in its possession, as was Fiona Sturgess, Marketing Manager of the Traverse Theatre. Professor Richard Boon, University of Hull, was his usual incisive self; Lee Dalley, University of Leeds, was a great and tolerant help as regards computers.

For permission to consult company records, we thank: the Council of the Royal Court Theatre; the Traverse Theatre; Out of Joint Theatre Company.

Philip Roberts is obliged to the (then) AHRB for a Small Research Grant; to the University of Leeds for research leave; and to Margaret Flower for typing much of the initial draft. Max Stafford-Clark is obliged to Naomi Jones for monitoring the initial drafts of the case studies, and to Stella Feehily for reading them.

A Note on the Text

   signifies a quotation from a taped interview.

   signifies an extract from Max Stafford-Clark’s Diaries.

Introduction

This book falls naturally into four sections, which reflect the major stages of Stafford-Clark’s career. The first section, the Prelude, chronicles his arrival at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. Appointed as a Stage Manager in Spring 1966, he became Artistic Director in Spring 1968. In November 1969, he resigned as Artistic Director to be Director of the Traverse Workshop Company. The Workshop’s final production was David Mowat’s Amalfi in August 1972. Stafford-Clark then went on, together with William Gaskill and others, to form in 1974 the Joint Stock Theatre Group. Part One is occupied with this period, which for Stafford-Clark drew to a close at the end of the decade. Part Two shows the third phase of his career as Artistic Director of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, London, from 1980. Part Three details how, in 1993, Stafford-Clark left the Court and founded, with Sonia Friedman, Out of Joint Theatre Company, which is still flourishing at the time of writing.

Each of Parts One, Two and Three contains a detailed account of three selected productions as described initially in Stafford-Clark’s Diaries, to which has been added a new commentary by the director. These case studies reflect both the evolution of a directing style and also offer a view of the times which generated them. Prefacing each of these three parts is an introduction and an account of the period covered, which seeks to set the case studies in the relevant context.

Each of the sections tries to offer a different perspective on a directing life. The period at the Traverse shows the powerful influence of American avant-garde companies, particularly of La Mama, who performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1967. The creation of the Traverse Workshop Company in large part stems from the innovative techniques of La Mama. It is ironic, given Stafford-Clark’s reputation as a text-based director, that La Mama’s work seldom left a text intact, preferring to use it merely as a platform. It was at Edinburgh that Stafford-Clark began the enquiry into the relationship between writer, director and, crucially, actor, which has hallmarked his work throughout. His later tendency to involve both himself and the actors in the creative process showed in such projects as Dracula (1969), which he described as a ‘joint investigation between the team of writers and the resident company’. Equally, his suggestion, for example, in the late 80s that Timberlake Wertenbaker make a play from the Thomas Keneally novel, The Playmaker, is anticipated during his time at the Traverse by his asking Stanley Eveling to fashion a piece around a book on Donald Crowhurst. The result, Our Sunday Times, transferred to the Royal Court’s Theatre Upstairs in June 1971. The Traverse years saw in addition the proliferation of experimental companies, with the theatre hosting work from the Freehold to the People Show, from Portable Theatre to Pip Simmons, from Moving Being to Low Moan Spectacular. The range and diversity of the presentations created a climate of change, of risk-taking and of innovation.

The Workshop came to an end in 1972, followed by a brief period of freelancing, which included raising some hackles at the Royal Court with his production of Howard Brenton’s Magnificence in 1973. In 1974, Stafford-Clark and William Gaskill, who had left the Court in 1972, came together in an experiment which essentially involved two directors exploring each other’s approach to rehearsing and directing. This led to the creation of the Joint Stock Theatre Group, the most important Fringe group of the seventies and beyond. The working pattern consisted of an initial workshop with actors and writer, followed by a gap in which, if all went well, a script was developed by the writer, which then formed the basis of subsequent rehearsals. During this time, Stafford-Clark was involved in the creation of work by David Hare, Caryl Churchill, Wallace Shawn, Barrie Keeffe, Howard Brenton, Snoo Wilson and Hanif Kureishi.

It was at the beginning of Joint Stock that Stafford-Clark began to keep a Diary. There is always one, frequently several volumes per year. He noted on 29 March 1977, ‘Writing a diary is like civilising a jungle; it’s making orderly and inevitable the chaos and mess of ordinary life. My passion for neatness finds an outlet.’ From August 1974, the Diaries (which continue to this day) record in a minute, neat hand an exhaustive account of a director’s public and private life. The entries were written sometimes in breaks between workshops/rehearsals, sometimes after a day’s work, sometimes during and sometimes after a meeting. The characteristic pattern is to record factually, and then analyse the facts. The entries range from writing down the progress or otherwise of a rehearsal, to a view of an actor’s development in a part, to observation of, for example, Bill Gaskill at work or in discussion at Joint Stock meetings, to consultations with the writer. The overwhelming sense is of a process, an emerging shape, a cumulative growth.

The Joint Stock section, of all the sections, shows how a text is made, modified, and brought to production. There is a careful analysis, for example, of precisely how Stafford-Clark’s initial idea of a play about the Crusades modulated, via Caryl Churchill’s reading, into Light Shining in Buckinghamshire (1976), and how there were two writers originally working on the project. Or the extent to which the Fanshen workshops in 1974 produced a way of looking at theatre which suffused all of Joint Stock’s working life. The piece entitled Yesterday’s News (1976) began life as a project with Jeremy Seabrook about a particular community. It failed to develop and was replaced by a piece about mercenary soldiers. Brenton’s Epsom Downs (1977) involved a research day at the Derby, while his views about Emily Davison were upended by two feminist thinkers invited to a workshop. Perhaps most extraordinary is the use not simply of the performance abilities of actors but also of their sexual orientation as prime material for the workshopping series. The Diaries record in great detail how this led to the creation of Cloud Nine (1979) and the emergence of Caryl Churchill as a hugely important writer.

The next section is to do with Stafford-Clark at the Royal Court. Moving from a work process which involved the relative luxury of the production of one play at a time to the multiple obligations involved in running a theatre necessarily altered his preoccupations. Over the following thirteen years, the Diaries record the business of managing a theatre with its own jealously guarded history in the face of political hostility, economic threat, and the sustained efforts by some to bring him to heel or replace him. Here are found confrontations with the Arts Council and with, on occasions, the Chairman of the Royal Court’s Council, as well as the endless manoeuvring and rejigging of schedules in order to build a season which could be financially sustained. The Court, like the arts generally, was fighting a rearguard action in the eighties, and survived. It also produced work of great quality by Andrea Dunbar, Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, Ron Hutchinson, Wallace Shawn, Jim Cartwright and Timberlake Wertenbaker. The Diaries for this decade reflect these difficult times, including the crisis over Jim Allen’s play Perdition (1987), but also its high spots, such as the processes that led to, inter alia, Our Country’s Good (1988) and Serious Money (1987).

Stafford-Clark, at the time of writing still the longest serving Artistic Director of the Royal Court, left on 1 October 1993. However, a new venture was emerging. Stafford-Clark notes on 24 May 1993 that, ‘As of last week I have a name: Out of Joint.’ This company, founded with Sonia Friedman, was to tour outside London, and initially took as its model the combining of two related plays in 1988: The Recruiting Officer and Our Country’s Good. Thus The Man of Mode was coupled with Stephen Jeffreys’s The Libertine (1994) and Three Sisters with Wertenbaker’s The Break of Day (1995). This policy was not systematic. Other pieces, such as Shopping and Fucking (1996), were standalone. Stafford-Clark and Friedman gambled that touring new work outside London would revive an audience for whom the opportunity to see new plays had diminished. The piggybacking of classic and new clearly represented a tactic to draw in good audiences.

Out of Joint is the fourth phase in Stafford-Clark’s career to date. As in the first phase, the impulse is towards new work, with a classic included from time to time. The record of the work by Out of Joint to date has secured the company an international reputation. Plays by Sebastian Barry, Mark Ravenhill, April De Angelis, Caryl Churchill, Timberlake Wertenbaker, Simon Bennett, Judy Upton and David Hare reflect the lifelong preoccupation with new writing which began in the mid-sixties.

This book is about the making of theatre. It is, above all, about the making of theatre by one theatre director over a lengthy period which has not yet concluded. On 2 April 1978, Stafford-Clark noted in his Diary that ‘Today’s Sunday Times makes it clear that I am not to figure large in the 1980s’. In October 2004, some twenty-five years later, the Theatre Management Association’s Award for the best touring company went to Out of Joint for Stafford-Clark’s direction of David Hare’s The Permanent Way. A year later, the Fringe Reports Awards named Stafford-Clark as the ‘Theatre Person of the Year’ in the Outstanding Achievement category.

Prelude

THE TRAVERSE THEATRE, 1966–72

Prelude

THE TRAVERSE THEATRE, 1966–72

Stafford-Clark, Maxwell Robert Guthrie Stewart (Max)

b. 17 March 1941. Educated: Felstead School; Riverdale Country Day School, N.Y.; Trinity College, Dublin . . .

   I did English with a subsidiary subject of Irish History. I don’t think I decided to be a director until I’d done it, but at some point when I was at Trinity I stopped wanting to be an actor, and at some point when I’d got to the Traverse I started wanting to be a director. At university I acted in productions, but directing seemed more of a fulfilment and also there weren’t so many people who were good at it.

I was on a rugby tour to Edinburgh. I’d read about the Traverse. I loved playing rugby [scrum-half] but everyone else would be out getting drunk at night and I’d be reading, so I did sneak off and go to the Traverse, and met Ricky Demarco. They were in the process of stuffing envelopes, so I just got involved in it. Then I got talking through Ricky to Jim Haynes and that’s how the arrangement to bring over the revue, Dublin Fare, came about. [Demarco and Haynes were two of the driving forces in the creation of the Traverse.]

Letter to Philip RobertsThe Oxford and Cambridge revues that summer were particularly weak, and Dublin Fare thrived in comparison. The critical coverage was generous, and we transferred to the Arts Theatre [in the West End] full of confidence. However, in order to fill up an evening, new material had to be incorporated, and the technical requirements proved utterly beyond my limited capabilities. The drama critic of the Evening Standard, Milton Shulman, wrote: ‘The one good thing about this infantile undergraduate revue is that none of these young people will ever be seen near the professional stage again.’ Triumph and Disaster were my first theatrical acquaintances, and they have been firm friends ever since. February 2004

Stafford-Clark was appointed a Stage Manager at the Traverse in Spring 1966. Sacked by the then General Manager, he himself had become acting General Manager by July 1966, and General Manager, as well as Assistant Director to Gordon McDougall, the Artistic Director, by November 1966. By May 1967, he was Assistant to the Director. His first professional production was of James Saunders’s Double, Double, August 1966.

   I’d never seen a stage arrangement like that at the Traverse [where the audience was seated either side of the stage]. The intimacy above all struck me. The theatre at Trinity was equally small, but the back row at the Traverse was never any distance. It did seem very particular and very exciting. The sixty seats meant that you could experiment. With a sixty-seater, as opposed to a three-hundred-seater, you could take many more risks. Edinburgh was a city which, because of its annual Festival, was accustomed to experiment and so it welcomed that.

He directed a triple-bill in February 1967, of pieces by the American playwright, Paul Foster. The umbrella title was Dead and Buried. The pieces were The Recluse, Balls, and Hurrah for the Bridge.

Programme note by Paul Foster, February 1967I have attempted in this play [Balls] to reduce every aspect of the theatrical experience to an irreducible minimum. I have eliminated actors from the stage, eliminated lights as much as I could, limited words and their meaning by making a statement then denying it so that algebraically, we wind up with zero. The players and their allegorical counterparts, the balls, one by one subtract away the sounds, the motion, the babble of surface logic, so the play simply is an attempt at finding a solution by stating the conditions. Perhaps it is, after all, merely a game.