Young directors wise up at the Maly
There was a fascinating forum at the Young Vic on Friday afternoon when eight young directors who participated in a Master School in St Petersburg with Lev Dodin of the Maly Theatre reported back to an audience of even younger, less experienced directors.
They were joined on the platform by Young Vic artistic director David Lan and Cheek by Jowl directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, all of whom know Dodin well and understand the nature of his autocratically-run ensemble.
What does a director do? Is he a mere filter between the work and the audience, as one over-sensitive actor once complained to Ken Campbell? “Nah,” replied Campbell, bunching his fist in the thesp’s back and propelling him brutally across the stage: “Go, on , get in there, you bugger…that’s what a director does.”
Campbell used to say there were two kinds of director, whisperers and shouters, and he was definitely a shouter. Most directors, though, are whisperers, and that entails maintaining a creative atmosphere in rehearsals and taking actors gently to one side and having a word in their ears when things are going well or badly.
The young directors had seen a good selection of the Maly repertory, including the astonishing six-hour Brothers and Sisters which made the greatest impression on them and re-defined, as Dan Jones of Sound & Fury remarked, the possibilities of the depths of naturalism in the theatre.
And Natalie Abrahami of the Gate in Notting Hill gave an evocative account of Dodin’s rehearsal methods and the way in which he would address the cast sometimes for hours on end.
The thing about Dodin’s Maly is that it’s rooted in his experience with the drama school, and both Lan and Donnellan concurred with the view (mine as chairman) that it would be an excellent thing if our drama schools were not so “separate” from the profession for which they are preparing their students; but Donnellan also said there was no chance that this would ever change.
There were lively contributions from Joe Hill-Gibbins, associate director of the Young Vic, and freelancers Yael Shavit and Will Oldroyd.
And all agreed that the project, brokered by Anna Karabinska-Ganev’s Gologan Productions, had been invaluable in facilitating this two-way exchange and exposing the young directors to the ideas and practices in one of the world’ great theatre companies.
Donnellan also filled us in on the rather startling “commercialisation” of the Moscow Art Theatre before he and Ormerod set off back to Moscow for another conference, then a holiday on a friend’s yacht in the Baltic Sea.
Essential preparation, I would have thought, for their next Cheek by Jowl show, which will be Macbeth starring Will Keen and Anastasia Hille.
Let’s hope that Anastasia has more luck with Lady M this time than she did at the National many years ago with Alan Howard in a production by Richard Eyre that became known as the “gas ring” version on account of some floor level simmering lighting effects.