Matthew Dunster - Interviews at the Young Vic

Matthew Dunster has had a great success with his production of Joe Penhall's decade-old play Some Voices in the Studio space at the Young Vic. His work grew from a central commitment of the Young Vic under artistic director David Lan, to train and develop a new generation of theatre practitioners with a special emphasis on the art and craft of directing. The success of the production was such that it was extended until 10 April 2004 - and was a total sell-out for every performance. Mel Cooper met with Matthew Dunster at the Young Vic before one of the performances during the run.

Matthew Dunster had come over to the Young Vic to see how the performances of Joe Penhall's Some Voices stood the test of time. The play had opened officially a week before, after a previews period, in the Young Vic Studio - a black box room of flexible seating that had places for an audience of about 100 in the present configuration. Matthew was working as an actor at the National Theatre, part of the company of David Hare's play, The Permanent Way. He has also, in the past, written very successfully for the theatre. We met before the play in a small conference room at the Young Vic - a building first constructed in the 1970s of breeze block and industrial glue that is finally going to be reconstructed over the next year and a half.

I asked Matthew if, now that he had had such a successful taste of directing a play, this would become his paramount activity.

He sipped on his coffee thoughtfully and then began, "I like to do all the other stuff. Really, I've learnt about directing from having fantastic experiences as an actor with some great directors. I've also learned about directing having some horrific experiences as an actor. I'm working as an actor with a wonderful director at the moment - Max Stafford Clark on David Hare's play The Permanent Way at the National. Working on that has been a real learning curve in terms of precision and simplicity."

I wondered if there was one director he would like to single out as having been a major influence on his approach to directing.

"The director who I think I've learned the most from is Richard Wilson. His approach boils down to: just keep it simple, don't get in the way. I did two shows with him at the Royal Court - a show called Toast and a show called Under the Whaleback, both by the same writer, and they were both wonderful experiences. With Richard, it's quite an invisible process. I don't know if you know but he went to RADA quite late and before that he was a lab technician. And I think there's something in his process that reflects that. He knows when to add a little bit of this or a little bit of that, like adding chemicals in an experiment until he gets what he wants. It's like a mixture of titration and then setting a flame under everything to boil off the excess. It's a kind of distilling process with Richard. He's a kind of ideal I keep in my head."

"You've also had quite a run as a writer," I pointed out. "Have you had any specific mentors in that field?"

Matthew told me that where he had trained they were encouraged within their degree to try all three major disciplines - acting, directing and writing. They are all creative activities and it seems to have been an effort to explore the creativity of each of the students. "To be honest, when I first left, my first three or four jobs were writing jobs. I won a competition when I graduated where the prize was a professional production of your play. For me, writing actually picked up pace before the acting. And then I started doing a lot of acting work.

"But I had had a couple of experience where I wasn't entirely satisfied with productions of what I had written. And although I wouldn't want to direct anything I myself had written - because I think that you lose a big part of the developmental process there, that the outside editing force of the director that is crucial - those two not-so-great experiences coupled with working as an actor with Richard, and watching Richard work, led to my thinking 'I can do that'. It's only common sense. From Richard I realized that it is simply that you have to look after the actors and look after the play. It's only common sense. It's not rocket science.

"That's how I started doing it on the Fringe. And David Lan saw one of the first things I did. That was, of course, entirely because I'd just done something with him as an actor - so he was one of the people I managed to mug and convince to come and see the show. We had done a rehearsed reading for the Court together and David directed it and I felt we got on so I asked him to come and see this show. And he said to me afterwards, 'We don't really have any money for the Studio for directors, but as soon as we do, I'm going to ask you to come and do something there, and work and train with us.'

"You know what it's like in the theatre, you get those sorts of half-baked promises all the time. But David was true to his word. And when I was acting in the Daughter-in-Law a couple of years ago, one of his shows here at the Young Vic, he told me one day, 'We've got the money now - Genesis is funding a whole Young Directors programme for us! So let's do it!' It was great. Great in lots of ways - including that he remembered and kept his word."

The Genesis Directors Project at the Young Vic was launched just over a year ago as a two tiered programme. There's a programme that is for directors with little or no experience. You can enter the programme and become part of the network simply by filling in the relevant form on the Young Vic web site or by making contact through your local drama clubs, schools, whatever. Then there is another tier which you can either work your way into or which you can enter immediately, depending on your background. That is for young professional directors as opposed to young directors who are still aspiring to be professional.

Matthew was put straight in the second tier. "And we would meet up every Tuesday with David and it was very democratic. How many we were depended on how lucky people were in terms of paid work. On a good day there could be as many as 20 of us. Sometimes we were as few as five. Rufus Norris and other really good working professional directors were there. Maybe not in years, or in terms of my actual age but in terms of professional experience, I felt very much like the baby of that group. Iit was very exciting and stimulating being in this programme and we all really did learn all the time. The rule was that you couldn't let the directors who were doing the acting solve the problems. You had to direct. So David wouldn't let me do any of the directing by demonstrating as an actor. The rule was: Don't demonstrate. It was great to have to direct David Lan and Rufus Norris in a scene together, for instance.

It seemed to me that it must have been intimidating to be a fledgling, student director working out ideas and approaches upon colleagues who were so experienced already in that field.

"No, not at all," Matthew replied. "Because whoever was up on their feet performing was always a million times more terrified than I was trying to direct. It was nice for me as an actor to watch directors going through that experience. I personally think it's a shame that more directors don't arrive at that point via the route of acting. It keeps it more practical! In the culture of British theatre a lot of directors take a much more academic role, are more like dramaturges on the continent. They know how to analyse a text, look at the poetry, the structure and so on. I think that our wider theatre culture would be healthy if more people had those two, acting and directing. Richard Wilson has those two. A lot of directors can often see the problems but they can't always help you solve them. But what you want as an actor to solve the problem is someone who can see what the technical possibilities are - and simplicity. 'Say it quicker. Stand over there to say it and it will carry better.' Also, you want to feel that the director is having his ideas in the room with you. You don't want to feel that he had his brilliant ideas in the flat the night before through intellectual analysis and now he deigns to share it with you. You just want something simple you can hang your more complicated ideas on."

I was reminded that there is the famous story about Katharine Hepburn when she was filming The African Queen and could not understand how to play the role. John Houson, according to Hepburn, only gave her one piece of direction - but it was the key to everything. "Kate," he told her, "just be Eleanor Roosevelt." Matthew said that that was exactly the kind of directing he was talking about - and what he himself tried to do to help the actors.
Since the curtain was going up in about 15 minutes, we decided to talk about Some Voices. I asked Matthew why he had settled on this play for his first major exposure in London as a director, an exposure that was bound to bring him to the attention of the national critics.

"David and I come from very different places," he explained, "so I must have read more plays in that period than ever before in my life. The point was to see if we could find a play that we both believed was satisfactory within the wider remit of the Young Vic as a company with its own identity. The Young Vic exists at the moment on brilliant lost plays that are being revived in a very contemporary way. That's David's genius, to find these plays and make them speak again to today's young audiences. So we were looking to stay within that model. We also had to make sure that within that model we had only three or four cast members because of the Studio space and the resources and money we had at our disposal. That makes it all more difficult because that sort of theatrical economy is a much more recent thing.

"I work with this same designer all the time, a woman called Anna Fleischle. So to begin with we looked at a lot of German plays. There's a part of directing that I don't understand until I read a play and I get an instinct for that specific text. But once I understand it enough to know I want to do it, then Anna will design something and I still have problems and she'll do two and three designs and that helps me understand the play and what can be done with it, what it is trying to say to us. So it was payback time, really, to work with her on this and to do something German if possible. But we struggled. I liked things David didn't and vice versa. And then he offered me a play that I just couldn't get along with. It was a big thing for me to say "No" to doing that play because I knew it was a play he definitely wanted to do in the Studio and I feared it might be the end of my opportunity once he gave it to another director in the programme - which, of course, he did.. And then David said to me, 'Read Some Voices! It was a play I knew but it was one I never thought we could do because it's only ten years old. And then I re-read it and I said, 'Yes, I've got to do this one!'- and it felt important that it was actually ten years, an anniversary that made sense. So it's the tenth birthday production and that's how we got here.

Matthew told me that once the play opened, his favourite review said that this play is about insanity, society and love but in Matthew Dunster's production it comes out mainly as a play about love. For Matthew, there are a lot of love stories in this play, and they're unusual and delicate and sometimes they're hard to find, not just for the audience but for the people that are involved in the love stories. I found Matthew's production of the play an extraordinary achievement for everyone concerned. The set is almost another actor in the production and all the production values are of the highest quality, incredibly evocative and stimulating of the imagination. The acting of every role is pitch perfect. I asked Matthew if he had gone into the playing knowing how powerful it was.

"I loved it, but I really only discovered that in the rehearsals. I didn't think that at first. David's instinct was that it was always about love. Mine was that it was about the metropolis and how unforgiving it is for certain members of society. I thought it was a brilliant play about London. And that's when I decided I wanted to do it. But I thought it was a wonderful play about this and David thought it was a wonderful play about that. Then I thought, well, if it's a wonderful play about those two things, it's just a wonderful play. And it's also absolutely about mental illness too. It's very rich."

We discussed the sad fact that the social relevance of the play has not diminished over the past decade.

"Ten years on we're not any longer part of a Conservative regime that set up all this care in the community stuff, but it feels as if it was written yesterday. You still see these people in the streets. You don't feel that any of these people are being better looked after or understood or that anything has really moved on. So I think it's a great tribute to the play that the only thing dated was that in one scene when a phone rings, I felt it should be a mobile phone and not a landline. None of the actors had a problem with making that ten year leap. So it is still important socially - and it is depressing that it sits so comfortably in 2004."

I asked Matthew if it was good for him to be working as a director on one play while working as an actor on another.

Matthew laughed and told me, "It was good financially. That was definitely useful. I wouldn't want to repeat the experience but it happened that both opportunities came when they did and neither was one that I wanted to miss. And by the time we started rehearsing Some Voices I'd been doing The Permanent Way for four or five months. The play at the National was a good place to go every evening because it stopped me thinking about Some Voices - it became my meditation if you like. Also we were in rep so it wasn't non-stop. And it will still be occupying me after Some Voices closes.

As we finish the The Permanent Way, I have the opportunity to go to the Drama School at Manchester Metropolitan University to direct London Cuckold, which I chose. It's so not me! But Noel Coward said, 'Never come out of the same foxhole twice,' so I think it would be good for me to do something people don't expect. That's the only way you learn, so that's next.

"Some Voices has been an extraordinary positive experience. It feels unreal too because I could have had the same experience and terrible reviews. The experience could have been the same but the reception could have altered my perception of it. I hope that I am not just reacting this way because the reception has been so good, that I would still see it is as a positive learning experience if the reception had been less positive. But I knew that this cast would be great and I meant what I said earlier, I do think it is a terrific play. I do think the rules are simple: don't get in the actors' way and don't let the actors get in the way of the play.

"I try not to get in their way and I try to give them simple solutions and I feel they have worked together like a real team to tell the story of this play so beautifully. As a director, you have to give them the support and confidence to do what they need to for the play. I spend a lot of time reading the plays with the actors but there is no substitute for knowing the play. Read and read and ask the questions and read and ask the questions. And not until I'm ready to stand up do we stand up, and then it blocks itself very, very quickly because they know so much about who their characters are and what the play needs and all the decisions they make are the right decisions."

We got up, threw away our cardboard coffee cups and started making our way through the maze of corridors and collapsing walls that make up the current backstage area of the Young Vic. Matthew kept musing about his luck at being included in the Genesis Directors Project.

"I've never heard of anything like this training before," he told me. "So many institutions are dedicated to the next great writers, the young writers, or the next great generation of actors; but mainly, these days, in the British theatre the focus is always about the play itself. It's almost embarrassing to think that it's only now that David Lan and Genesis have decided to look directly at that other, vital part of the machine. It's been very successful already the way it supports the work of directors and their growth so closely. I think every director I know involved in this scheme has gathered strength from the experience. They are also much more confident about their professionalism and their understanding of the directorial role vis-a-vis the actors and the play scripts."

As we stopped in the Young Vic restaurant to make our separate ways to the theatre, I asked Matthew if he had any suggestions of what might be needed to make Genesis Directors an even richer experience for young directors like himself.

He did not hesistate. "I'd like to see this project make plays with directors more in the European tradition of the workshop experience, something that is director led and ideas led and develops out of the work. Projects like the old Royal Court play, Fanshen." And he was off to see his play.

Matthew started his involvement in the theatre at school. He had an English teacher who did all the school plays and who was much loved by the students. Matthew felt that he really did not want to get into the acting 'scene' at all, but he had to do a lot of reading out in class and the teacher asked him if he'd be interested in playing in Kes. He was about 14 at the time and was being offered the part of the bully. So Matthew read the play and agreed. It was as simple of that. From that moment on, he was bitten by the bug. He was in the same class as Paul Hilton, who is now also an actor - they both started in the same school at 14 and continued to work together over the next seven years. Even when they left school, Paul and Matthew stayed involved in an acting group run by his former English teacher. And after going their separate ways to study, they ended up playing brother in the D. H. Lawrence play, The Daughter-in-Law, at the Young Vic.

When Matthew left school, he went to work as a debt collector for Northwest Water, he told me on a subsequent occasion. "I had a great time between schools. I spent three years in Manchester. I was there at the time of the Summer of Love and all the rest of it and I was earning a lot of money. I kept my hand in with this group we formed as an offshoot of our school group when we left. And because of my continuing to do acting work, I met two young directors, Polly Teale and Ian Rickson. One now is an artistic director of Shared Experience and one now runs the Royal Court Theatre. They saw me during the festivals, so during those three years they brought me down to London. I did three shows and that kept my hand in. I had an unbelievably understanding boss at Northwest Water who gave me unpaid leave when I needed to come do these things. Then after three years he just said to me I had to make my mind up, I could not carry on dabbling in both. So I went to an acting course and that was the start of the next chapter. When I left drama school both as a writer and more as an actor, Ian was an associate at the Court already and he was able to open a lot of doors for me. They made a real investment in me and that's humbling."

But, as I have seen for myself at the Young Vic Studio, and as many others have now seen too, the investment was definitely worth making. And the Genesis Directors Project is doing what it set out to do - bringing the next generation of directors to the attention of a wider public and giving them a springboard at the earliest, most crucial stage of their professional career.

Credits for: SOME VOICES
by Joe Penhall
March - 10 April 2004, Studio at the Young Vic
A Young Vic production

Direction Matthew Dunster
Design Anna Fleischle
Lighting Drew Pautz
Sound Jules Maxwell

Actors
Tom Brooke
Daniel Cerqueira
Louis Dempsey
Dorothy Duffy
Roger Frost