Dj SpinOza talks Chekhov

He looks relaxed. The beard is more ragged than usual, and he hesitates when he speaks. He gesticulates wildly, of course, his hands betraying his anxiety that he might simply have created something that already existed. It is the danger of the autodidact, to expend energy on reinvention through ignorance.

'Come on, then,' he laughs. 'I'm ready to be grilled.'

I wanted to ask you about the name you've given to the work.

Post-visual theatre? Or Uncle Vanya in Dub? That's easy: I took a version of Chekhov's play, and dropped it into music. And some of it is dubstep, but the dub record, in reggae, is one for the dancehall. And I did that with my Text.

I was thinking about post-visual theatre. Inventing a genre is pretty bold, and isn't this just a radio play?

No - radio plays are still about the script being performed. I took a pre-recorded text of Uncle Vanya, and treated it as music - editing it, distorting it. This isn't a play, in the sense that its foundation was a soundfile, not a script.

There is a clear punk aesthetic though, with a dash of Duchamp. All the material used counts as a ready-made, and was put together with common technology. Punk has been mistaken for a sound - you know, loud guitars, shouting - but it is an ethos. Use what is available, do it yourself.

But the visual part - there are no visuals at all.

I'm inspired by Wagner's idea of total theatre... immersive performance too, which seems to be its natural successor. I was working on a visual theatre festival, manipulate, when we tried to decide what the genre meant. I see certain work, say David Harrower's Ciara as not being visual, because they are all about the voice and the words. He strips back set and movement, even presence of the actor.

But the bottom line is that all theatre is visual to some extent, except the radio play. And while this is not a radio play, it exists as audio. So the post prefix denotes that although it is influenced by visual theatre - and here I mean Dance Theatre, puppetry, works that contain video and so on, it has no intrinsic visual element. Yet.

Think of it like a soundtrack, only the video part is whatever you look at while listening. It does bear some similarities to electro-acoustic composition, in terms of the actual sound, especially in Act II.

How about that prefix, then?

I get to see a lot of what is called post-dramatic theatre. Lately, it has got into a rut, laying out all of its elements in order, encouraging contemplation on the form, not the content. Well, like the post-dramatics, I share a willingness to deconstruct theatricality, and challenge what 'theatre' is. And I like to make narrative into a problem... unless you know Vanya, you'll have a hard time following the plot.

What seems valuable in post-dramatic theatre is its diffidence towards big statements, but also the opportunity to play with themes rather than stories. The post-modern idea of destabilising, of rejecting a central position, solid ground... it makes theatre open to interpretation, emphasises the negative capability.

But I like to feel post-dramatic theatre can be about emotions. That is why music is so essential.

Essential?

Important... although even post-modernists have to admit that there has to be an audience of some sort. So there are essentials, I guess.

What was it about Uncle Vanya?

It's a classic. Now, when directors say that usually, they mean - I have no idea why I picked it, but it is the thing to do. Vanya is a classic, and it might be good - although the version I have, both translation and performance is shocking.

I want to expose what it means to be a classic: it means that directors think it is enough, sometimes, to do it straight. The LiberVox recording I use, God bless them for making it free, is very straight and was made out of a sense that this classic ought to be available. Never mind that they kill it with bad acting - Chekhov is available.

First of all, I was attacking the idea that a classic can be done with no interpretation. The way I cover it in music is insulting it.

But Chekhov poses other questions - like the one I address in Act II. Is it funny or a sad? Chekhov thought it was a laugh-fest, but Stanislavski treated it like tragedy. That tension runs through all the versions...

You use quite a range of music... from holy chants to drum and bass. What dictated those choices?

After I had my text, I wanted to give it moods. I try to interpret Vanya as a series of shifts in mood. Different episodes demand different styles... the dubstep is a short-cut to express the aggression I detect just beneath the civilised exchanges, and the classical music speaks for itself.

And does the music reflect the themes?

Yes - in Act I, I go between heavily mechanised music and more pastoral, classical pieces... I say pastoral, but they have a drama. There is also a leitmotif throughout, the blackbird, which resolves in Act IV.

I detected a kind of melancholic futurism in some of Astrov's speeches where he looks to a thousand years hence. He cares for the forest, he's an early environmentalist, but he fears for it. Funnily enough, Astrov's story of the plague and his forestry reflect Chekhov's own experiences as a landlord. Chekhov is often seen as presaging the sudden changes in Russian politics... the move from rural economies to the industrial... the weight of the dubstep is a nice contrast.

Each Act seems to have its own identity...

Each Act deals with a different set of formal possibilities... Act I is the straight one, it just gives the mood and reveals the vocabulary, or technique of post-visual theatre... Act II follows a question... Act III is a party... Act IV is spiritual. I was trying to see what the different boundaries were.