Jesse is an actor, playwright, director and an East 15
alumnus. He is Artistic Director
of Bear Trap Theatre Company. His
play Bound has won various awards
including Edinburgh Fringe First in 2010 and has been performed throughout
England and abroad.
For more on Jesse and Bear Trap please visit http://www.bear-trap.co.uk/.
Follow on twitter@youbigjesse
Jesse Briton
March 1st 2012
1pm
Bristol Old Vic
What are you working on at the moment?
I’ve got a couple of pieces I’m doing through the company
Bear Trap. One we’ve been
developing for a year and half.
Largely a family drama, part historical epic, set during the first
crusades. It’s that classical
story telling which we try and make intimate, things we use visually, music as
well. This time we are working
with a cellist. We are also doing,
in contrast to that, quite starkly, a one woman autobiographical show, partly
in the welsh language and partly in English, which is about our designer, Bud who
designed Bound. She comes from a
long family of farmers in Wales.
It’s been in the family 300 years. So she’s becoming a theatre designer,
her sister has become a workshop/website designer, and there’s no one to
continue on the farm and essentially she feels a lot of guilt cause her
decision signs the death of that farm.
It started off with that as the idea for the piece, we devised it. With
first crusade piece I am writing it and directing. With this piece I am
devising it with Bud and directing.
What are some of the advantages/disadvantages of being
both playwright and director on the same project?
There’s always the issue of distancing yourself from the
project, particularly if you’re writer and director. You’re almost ‘god’… whatever you say goes. It can be like that. I try to refrain from being like that
when im directing and give the cast as much leeway on the text as
possible. And be gracious with how
much I let them improvise and let things spill over. Its important, especially with a piece like Bound, which is an ensemble drama and requires a lot of
fast interconnecting stuff and they need the freedom to spill over the
text. One of the things that being
an actor gives me is a sympathy for actors, a love of actors. When im working on a project I’ve
written and directed there’s the potential you don’t give the actors much
freedom and retain for yourself and allow yourself that width of depth and
ideas and don’t neccesarily share with them. It becomes very close to you, its obviously difficult to see
things objectively. I find you can
become defensive when there noone else to share the blame.
Who or what inspires you.
I never intended to be a writer. I enjoyed creating my own
work, but never really thought it was a possibility or an option to do and
certainly not end up coming to the Old Vic from Somerset. In the world of new writing, it feels
like the plays that are being written and produced are actually quite narrow. I
think that’s partly dictated by those institutions, which supports new writing
for example, the Royal Court or any of those lovely theatres. As a young
writer, you have to write a certain style. I don’t feel what I write fits in
very naturally in to that. I’m quite obsessed with classical. I’m not really
interested in people who have real angst, inner emotions, domestic
violence/abuse, all that troubled stuff. It’s never really interested me. I’ve
always been interested in telling more archetypal stories. There is nothing
really original about that. The stage I’m at, I really enjoy not borrowing, and
not stealing, but looking back. I’m obsessed with history. I’m particularly
interested in what’s human, funny or quite tragic, and how very quickly they
turn. It’s particularly interesting, very strong comedy, and very strong
tragedy, that actually they’re incredibly close. That within great tragedy we
see some thing which is very human.
I have trained as an actor, and as a theatre maker. The majority of the work which I go and
see, is devised work. I follow companies like Complicite. When they were developing Master and
Margarita, they called a load of people to work shop it, I was lucky enough to
be called in. I spent a few days
working with Simon (McBurney) and it was incredible for me. Simon is like a
demi god almost within the British theatre.
What is the best advice you have been given?
From Uri Roodner who trained me, “If you don’t run no one
would follow you”. Uri is a really wonderful man,
gives quite cryptic advice. That was a particular one for me. In my early parts
of training, I was a very nice young man and was very interested in every one
having a good time, creating theatre together. What that meant was we never got anywhere, and he said that
to me. I was called in by the acting tutors with all the other people who were
struggling and weren’t very good with attitude problems and all the rest of it.
I thought I was doing all right and they said, you are working here,
which is where every one else is working, but you’ve got the potential to be
working…. here. And at the time I thought
what’s the problem with that? I’m doing what every one else is doing? What’s
the problem? I think, and this is perhaps another long conversation, about our
British education system, society, and our culture. I was a state educated
school kid. Almost afraid of
really taking opportunities that I wanted to, and as soon as he hammered that
into me, I kind of went through quite a painful process, well I’m going do what
I want, I’m going to stop being so democratic in how I create work. I had just
been treading water, as soon as I took that decision, I went BOOM.
Dream projects?
I‘ve got two views on this. One which is a very kind of glib
answer to, is just do your dream project. If it’s a dream project you probably
never get a round to doing it. Just do the thing you want to do in that moment.
Like for example the piece I’m working on, is a piece which I really love, and
desperate to put on, set in the first crusades. Which is a huge effort. You should always put your self under
pressure to do the project you really want to do at that moment. And absolutely
trust in it.
Second view is on films. Bristol old Vic is my nearest theatre but it’s about forty
five minutes drive away. Growing up in Somerset there was really no theatre in
the area and I grew up watching films at the cinema. Wells has got a tiny
little independent run cinema, I went to religiously. There something in me, where by I want to test myself in
that medium as well and would really love to have a crack at that.
Best directorial note?
When an actor is not doing very well, I tell them, “Do it
like Daniel Day Lewis would do it.” As soon as I give that instruction,
their performance gets better. It’s funny… it never fails to. If you use it in
a serious situation, it ejects a kind of note of lightness. People know what you are talking about.
It’s committing. Daniel Day Lewis
commits straight away, it’s that intensity which we are partly mocking but need
to manufacture, for yourself…this is my intense work on acting and
theatre. It has been accused by people from different
countries, that British actors only act from the neck up. It’s the way we go about learning
acting, it’s all psychological, and we separate it. People are entirely disconnected from their bodies. We’ve
got an actor in the current company, who has never trained and he’s on par with
everyone else in the company that have come from top drama schools. There is
something which is just …. about
not acting. I don’t think there is any thing really you have to do. It’s just
listening. If you are really
listening to what some one is saying, if you really hear it, everything takes
care of itself. The directors
should think as much as they can. They should go away and just think. But
actors should be in the moment, just living and listening.
Final question. Is the director dead?
I don’t think the director’s dead. On your blog, you’ve got lots of older, much more
experienced directors. And this is very presumptuous, but I think directing is
actually very simple. It’s a balance. I try and give as much authority to the
performers that is humanly possible.
The cult of the director has become unhealthy. Everyone has gone to see
shows where the ideas the directors had, killed the show and killed the actor’s
natural playfulness. We see the
director being somebody of overall charge. And I don’t see that. I see it as
being the person helping the actors on to the stage. There is the point when
the actors must ultimately own it. For me that’s the most important thing.
Quite often it feels like a director owns the production, or a writer owns a
production. I don’t think the
directors dead. I think that role
still exists, but it must evolve.
Thanks Jesse for sharing your thoughts!
“Error is not just acceptable, it is necessary for the
continuation of life, provided it is not too great. A large error is a
catastrophe, a small error is essential for enhancing existence. Without error,
there is no movement. Death follows.” -Jacques Lecoq
