Frantic Assembly’s Tony Award nominated Scott Graham joins forces with director Bruce Guthrie to co-direct a new interpretation of Manfred Karge’s German classic Man to Man.
German playwright Manfred Karge is best known to Edinburgh audiences for his masterpiece Jackie wie Hose or Man to Man, performed by Tilda Swinton at the Traverse Theatre in 1987, subsequently transferring to the Royal Court before being made into a film and also The Conquest of the South Pole, which went on to play to sell-out houses in London and was also filmed.
Please find the below answers for Matthew Scott (music) and Rick Fisher (lighting designer)
The Dramaturgy Questions
Matthew Scott (music): Dramaturgy makes my work much easier. Composing music for dramatic work is very largely concerned with making arcs of thematic or remembered material, and this process is made a lot easier if the structure of the piece has been worked on beforehand. Good dramaturgy clarifies lots of things, it's the equivalent of lighting in that a play with an under-lit section i.e. what the piece is actually about is not sufficiently flagged up, cannot hope to take an audience on a complete journey as intended. People get lost in the dark, literally and metaphorically.
What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
The best dramaturgy has got to be in Shakespeare's plays especially Macbeth, Hamlet and A Midsummer Night's Dream where the structure and the flow of ideas is so sure-footed. Brecht's handful of masterpieces come pretty close (Galileo and Mother Courage). I find St Joan of Bernard Shaw pretty impressive also. I think in terms of individual plays rather than genres and movements.
Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
Collaboration and the free flow of ideas is the key to the whole process, but it takes time and is too often a casualty in the rehearsal process. The cooperative collegiate approach needs to be built in from the start.
What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
Not much. The thing that an audience tells you is if your meaning isn't clear; there are various signs, coughing etc, all of them unwelcome.
Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
I wish that it was taught in the UK in the same way that it is in France and especially Germany. I also very much value my own study of the science of Rhetoric, of which two universities still have professors. Rhetoric seems to me to be the only constructive form of analysis.
How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
Rick Fisher (lighting designer): Lighting is should always be part of the story telling of a piece though which story to tell is sometimes up to debate, in Man to Man we sometimes are trying to create a naturalistic atmosphere but mostly we are trying to reflect the mood and thoughts of the character. Keeping the light as dramatic and charged as the dialogue and emotions and thought of Max was a key goal.
What particular traditions and influences would you acknowledge on your work - have any particular artists, or genres inspired you and do you see yourself within their tradition?
The most obvious ones are the extraordinary images from German films, that even if I have not seen them, certain images of starkly angled lighting and the resonance of shadows have become part of my lighting vocabulary for many shows.
Do you have a particular process of making that you could describe - where it begins, how you develop it, and whether there is any collaboration in the process?
Light can only really exist in the actual performance space and we all work together to craft how the show should be delivered during the technical rehearsal. I hopefully have various options available of how to deliver light to the stage and to be able to light the performer and the lighting is then created over the technical rehearsal and refined over further rehearsals and previews.
What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work?
Leaving space for the audience’s imagination and involvement is key to any good piece of theatre. Lighting works on many different levels and each member of the audience will have a completely different interpretation of the piece and hopefully many will not notice the lighting as a separate entity. It is often said that the best lighting is invisible, but I prefer to think that the best lighting looks inevitable as if no other choice could have been made, so it is just right for the moment.
Reworking the original German masterpiece into an intimate and all-consuming piece of physical theatre, Man to Man confronts the horrors of World War Two from a unique and deeply personal perspective.
After her husband dies, Ella Gericke adopts his identity and continues working his job as a crane operator in order to survive in Nazi Germany. Compromising her own identity for survival, Ella is plunged into a new masculine world of beer, schnapps and poker; a claustrophobic existence dominated by the fear of discovery and the changing face of authority in a volatile twentieth century Germany.
Man to Man stars Margaret Ann Bain as Ella/Max Gericke. Margaret Ann's work includes 2010 Fringe First winner Beautiful Burnout with Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland and A Doll's House with Theatre Delicatessen. She also works internationally with Frantic Assembly as a Learn and Train practitioner.
Man to Man has been translated and adapted by George Devine winning playwright Alexandra Wood, and directed by Bruce Guthrie, Associate Director for Sam Mendes on his world tour of Richard III, director of Twelfth Night and Othello, for the Singapore Repertory Theatre.
Man to Man by Manfred Karge
Translated & adapted by Alexandra Wood
Starring Margaret Ann Bain
Directed by Bruce Guthrie and Scott Graham
Underbelly, Topside
5-31 August at 17.40 (18.55)
Tickets: £7, £10, £12
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