By BRUCE DENNILL
Empatheatre, in collaboration with The Baxter, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Unruly Natures research project, presents a return, full-length season of Unruly by popular demand. It stars Andrew Buckland, accompanied on stage by jazz performer and composer Chantal Willie-Petersen on double bass. Directed by Neil Coppen, this immersive storytelling performance, based on extensive academic and creative research, explores the coexistence of urban baboons and humans in the fictional town of Skemer Baai, where tensions rise following the mysterious disappearance of a baboon matriarch.
Buckland offers audiences a dynamic performance brimming with humour, compassion and his trademark physical theatre mastery alongside Willie-Petersen’s evocative live music.
In the lead-up to a new production, how do you prepare – physically, mentally and emotionally?
Physically, I need to stay fit and flexible and ready to play, ready to experiment and explore on the floor in a physical way, as much vocally as creatively. There’s quite a strong period of preparation physically just to get the body flexible again and with some level of stamina. This is not a new production – I’ve performed it before – so there’s quite a specific kind of physicality that I work towards, becoming fluent in and familiar with again. Then, it’s important to really bury myself in the in the script to become familiar with the world of the play again as well, because so much of it is not about remembering lines, but to inhabit the spaces between the characters and the world that’s created by their interactions. When it’s a one-man play and you’re playing all of the characters in that world, it needs to really be at one’s fingertips, so it’s a lot of time with the script and then on the floor physically to try and use the time to allow the body and the mind to reinhabit that world.
What is the single most influential performance you’ve ever seen – the one that made you feel, “This is what I want to do with my life!”?
I’m not sure about the most influential, but when I was a student I saw the work of Philippe Jeanty. He performed a work at the National Arts Festival and it was just a revelling in theatricality and the magic, transformative capabilities of space and sound and body, without necessarily a verbal aspect. There was no text – it was mostly visual theatre – but it was certainly one of the most exciting things I’ve seen. Also Cirque du Soleil and a circus called Archaos were kind of seminal moments. But by then I already knew it was clear that this is what I wanted to do with my life!
What is your favourite aspect of the industry – be it specific people, parts of the production process, particular venues and locations, or something else?
I love the rehearsal process. I love being in the rehearsal room and the relationship that you build up with the other performers, with the director and the other creative people in the room. I suppose it relates to the way in which I thought about teaching theatre studies at university, where not everyone was going to be deeply involved in theatre. Only a few really understand the kind of work involved being in the performing arts industry, or have the necessary skills and talent required. I think, though, that theatre should be compulsory for all people. It’s an amazing training in life skills – how to be authentically yourself in any situation, how to relate to other people that you don’t agree with, how to be able to work with and to create a product that hopefully brings light into darkness. I love the activity of theatre and sharing it with an audience that allows us to see each other, to be with each other, in a way that normal life doesn’t offer very often.
What has been your scariest onstage or on-set moment so far – anything from forgetting words or cues to accidents or other unforeseen events?
I don’t know if it fits, but it has to be farting during a silent mime show. I won’t say more than that!
Tell us about your current production and what makes your character interesting to play?
Unruly has been a fascinating project from the start. I had a close friend, Kathy Jago, who was a painter and a quadriplegic towards the end of her life. For her last few years, she lived in Pringle Bay and developed an extraordinary relationship with a troop of baboons there. I visited her often when she was with them and it opened my eyes to this phenomenon of baboons and their relationship with humans. So when Neil and Dylan approached me for Unruly, before they had even finished the words, I was already saying “Yes, I will do it!” It’s given me a chance to explore my fascination, partnered by this extraordinary rigour that Neil and Dylan have for research, their respect for the subject matter and for the people who are sharing their stories. We have created characters, situations, dynamics and relationships, all based on real-life interviews. This has been skillfully crafted into a superb text, the dramaturgy of which is high level, so you feel safe as a performer and it takes the audience on an interesting and unexpected journey. As it’s just me and Chantel on stage, the rhythm of it is in our control, with the storytelling and relationship with the audience very much in our hands. I love that dynamic. The play explores, in a positive, loving and creative way, the dynamic of the relationship between humans and baboons. People talk about baboon/human conflicts and most of the time it’s human/human, because they disagree about the baboons. Baboons are constant: they are a fascinating subject and the people who deal with them are fascinating subjects. The play opens up questions rather than providing answers. It presents possible ways of having empathy with the opposing point of view, so that one can get a broader perspective. This character is interesting because he’s so nicely flawed. It’s great to play these characters of complexity, containing these weird opposites, reconciling them in a way that resembles life, because that’s true of all of us. I feel extremely fortunate to be able to play this game with these players.