A_FB_MND_2008_ 60 AFTER couple
Transcript
CA= Catherine Allen (Interviewer)
M= Male audience member
F= Female audience member
Okay so coming out of the tent how do you feel straight away? What are your initial
impressions of the piece?
F: I thought it was absolutely wonderful and magical. And I loved it.
M: When you come out, your head is just full of everything that’s been going on.
CA: [Laughs] Yeah
M: What you’ve seen and what you’ve heard, the whole thing is just brilliant, just
brilliant.
CA: It did sort of appeal to all the senses
M: Absolutely, yeah definitely. You were just caught up in the whole thing the whole
time. You were just lost in what was going on. That was the thing. You didn’t realise
that you were a member of the audience or anything like that. It was just that
everything was just happening as if it was all very real.
CA: How do you think they created that feeling?
F: I think it was just a combination of everything being integrated together like the
different costumes, the music, their lighting, their acting and their same actors taking
different roles and not obvious.
CA: Mmm… yeah, yeah.
M: Well, the masks were wonderful.
F: Masks, yes.
M: That’s one of the things that caught me more than anything. It was just these
fantastic masks and the fact that they do everything themselves. Everybody just chips
in don’t they? Everything that they do, so everything is made by them. I mean its just
such a fantastic venue to do it in.
F: Its very intimate and you are very close, and involved with it and its not like being
in the Albert Hall or something where you are miles away. You are very close up and
involved in it.
M: There is that wonderful tradition of the travelling theatre. They just come as the
whole thing. They don’t just arrive and play at a particular venue. They bring the
whole thing with them so they create an atmosphere before you go in and then their
lovely invitation that the bar is open, just go and enjoy yourself. You just reminisce
and talk about, you know, whats gone on.
F: And also, you get the feeling that this is how theatre might have been centuries ago,
like in Shakespeare’s time. But even longer ago, like in the Greek times. Its like a
little amphitheatre in a way and based in Greece, as you said. So its like a tradition of
being that close, you know, they got a mixer desk and all that, and the rest of it but
that’s not what it relies on.
M: You are not aware of the technology though are you? I think when you are there…
CA: You totally don’t realise.
M: No, you don’t. You think you are part of something that is not of now. And yet,
the message of the play itself, is of now. It has a message that says something to us
but its done it in a way that makes you feel as if its always been like that.
CA: Do you think this feeling they create of a closeness with the masks, and you
being in a another world, do you think that helps bring out certain messages and
themes from the play, that perhaps say, another approach like the Royal Albert Hall
where your miles back, wouldn’t bring out?
F: Yes I do.
M: Yes, yes, yes, yes there is that sense of being very close to whats going on as
opposed to being detached to whats going on.
F: Its like everybody in there was spellbound, I think.
CA: I suppose that makes you feel closer to the magic of Midsummer Nights Dream.
M: They also bring other bits and pieces into it, don’t they? Very modern bits and
pieces. You know, like when he shouts out about the taxi or when someone came in
late, and they said good evening. They are constantly aware of their audience, and
they are doing something for their audience, so theres almost like an interaction, isn’t
there? You feel as if you are part of it, you don’t feel detached it.
F: Definitely everybody is involved, in that relationship, I would say. Not at all
detached, I don’t think anybody would say that.
M: Makes you want to join a travelling theatre!
[All laugh]
CA: You know you were saying about the modern influences, these little hints like
taxi bit… How do you think that added to it, do you think that worked well,
contributed well?
M: Yeah, very much so because it is part of a message about the play itself, having a
modern message, so they are playing it as part of this time even though it’s a play that
was written hundred of years ago.
CA: They are acknowledging that we are in the here and now, but still drawing back
to the past.
F: There is no problem with that at all.
M: Well it adds to the humour of the whole thing, doesn’t it?
CA: Bit pantomime as well, like they do that in pantomimes…
[All laugh]
F: Well they do, they bring it up to date in that way. Because they did things like that,
it stopped it being reverential.
M: Well its not stuffy is it? That’s the thing. You know, its making Shakespeare
relevant and you know, right for now. Its not just a historical play, it is something that
has relevance to us.
CA: So what do you think, say in a year’s time, you will remember most about this
evening and the play?
F: The magic of it.
M: Yes it is. You know, you have been drawn into something but which you feel is
real.
CA: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
M: You know, if you just view it from the outside, you have things that are unreal like
the masks and so on, but you feel as if you are part of a reality and that’s a strange
thing to say.
CA: Mmm, that what magic is really, in a way, isn’t it? A whole separate reality,
yeah.
M: Yeah, yeah.