Young Vic – ⟨Theatre|Science⟩

May 12, 2016May 12, 2016

Interview: Director Matthew Xia on Blue/Orange at the Young Vic

The semantics of an argument between a senior and junior doctor form the basis of Blue/Orange, Joe Penhall’s play about a young black man who has been confined in a psychiatric ward. Matthew Xia directs a revival of Blue/Orange at the Young Vic Theatre between 12^th May and 2nd July, with Daniel Kaluuya, David Haig and Luke Norris in the cast.

Science Centre Stage spoke to Matthew Xia about the process of staging this revival in the current climate of change in the NHS, about using words to create illusion and misdirection and the current place of medicine in theatre.

Can you give a little background to Blue/Orange and what it is about?

Blue/Orange was written towards the end of the late nineties by Joe Penhall in what was at the time his most successful play. It won the Olivier Award for Best New Play in 2000. The original production at the National Theatre starred Bill Nighy, Andrew Lincoln and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Sixteen years later we want to explore the same themes which feel ever more pertinent. There’s certainly a series of crises concerning junior doctors and beds and resources and all the things that have constantly plagued the NHS.

We start on Day 27 of a Section for a young black man called Christopher. He’s in for assessment and treatment over a course of 28 days. He’s on the 27^th day, so he’s being released tomorrow. But the junior doctor, who is white, (Christopher is black) thinks that there is something in the diagnosis that is inaccurate and would like to have him stay for up to six months. In order to do that he needs the agreement of his senior consultant called Robert Smith. Ultimately the play is looking at the potentially subjective nature of diagnosis, particularly in psychiatry, and how that is affected by things such as unconscious bias, ethnocentricity, cultural specificity, and how these things cause us as humans to make subjective diagnoses, even with our best will and best intent in mind.

Daniel Kaluuya plays Christopher in Blue/Orange. © Johan Persson

What the play really tries to tackle and what I’m personally interested in, is first, the kind of diametric argument that is presented. Joe Penhall’s great at writing complex, nuanced, detailed arguments. Secondly, you’ve got these two white doctors and their black patient so I guess the other thing that it really explores is the power structures inherent in patient-doctor dynamics and how that might have a bearing on diagnosis. It also explores the power structures within the relationship between a senior and a junior doctor and the expectations upon both of them in those roles.

Did you consult with doctors and psychiatrists during the development process to help understand the system they operate in?

Yes, certainly. My process anyway is to completely immerse myself in the world that the characters live in. The mental health guidelines from 1997, government documents, white papers, testimonials and a brilliant book called Users and Abusers of Psychiatry were really useful in the rehearsal room. The next stage was that the designer (Jeremy Herbert) and myself went along to the Maudsley Hospital. The play isn’t set in the Maudsley but it’s the crown jewel of mental health facilities. I went down there and spoke to occupational therapists who gave us a tour of the building so we started to get an idea of the environment that these people would be working in.

Luke Norris plays the junior doctor Bruce. Photo: Johan Persson

We met a brilliant man called Dr. Neil Brenner who is a consultant psychiatrist and had the most incredible array of stories and experiences. We’d read him small bits of the play and he’d respond to them, which gave us a sense of the truth of the world that we were trying to replicate and also some guidance on how far we could stray from the truth with the production.

How do you challenge without offending, upsetting or crossing the status boundary?

At at the turn of this century there was a very clear hierarchy [in medicine]. The junior doctor in this play is ideological and principled and that leads him to challenge his senior quite a lot. Dr. Neil Brenner says he would be out on his ear, immediately. It was useful because it actually meant we could temper some of those challenges. Then there is a much more interesting game to navigate. How do you challenge without offending, upsetting or crossing the status boundary? I think this makes for a much more interesting reading than a hot headed, fiery, junior doctor who doesn’t quite know his position.

Given that you were told Joe Penhall was something of a soothsayer for predicting future changes in the NHS back in 2000, do you think the play says anything about future patterns and how things might develop from here? Or is it more of a snapshot of where things are?

I think it’s more of a snapshot of where things are but I think that brilliant thing of putting a play on at a different time to when it was written means that it becomes a prism that refracts today’s thinking and understanding. You spot new patterns and different correlations that maybe weren’t so readily apparent the first time round. I think we live in a very different, much darker world than we did in 2000, a kind of post 9/11 world. Christopher thinks his father might be Idi Amin at one point – that’s ambiguous, and it’s meant to be ambiguous. Is his father Idi Amin or not? But he says at one point he’s a Muslim fundamentalist. Now in 2000 that would have rung out in such a different way to how it rings out now. This man being attracted to this hugely powerful Muslim extremist- it says something very different. So I guess my point is that the play has stayed the same. We have changed and it will be interesting to see how that relationship between audience and piece has changed because of the shift in society.

David Haig as senior consultant Robert Smith in Blue/Orange Photo: Johan Persson

Does your interest and background in illusion have any bearing on your work in theatre?

I think they are quite separate interests for me. My interest in illusion is an interest in amazing people and in small theatrical events and happenings. In my last show (Into the Woods) it was much easier to employ magic and trickery in a fairytale land. I think where the magic actually comes into Blue/Orange is that it’s ultimately a play about semantics and the inherent power of words and the slipperiness of words. Of course that was all coming out of people like Alastair Campbell and the Blairites – that was the world that this play was written in. Spin was huge. Somebody of a particular class or esteemed in a particular fashion could say something that meant one thing and if somebody else said it – it meant something completely different. It was a game of rhetoric. I think that’s the sort of magic that I’ve become interested in in the last ten years – the misdirection of words and the use of words to mask and create smoke and mirrors. That is almost certainly within the play. The character that David Haig plays is so manipulative and controlling and Machiavellian in the way that he uses his words. He’s incredibly calculating, incredibly deft with his deployment of words. I’ve always had that interest in magic and it’s something that’s come to the forefront more recently with psychological illusionists.

Given that you have quite a small cast, how does your rehearsal process work – do you like to work with the writer in the room?

I spent a lot of time with Joe in the casting of the show and very early on in rehearsal. He came in and pointed out where the pitfalls were to be found or the problematic spots or certain things that we just have to get right with this play otherwise is just doesn’t quite work in the way that it’s meant to. It’s incredibly useful, incredibly helpful. But I think as with all plays ultimately, even if it’s a new play, at some point the writer needs to leave having known that they’ve done their job, which is to write the play and to pass that over to a team who would then bring it to life. One of the problems with having a writer in the room too long is that everybody looks for direct answers. So as opposed to having an investigative exploratory process you just go ‘why do I say this?’ or ‘why does he do that?’ instead of working through your own system of logic as to why you get from one thought to the other. It’s been great having Joe so close to this production and equally it’s been great, as always, being left to our own devices to make a play.

Similarly with designers, do you bring your own ideas beforehand and work through it with them in rehearsal or do you leave it to them to approach you with ideas?

The reason that I make theatre and one of the reasons that I enjoy making theatre, is the collaborative nature of the arts. It’s very much me and Jeremy Herbert sat in a room reading the play very badly to each other and then finding what it needs, what it’s about, what moments have to be realized in terms of a pragmatic approach to the work, versus a more abstract conceptual approach.

It’s ultimately a play about semantics and the inherent power of words

The idea that Christopher is in an institution, what does that mean? One of the decisions that we made is Christopher never leaves the playing area so that you know he is here constantly and it is his life that’s being discussed and that he is completely disempowered in those conversations. And of course time and place is the ultimate thing that you are hoping to communicate to an audience with your design.

That then develops into a series of images, references, sketches and drawings. I might walk past a painting or a piece of skirting board or a colour and just take a picture and send it to Jeremy. There’s quite a protracted process where we’re always reluctant to put anything down too quickly. Then you start playing in a 3D world with a model box. I always knew this was the presentation of an argument and what we’re looking at under the microscope isn’t actually Christopher. We’re not as an audience trying to diagnose Christopher. That might be part of the game that you play as an audience member but what you’re really doing is trying to understand how these doctors are arriving at these diagnoses or theories and the words that they use to bolster and strengthen that and the understanding that they might not necessarily be doing it for absolutely Hippocratic reasons.

Do you think there has been a recent shift towards an increasing representation of science and medicine on stage or have these subjects always been ripe for exploration in theatre and the arts?

I don’t personally feel like there’s been a shift. I think theatre can only ever respond to the here and now and particularly in the writing of new plays. Would somebody say that Alistair McDowall’s X at the Royal Court is an exploration of science when it’s set on a space station in Pluto? Ultimately it’s about the breakdown caused by isolation and loneliness. A play about science is still a play about human experience and I think these questions have always been asked whatever the current thinking of the time was. You could argue that The Alchemist by Ben Jonson is a play about the modern contemporary science and understanding of how elements may work. You could argue that Doctor Faustus with his investigations into magic and the occult is an exploration of science.
I think people are finding more interesting ways of putting stories about scientists and physicians and medical practitioners and engineers on stage. That’s possibly got something more to do with a slightly liberated way of approaching theatre that isn’t so bound by dialogue, dialogue, dialogue, next scene, dialogue. People are playing with projection and elements and smells and sounds. Is Peter Brooke’s The Valley of Astonishment, exploring synesthesia a play about science? Or is it a play about human experience?

Or are they one and the same?

Matthew Xia’s production of Blue/Orange by Joe Penhall runs at the Young Vic 12 May – 2 July. Tickets www.youngvic.org 0207 922 2922

January 4, 2016January 5, 2016

Highlights from a Year of Science in Theatre 2015

In a year in which high-profile productions such as Photograph 51 and Oppenheimer attracted considerable attention for bringing science to the stage, 2015 was also a year in which smaller gems such as Islington Community Theatre’s Brainstorm shone.

Nicole Kidman, who plays Rosalind Franklin in Photograph 51. Photo: Marc Brenner — Nicole Kidman played Rosalind Franklin in Photograph 51. Photo: Marc Brenner

It was arguably the star appeal of Nicole Kidman rather than the play that drew audiences to the Noel Coward Theatre in September to see Anna Zeigler’s Photograph 51. However, those who saw Kidman’s portrayal of Rosalind Franklin (for which she received an Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Actress) in Michael Grandage’s production saw a theatrical depiction of an intriguing period in the history of science. Science Centre Stage spoke to Edward Bennett, who played Nobel prize wining biophysicist Francis Crick in the production, about his approach to playing a real-life character and visiting the archives at Kings College London. Photograph 51 is currently nominated for best new play in the What’s On Stage Awards (despite first being performed in the USA in 2007).

When Tom Morton-Smith’s play Oppenheimer opened at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre at the beginning of the year, its subsequent success was sufficient to lead to a West End transfer. Commuters in London encountered hundreds of posters featuring John Heffernan as J. Robert Oppenheimer promoting the play at the Vaudeville Theatre where it played for two months. The Institute of Physics and Graham Farmelo arranged a panel discussion at the RSC in Stratford-upon-Avon in which the playwright, director Angus Jackson, physicist Prof. Frank Close, science journalist Alok Jha and former Times literary editor Erica Wagner discussed the themes of the play in an event chaired by deputy artistic director of the RSC Erica Whyman.

Another panel discussion in May at the Royal Society, also chaired by Erica Whyman, saw Tom Morton-Smith discuss Oppenheimer with Prof. Marcus du Sautoy, Prof. John Barrow and science-theatre scholar Prof. Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (whose new book Theatre and Evolution from Ibsen to Beckett was published by Columbia University Press in 2015).

Although Oppenheimer and Photograph 51 offered the highest profile portrayals of scientists in mainstream theatre last year, there were also some very strong smaller scale performances bringing together science and theatre, particularly generated by collaborations between scientists, theatre makers and writers.

Brainstorm was developed with support from the Wellcome Trust — Brainstorm was developed by Islington Community Theatre with support from the Wellcome Trust

An undoubted highlight of 2015 was Brainstorm, Islington Community Theatre’s uplifting and energetic piece exploration of the neuroscience of the teenage brain. It was performed by 10 teenagers with support from the Wellcome Trust and was devised by the cast with guidance from UCL neuroscientists Prof. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Katie Mills and directed by Ned Glasier. A hugely successful opening run at the small Park Theatre in January led to a well-deserved transfer to the National Theatre’s temporary theatre space in the summer. Islington Community Theatre then took part in Battersea Arts Centre’s Live From Television Centre project, resulting in a 30-minute version of Brainstorm becoming available on BBC iPlayer, substantially widening the audience it reached. Brainstorm will return to the National Theatre in 2016.

Harry Lister Smith Photo: Richard Davenport — Harry Lister Smith in Metta Theatre’s Mouthful Photo: Richard Davenport

Another intriguing production benefiting from Wellcome Trust support in 2015 was Metta Theatres’ Mouthful, in which international playwrights were paired with scientists to produce six short plays about the global food crisis. The result was a thought provoking and engaging production at London’s Trafalgar Studios. Science Centre Stage spoke to Metta Theatre’s artistic director Poppy Burton-Morgan about the development process behind Mouthful and how the scientists and writers worked together to create the plays.

Menagerie Theatre also continued their strong programme of pairing academics and writers in their What’s Up Doc? series for the 2015 Hotbed Festival in Cambridge. Pictures of You was writer Craig Baxter’s latest collaboration with Dr. Martina Di Simplicio of the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University, in which mental imagery was explored in a short play that was subsequently had a short run at London’s Soho Theatre.

That Is All You Need To Know - Idle Motion — That Is All You Need To Know – Idle Motion

There was barely space to swing Alan Turing’s bicycle in the upstairs space at the Arts Theatre (though they tried) as The Hope Theatre’s performed Snoo Wilson’s Lovesong of the Electric Bear in a quirky and offbeat take on the life of Alan Turing directed by Matthew Parker. Meanwhile, Turing also featured in That Is All You Need To Know at the New Diorama Theatre as Idle Motion performed their Bletchley Park inspired piece of remarkable devised physical theatre for the last ever time.

At the peripheries of the science-theatre genre lie certain plays presenting dystopic but feasible near-future scenarios. In 2015 the Royal Court Theatre’s production of Jennifer Haley’s The Nether asked pressing questions about the boundaries between the online world and reality during a 12 week run at the Duke of York’s Theatre. The Young Vic Theatre played host to Southampton Nuffield’s revival of Caryl Churchill’s A Number, exploring the possible consequences of where human cloning could take us. Science Centre Stage spoke to director Michael Longhurst about the background to the play and how he and Tom Scutt worked together on the striking set design.

Nick Payne's Constellations had a UK Tour in 2015 — Nick Payne’s Constellations had a UK Tour in 2015

The inestimable Tom Stoppard topped and tailed the year with his new neuroscience-inspired play The Hard Problem opening at the National Theatre in January and a revival of the little-performed Hapgood at Hampstead Theatre in December. Hapgood is a spy-thriller drawing on ideas from quantum physics which apparently baffled many who saw the original production in 1988. However, Stoppard has revised the play several times since, including an updated version for the Hampstead Theatre that runs until 23rd January 2016.

The Hard Problem will have its USA premiere from 6th January 2016 at he Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia. Stoppard discussed the play with philosopher David Chalmers, who first coined the term the ‘hard problem’ to address the question of consciousness, on stage recently ahead of the new production.

January 2015 saw the death of scientist and playwright Carl Djerassi at the age of 91. Djerassi’s writing about the relationship between science and theatre was extensive and he wrote many plays, including Insufficiency and Oxygen (with Roald Hoffmann) each constructed around some aspect of science. Despite at times being controversial, and with mixed reactions to his plays, his approach was spirited and there is no doubt Djerassi contributed a great deal to the consideration of the place of science on the stage. Jenny Rohn wrote thoughtfully about her own interactions with Djerrassi in a piece for LabLit in March.

Lisa Dillon as Elizabeth Haploid at the Hampstead Theatre until 23rd January — Lisa Dillon as Elizabeth Hapgood at the Hampstead Theatre until 23rd January

If 2015 was a strong year for science in theatre then 2016 also has some interesting prospects in store. A new play by Nick Payne for the Donmar Warehouse opens in April. The Royal Shakespeare Company will apply their considerable resources and talents to a new version of Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, arguably one of the early depictions of a scientist in theatre. But if Photograph 51, Oppenheimer and The Hard Problem were some of the mainstream successes of 2015, it is the smaller gems that may also be most worth seeking out in 2016.

July 16, 2015August 27, 2015

Q&A with Director Michael Longhurst

Michael Longhurst has directed many critically acclaimed productions, including Nick Payne’s Constellations in the West End and Broadway. Longhurst is an Associate Director at Southampton’s Nuffield Theatre and his new version of Caryl Churchill’s A Number for Nuffield recently transferred to London’s Young Vic Theatre. Science Centre Stage spoke to Michael Longhurst about his views on science in theatre and on how he worked with designer Tom Scutt on the remarkable stage set for A Number.

A Number was first produced in 2002 at a time when cloning was very much in the public conscience (not least because of ‘Dolly the Sheep’). What stimulated you to direct A Number again now?

It’s a play that I had read at drama school and had fallen in love with at that moment. I think the line-by-line writing that Carol makes the scenes out of is extraordinary. I studied philosophy at university and I think the thematic ideas of the play are really interesting. They go beyond and above the idea of cloning and into the idea of personal identity, and beyond and above the idea of nature and nurture and into the idea of freewill and determinism. She is so erudite in packing in so many ideas into a very short, punchy play and it’s an incredibly exciting theatrical premise.

Science is a key enabler in understanding who we are, who we are now and who we are becoming.

Fundamentally, we watch an actor pretend to be more than one version of himself, which is absolutely the most basic part of acting and theatre. It allows us to access the idea of a clone with the same genetics but who behaves differently. I love the simplicity, theatricality and complexity of the ideas it draws on. We were looking for an exciting project for Southampton University (where The Nuffield is based). It has a lot of specialization in biomedicine, so we hoped that it would appeal to some of the audience there. I was working with designer Tom Scutt, who also designed Constellations, and we were excited about the design opportunity to really push a conceptual version of this play in how we staged it. The strength of reaction is one of the major factors that has brought it to life again and brought it into town (at the Young Vic).

A NUMBER by Churchhill , Writer - Caryl Churchill, Director - Michael Longhurst, Designer - Tom Scutt, Lighting - Lee Curran, The Young Vic Theatre, 2015, Credit: Johan Persson/ — John and Lex Shrapnel in A Number, Young Vic Theatre 2015, Credit: Johan Pehrsson

In rehearsals we were looking at the progress of the genetic world and interestingly as science advances there’s nothing that makes the play obsolete. The ideas that Caryl Churchill puts forward in the play are still pressing and they become more pertinent the more familiar we become with genetic advances and possibilities. Crudely, we haven’t yet cloned a human so the play’s not yet out of date. It is still a play that is asking- ‘what if ?’ The fact that we are more aware of the advances, such as being able to edit the human genome means that out idea of it as something that is in the dim and distant future in some dystopian world is being eroded. Our world is getting closer to this and I think that makes the ethical questions of the play present more pressing.

In developing the production did you talk to scientists in the similar manner to the way that you and Nick Payne did with Constellations?

Interestingly, the play never mentions the word cloning. The characters, certainly the clones, aren’t aware of this process. So in some sense it wasn’t something that the characters in the play necessarily understood. It was an opportunity that was offered to the father and that he benefits from and it’s a complete shock and surprise to the son. We did work in rehearsals to try to understand how cloning works, but actually we didn’t go out to meet scientists who are experts in their field because the characters themselves have a lay understanding of cloning, which we supplemented by research in the rehearsals.

How do you go about the process of putting together ideas with stage designer Tom Scutt?

Whenever I enter a design process it feels like there’s what I call top-down and bottom-up work. Top down work asks what are the themes that we are trying to capture? How can we use metaphor? How can we create an environment that has an emotional resonance with what we’re trying to say about the play? And then there’s the practical stuff- the bottom-up stuff – which is what does the play need? A Number actually needs nothing. With two bodies and no props, it frees you from many stage constraints. We decided at Nuffield that we wanted to give the audience a new experience, so we created an installation. We weren’t doing a traditional proscenium arch production of it. We were allowed to play with capacity, and make it an incredibly intimate experience. Tom hit on the idea of using mirrors, which felt like he had very cleanly, profoundly and simply hit upon both the ideas of identity – who are we? – and the idea of a multiplicity of reflections. Often as a director your job is to have these thematic discussions with a designer, and then be brave when they offer you an exciting solution. In a piece of live theatre the actors and audience are sharing a space, and in this instance I put them behind a glass wall and used microphones. But I hope that in addition to the ideas of reflection and identity, it also gives the audience a feeling of watching an interrogation. It’s not dissimilar to when you go to a police line-up through a two-way mirror. I think what that does is tie into the ethical issues, the idea of responsibility, the idea of our agency, the idea of guilt, blame and consequence. I think that all of those were useful social ideas to bring up in a stage design.

Often as a director your job is to have these thematic discussions with a designer, and then be brave when they offer you an exciting solution.

Do you think there is complementarity with Jennifer Haley’s play ‘The Nether’ which literally depicts an interrogation in a near-future science fiction scenario?

Yes, absolutely. Both are taking out technological capabilities and pushing them a little bit further, looking at how humanity will respond if we are able to do those things. And do we like how humanity could respond? And therefore do we want our society to go in that direction? I think that’s the value of all “sci-fi work” is that it allows you to examine the society that we are in through looking at a society we’re not in.

There are productions of A Number that have used test tubes a lot and very heavy scientific aesthetic and I think potentially that might have been interesting when the play first came out – when there was a sort of hype and horror around cloning. Actually what we wanted to do was push our aesthetic into a slightly different place. I put the idea of an interrogation room, which is more about responsibility and ‘blame’.

Did recent public debate and legislative changes surrounding mitochondrial donation influence this new production of A Number?

These advances are having huge gestalt shifts in our thinking, the idea of a three parent family, or the idea of being able to edit our genes are huge. The fact that we can’t achieve it at a certain level doesn’t mean conceptually we’re not on a certain pathway. It seems like as soon as we acknowledge the possibility of editing the genome, then we’re able to correct genetic diseases but we’re also a step nearer to eugenics. That is an important thing that we need to be thinking about.

Do you think the success of plays such as Constellations and A Number indicates a growing place for science in the cultural life?

I have directed predominantly new writing. I love theatre that is exploring who we are and science is a key enabler in understanding who we are, who we are now and who we are becoming. I think a writer who uses science to explore and answer that question can often tap into hugely exciting, revelatory and challenging areas of our humanity. I think as a theatre maker when you have a play that is exploring science, often formally – as is in the case of Constellations and actually in the case of A Number, both of those plays have the form of the play, or at least the theatrical experience dictated by the science. In A Number you’ve got one actor playing several clones. He literally embodies the act of cloning – but it also makes very good theatre. And in Constellations the form of the play was repeated versions of the multiverse. It’s an exciting theatrical provocation for an audience. In the design there’s lots of potential for metaphor. All of these things appeal to me as I’m interested in analytical ways of thinking. I guess it’s a personal preference but I think it’s a really valuable branch of theatre.

Would you argue that science in theatre works best when the science informs the structure rather than the didactic content?

Absolutely. If we’re trying to understand scientific principles there are probably much deeper lectures that one could go to, essays or journals that one could read or documentaries that one could watch. But I think what theatre can do is dramatize emotional consequences of what the science is. It can help us have an emotional understanding and ask the ethical question. Constellations poses what does it feel like to be in a multiverse? Actually, what that does is it makes you realize that I can’t access these other parallel universes, so my choices in this one are all the more precious. And that is the emotional feeling of the play.

I think A Number asks if we could do these things then what would be the ramifications be? What does it mean – this idea that man is born equally? Well genetically he’s not. If we are given these opportunities, how can they be used or abused?

A Number, directed by Michael Longhurst, runs at London’s Young Vic until 15^th August.

The Royal Court Theatre tour of Constellations is at Trafalgar Studios until 1st August.