L. When did you decide to become a director and what made you take this decision?

T. C. I decided to become a director when I was at Oxford University, I decided because it became clear to me that I was not an actor. I went to Oxford to study Latin and Ancient Greek and like everybody at Oxford who does theatre I was not studying theatre, there was no course in theatre at Oxford, there still isn’t, and I was doing plays in my spare time, or more accurately I was doing plays all the time and I was studying in my spare time. And my friends made it clear to me that I was not an actor, they said “You have to stop, it’s very bad, it’s embarrassing”. So this made a problem for me because I was very happy and I was sure that I knew something about theatre… but they were right. I couldn’t contribute to theatre by acting and I didn’t want to miss meeting all the interesting people. Also the prettiest girls were doing plays so I had to stay in this world somehow, so I became a director.

L. Did you ever think about making films?

T. C. No, not really. There have been one or two opportunities in the past, and there are still one or two floating around, but I never pursue it. If it happens, I don’t suppose I would say no, but it doesn’t interest me particularly. I guess there is enough for one lifetime in the theatre.

L. You’ve done many of SXPR’s plays, what makes you come back to them, what is it like to stage the same play twice, or more? What makes a director come back to a play?

T. C. I think that what makes you come back to a play, of course, is the feeling that you haven’t discovered everything that there is to be discovered in it.

L. And do you think that it is especially the case with SXPR? Because I’ve noticed directors coming back to SXPR all the time; if they’ve done it once, they always go back to it.

T. C. Yes, it’s true, it’s very frustrating, with SXPR, because it slips through your fingers. And this is what I love about it, and what makes it so wonderful is that a play is a different play when you’re twenty, from when you’re forty. So you come back to the same play and it’s completely different, with SXPR. With others, you come back and it’s the same thing as you remembered it. But not with SXPR, they’re always changing. It’s almost as though you leave them alone in the dark and something happens, but you never see what it is. So of course I come back to SXPR, I don’t say it is frustrating as a bad thing, because I think plays should not be able to have their meaning pinned down, and I try not to make my productions possible to pin down. I used to believe in the “orthodox” way of doing plays, which made it somehow the director’s job to understand, interpret and explain the play for the audience, but I don’t believe in that now.

N. Maybe it’s also a British pride, because you remember the western cannon of Harold Bloom, where he said that SXPR was something bigger than Batsheba…

T. C. I think that says more about the decline of the influence of the Bible, than about SXPR’s greatness, and I don’t feel any pride about SXPR just because he was English: my mother is Irish and my father is American.

L. Why do you see “The Odyssey” like a game? What made you imagine it like a game or an experiment that always changes its rules?

T. C. Because I’m increasingly interested in theatre as a game. And I don’t have any problem with the way theatre is done, and I’m not trying to suggest that the usual way of putting on a play – where it is the same every night - is old fashioned or boring, or that I want to destroy it; I don’t want to destroy it, I do that kind of work myself, as well as this, but at the moment I’m interested in the kind of experiments that I’ve been carrying out in England, especially with my company “The Factory”, in unrepeatable theatre. This is a continuation of that exploration, and it seemed to me a particularly fertile source material for an experiment like this, because “The Odyssey” is not a play, it is already something different, something where there is a big question mark about how you could make a dramatic event from it, where you could make a conventional play from it, so instead of trying to solve all those questions, I tried to make all those questions more difficult and more interesting.

N. You talked about “destroy”. I want to tell you about a series of reconstruction, about Mallarme, and he said that beautiful phrase, “la destruction… “

T. C. Yeah, destruction is really not my Beatrice, or in a way it is, because I like to take apart the thing that are always together, and look at them a little bit separately, but when I used the word deconstruct in that context, I only use it in a specific way. It’s good that you asked, because it is very important. Many people see my work and they think that it is somehow a kind of insult or rebuke to every other director. That somehow I’m saying “oh, that’s shit, this is the way to do theatre”. And I just want to be clear that I’m not at all saying that. I like to go and see other directors’ work, and I don’t sit there thinking “oh that’s so boring and old fashioned”. I think that theatre is good when it’s good and boring when it’s boring.

N. But I noticed that you said in the interview for “Gazeta de Sud”, about the “Globe”, a big place where you play, without roof, the spectators are there, and the actors are there, and there is no boundary between them. And it is very important for me to understand, because here, in Romania, maybe you understand something about our directors, our plays, and here there is always a boundary between actors and spectators. You tried to break that boundary here.

T. C. That’s absolutely true. Where I am in my life now, I enjoy breaking that boundary. But I don’t do it to try to teach other directors, I just do it because that’s what I’m interested in.

N. You are familiar, of course, with the famous theory of Addison and Steele, that of the engaged spectator, the spectator that watches while being watched.
T. C. Yes, and this comes from the Elizabethan period. The lords and the rich people actually sat on the stage. The poor people were down in the yard, standing, it is a very interesting picture of that society, you have one thousand people crowded into this space, and they got in for one penny, and then for a few more pennies, you have the people sitting down, and the rich people sitting behind the stage, because that way everyone could see them.

N. For a little money you could obtain the distance.

T. C. And the best seats were those behind the stage, because a) you could be seen by everyone, which was important, and b) you were close to the stage, but far away from the smelly peasants. And the most expensive tickets of all were for the lords, who had a stool put on the stage! They would sit on a stool, among the actors, just watching the action. We can’t imagine that now.

N. Was your meeting with our actors good for you?

T. C. Well, it’s always good to meet a new group of actors and there is another step when they are foreign and they speak a different language and all of this is good for me because it forces me to find a way of stating again my principles and what I’m trying to achieve, as clearly as possible. You can get comfortable if you always play with the same actors and in your own language. All my actors in my company know exactly what I want from them, and I don’t have to say very much, I just give them an exercise and they do it. Nothing I do can surprise them now, I’m sorry to say. When we play “Hamlet”, sometimes I think of an obstacle for them and I tell it to them just before they go on stage and they’re not surprised at all.

L. Was it difficult for the actors to understand what you were asking from them? I know that is was something new for them.

T. C. I don’t know if it’s very new to them, the problem is that it’s not good somehow if I explain it all at the beginning, and I think that’s very hard for them

L. Because you’re taking them out of their comfort zone …

T. C. Sure, but also because they can see that in a way I’m not being honest with them. Because they can see that I know more than I am telling them. But it’s not that I’m trying to be dishonest, or that I’m trying to be manipulative. I just know it’s not good to tell them everything that is in my head at the beginning.

L. Do you think that there is a problem with actors, that after a while they forget to be students, that they have to learn constantly?

T. C. The problem with actors everywhere, and it’s not just in Britain, in Romania, or in any other places I’ve worked, is that all actors are in terrible danger, as soon as they go into the profession, of thinking that their creativity is of no use to anyone, and therefore they begin to lose faith, they think that all that is required from them is to bring along their skills and their obedience and their professionalism. And of course, I want all those things, even obedience, because you need that in a group, but I also want their imagination, and their energy, their creativity, and I want their naughtiness. I think all actors are in danger of losing the use of these things, and it’s not their fault, it’s the way theatres are set up.

L. Do you think that it’s also the public’s fault, because of what they want to see, what they ask for? Do you think that the public must be educated?

T. C. I think “educated” is a word I would avoid, because I don’t like the idea of educating anyone, but what I think is that the audience have already been educated into accepting something that is dead. They have been educated to pretend that they believe what they are seeing is alive. I go to a great many shows, in Britain especially, and I hear a sound that is like laughter, but I know that it’s not real. I know that they’re laughing not because they thought it was funny, but because they feel that they must. But fundamentally people aren’t fooled, and this is why too many people go to the theatre from a sense of duty, and I don’t want anyone to come to my shows because they feel that they ought to go. So I would say that what is needed is “de-education”. It’s like taking people out of a cult and de-brainwashing them. Teaching them that their honest response is valid, and that if they’re bored, they can leave. And if they find it irritating, they should say so, not pretend they like it just because it’s SXPR and everybody told them it’s the best thing ever.

L. What is, in your opinion, a true actor?

T. C. In my opinion, a true actor is someone who is really willing to forget about himself and to put all his focus on what is happening outside.

L. Do you think that’s possible? Getting out of yourself and become your character?

T. C. It’s got nothing to do with becoming a character, I don’t believe in becoming a character, I think that becoming a character is not looking outward at all, it’s looking inward, and I want to avoid that. I think it is possible to forget yourself if you remember what you were like as a child when you didn’t know that you existed, you only knew that the world existed and that it was incredibly interesting

L. How important is it for the actors to communicate directly with the audience?

T. C. I don’t think it’s necessary for them to communicate directly with the audience in every kind of play. But I do think there is a spirit behind that impulse - to address the public directly - that’s very powerful even if you’re doing a play where there is no opportunity to address the audience directly, like in modern plays, by (say) Harold Pinter, that don’t have any soliloquies. It is an impulse to pull away from something that, for me, is the cause of a lot of bad acting: the mental energy that is spent trying to believe that everything I, the actor, am doing is true. Now, we know that all theatre is based on accepting something that isn’t true; but that is not the same thing as believing it. The audience doesn’t believe these things are happening, nor do they have to believe it, they just have to accept it as a proposition. And I think that the actor who tries very hard to believe is putting himself through a lot of stress for no reason. Similarly the actor who puts himself in the position of trying to believe that he is in a room with only one other person and that there aren’t two hundred people watching, is also wasting a lot of mental energy. So I suppose I would answer the question by turning it around and saying: why should anyone pretend that this room is not the room we are in, including the people who are in it with us?

L. Tell us about your experiences with puppets and with opera. What led you towards them?

T. C. With puppets I was very lucky because I stumbled into them while doing opera. I can’t claim that it came from a wonderful motivation or epiphany. I was doing a show called “Acis and Galateea” in which – curious “Odyssey” connection – the Cyclops Polyphemus appears, and he is a giant, and then it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t do anything to make Polyphemus a giant; maybe instead the other characters could become puppets. And that was a “neat” solution to my problem. That’s all it was. I had no idea what would happen. I just thought it would be charming. When it first happened at a rehearsal that we used these puppets and one of the puppets was killed by Polyphemus, it was a very shocking moment. It changed the way I’ve worked ever since. Because everybody in the room was suddenly in tears, watching this little puppet die. And it was so much more powerful than watching an actor do it. And at the end we were all speechless and wondering how that had happened, and luckily the person who had made the puppets and was operating them has become a very good friend of mine and she has explained to me some of the principles of how they work. And from that day I realized that I needed to work with puppets more, and to find out more about them. I am still very much an amateur. But I love working with them, I love the way that they teach actors so many good lessons about being completely forgetting about themselves.

L. What about opera?

T. C. Well, opera was a complete accident in my life. I was doing a production of “The Tempest” in a prison in ’93, where all the actors except for Prospero were prisoners. And there were only four performances, of which only one was for anything remotely like members of the public, and even then they were invited friends or family of the prisoners. So I assumed that nobody would ever hear about this production. And then I got a letter a couple of weeks later from the artistic director of Kent Opera and he said “I read about your work in the newspaper and I phoned the prison and they let me come and watch and I thought it was rather remarkable and I want you to come and direct an opera for me.” So I went to meet him and we talked and he said he wanted me to do this opera by Benjamin Britten and I said “I don’t think I should.” And he said “why not?” and I said “Well, for one thing, I don’t usually go to the opera, and, for another, when I do see it I usually don’t like it”. And he said “the first is not a problem, and the second is an advantage”. Just like that. So he gave me the CD and he said “listen to the music. If you find that you respond to the music, then you should say yes”. So I did, and I accepted the job, and it was a big success. And that’s how it all started, and this year I get to direct my favorite one, which is “The Magic Flute”.

N. Is your Odysseus an old soldier, „so sad and overwhelmed with terrible feelings” like in Umberto Saba’s poem, or a forever-wanderer in the seas of imagination?

T. C. We don’t have just one Odysseus, but only one Penelope. The principle on which Homer made his poem was the principle of the “fixed” and the “flowing”. So there’s that which moves, and that which is still. There are certain moments in Homer, like the moment in the “Iliad” when Hector looks down on his little child, and the child is frightened by Hector’s helmet, and he and his wife laugh – you read such a moment, and immediately 3000 years disappear.

N. What can you tell us about what in Great Britain is called „in-your-face-theatre”? What about the post-traumatic theatre that only now, after a few stagings of Sarah Kane’s plays, finds a place in Romania? Are you interested in something like that?

T. C. I’m not uninterested in it, but the plays of Howard Barker are more the kind of “in-your-face-theatre” that I am interested in, because they are very difficult to watch, so cruel and violent, but they are also incredibly beautiful and poetic. And the difference between Barker and Sarah Kane for me – and it’s only my taste – is that the way Barker does “in-your-face-theatre”, at the end of all the horror, I come out of the theatre and, for reasons I don’t understand, I really want to live, whereas when I come out of Sarah Kane theatre, I don’t have that feeling.

N. Do you think it’s a nihilistic theatre?

T. C. I don’t know, to be honest I think that Sarah Kane’s theatre is unformed. She might have become a great writer, but for me she’s very much an immature artist.

L. Tell us about your company, “The Factory”.

T. C. I am almost the oldest guy there, and the guys that run “The Factory” are both 28, and I’m 43, so they call me “dad”. The company is very young, and it is working on the principle of being as free as possible, free from conventional theatre spaces, free from conventional theatre processes, and free from theatre economics.

N. What about your experience here in Craiova? What are your expectations for this project?

T. C. For me, the exciting thing is to do work where I really don’t know what will happen. If I do a production of a SXPR comedy for the RSC, I know - within a very small band of variation - how the audience will respond. With something like my project here, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know what will happen. What I’m interested in is to see how its audience will respond to the challenge.