Interview about Veil with Bob Frith, Artistic Director of Horse + Bamboo Theatre.

(Interviewer Richard Hall/copyright: Horse + Bamboo Theatre 2007)

 

Well, there’s more awareness of other theatre practice, actually an awful lot more. Remember that my background was as a visual artist, and my performance work grew out of my painting, printmaking and sculpture work rather than knowledge of, or even a passion for, theatre. In fact it was only after several years of creating shows at Horse + Bamboo that I really felt myself to be working in ‘theatre’, and even now I still feel slightly fraudulent when I find myself working in a conventional theatre environment.   

For the first dozen years or so Horse + Bamboo undertook scores and scores of projects – fire theatre pieces, community plays, ceremonies, street shows, residencies, work with people who have special needs, with refugees, tours…we tried everything. It was a great way to learn just what worked and what didn’t, and gradually we honed things down to the things we enjoyed and the things that interested us. This always involved masks, but it slowly became clear to me that what I really wanted to do was to create scripted visual narratives.

I used to perform - but slowly I withdrew in order to direct, to have an outside eye. The process of directing was something I had to learn, and continue to learn, and as I did the role of writer also began to interest me more and more.  

 Actually it’s the thing I mentioned before – the challenge of creating a sustained narrative; the challenge of creating something as rich, complex, structured and meaningful as the best written drama, but using a formal world of images and music.

I see a lot of visual theatre that has absolutely stunning, really breath-taking, moments but I don’t see much that has the density and structure of the best written pieces – or of the best cinema, or story or song-writing. I’m excited about creating a non-verbal theatre that is on a par with these things – brilliant, intelligent, rich storytelling.    

 They’re not salt and pepper, but essential tools that enable us to create a sophisticated but visual narrative. I’m still very excited by masks, by the surprise of what they do, by their essential mystery – they shouldn’t work, they should limit expression but they don’t. They release their magic by, I think, acting on and through our imaginations. It’s the same thing I see when my young son plays with his toy cars – they are actually far more exciting to him than real cars and trucks; they enable him to create his own world and stories – in fact they become realer than real.

I think the formal approaches we use, usually dictated by the fact of using masks and puppets, place our work closer to dance or opera than to drama. The very formality, the artifice, can be very freeing.  

I don’t approach things theoretically; in fact I have very few rules about mask-work or puppetry. I try to keep things fresh, and respond to what I see happening on stage – what looks good, what communicates. I’m usually very clear about what I want to achieve on stage, what I want something to say, and whether it says it directly or obliquely, but I’m very open to how this is achieved.

 Many things. Some are formal, and they follow on from wanting to develop things I discovered in ‘Company of Angels’ (the last middle-scale H+B show);  in particular the epic quality of that production and the setting of a story over a period of time.

I also wanted to understand more than I did about the current situation in the Middle East. I tend to use writing for theatre as an opportunity to learn more about the subject, and I felt signally lacking in understanding much about the relationship between the Islamic world and the west.

I have already learned a lot from the process of writing Veil; not necessarily what I thought I would learn. It’s complex; it’s subtle; it’s daunting. I haven’t written a diatribe, at least in the contemporary sense of an attacking piece, but I think something closer to the original meaning of diatribe – a debate that rubs at the subject. I like that idea – a theatre piece that rubs away at the subject.

They are the characters through which the central story develops, and the characters that I identify with. I think these young women are the characters the audience will be drawn to.

 I find it hard to think of people as Christians or Muslims, even if they prefer to define themselves in this way.

 Debate? Actually isn’t there a kind of natural compromise in place? And I’m pretty happy with that compromise for now; I really don’t see any other choice. 

 Anyone who wears glasses, sunglasses, a toupee or hairpiece, uses make-up, grows a beard or moustache, or has false teeth.