Swivelheaded Dramaturgy: Jon Welch @ Edfringe 2016

Swivelhead

Pipeline Theatre

 Pleasance Two, 15:10 (80 mins), 

3 – 29 August

An RAF drone pilot visits his rural childhood home for his sister’s wedding. Holed up in an old treehouse he becomes aware of something impossible – his body discarding its human form... 

Using knife-sharp new writing, puppetry, projection and an immersive soundscape, Swivelhead viscerally explores the ethical and personal consequences of a new age of warfare.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Strangely, it came from seeing a documentary about a circus elephant who after a lifetime of shackled abuse and ‘training’, went rogue (i.e. back to her true, never-forgotten nature), kicked her trainer to death during a show, then stampeded out of the big top, and, eighty-seven bullets later, was brought down in a Honolulu side-street, her pathetic circus hat still topping her huge, majestic, tragic head. 

This lead me to the ‘training’ of our military, the fight between our vulnerable, complex nature and the need for unquestioning obedience (which is assumed could end with a clinical instruction to kill), and from there to the world of remote drone flying, where the ideal of the ‘warrior’ has seemingly been diminished to ‘executioner’. 

 

 

How did you go about gathering the team for it?

 

The core team was already in place. Pipeline is made up of a writer, two designers and an actor, and we develop ideas, text and design together. Outside of that, we sought advice from international authorities on drone flying, pilots, experts in and sufferers of PTSD, psychotherapists and a dramaturg/researcher.

 

How did you become interested in making performance?

 

I trained as an actor, and never quite ‘got’ the ability to throw off the self-monitoring shackles during performance. As a writer/director, however, I don’t think you can ever overthink (prior to going in to rehearsal, at any rate). 

But the joy of sharing that with people who actually can genuinely be ‘alive’ in the part and the story is priceless. And from that, what is really interesting is the fact that even after all the thinking, writing, imagining, collaborative input, rehearsal and realising, the chemistry between performance and audience that arises during performance can never be predicted – (as Steve Waters calls it: the secret life of plays).

 

 

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?

 

Yes. Going from germ of an idea, to story outline, to design thoughts, to early scene offers, back to design, to fleshing out, back and forth.

 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

 

I’d like them to experience a sense of unmediated involvement. Always, the hope is that the characters will stay with the audience long after the end, that they will be moved, challenged, that the piece will arouse empathy and, in its small way, make a contribution to the wider social discourse. 

But if audience members can be taken into the world or reality that we’re trying to conjure, in a way that they don’t even think to question, even as they’re sitting in a room, on squeaky chairs, at 3:10 in the afternoon, then that’s the holy grail.

 

 

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

 

Any strategies that help focus attention where we want it focussed. Particularly with a theatre-going public that are film/tv-idiom sophisticated. So technically, soundscape, AV and lighting are crucial. And a design that punches beyond its weight. But the dramaturgical truisms of beginnings, character presentation, exposition, development, pace, jeopardy, story arc, reveals, etc., all hold true. 

We like minutiae, detail. We want the audience to be seduced into an unquestioning state. That involves removing, tiny detail by tiny detail, anything that could get in the way of that. Whilst honing, tiny detail by tiny detail, anything that could help that.

 

 

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?

 

I suppose black box naturalism. In a way, we’re quite old school. It’s text-based, mostly fourth-wall. The writing is often subtextual, the acting nuanced and underplayed. Actors come on stage and talk to each other, and character and plot is revealed through dialogue and action, physicality. We like stories. But to make that good, properly good, is very, very hard.

Artificial Dramaturgy: Jon Welch @ Edfringe 2015

Blogspot Q and As from Jon Welch, writer of ‘Spillikin – a Love Story’, showing at the Jack Dome at 5:10, throughout Edinburgh.



The Fringe
GKV: What inspired this production: did you begin with an idea or a script or an object?
Jon Welch: This definitely began with an object: many thousands of pounds-worth of actual humanoid robot, made by a Cornish company called Engineered Arts.

Why bring your work to Edinburgh?
Beginning to question that strategy quite strongly now. No, actually, it was sort of suggested by a very lovely venue, the time was right, and as a company, we couldn’t not. The whole shop-window thing. Also the subject matter – Artificial intelligence and dementia care are very very relevant at the moment.


What can the audience expect to see and feel - or even think - of your production?
Well – they can expect to see a robot. And some actors. And a story. It’s about an older lady with Alzheimer’s being kept company by a robot, into which her late husband has sort of uploaded himself. So it’s about love, humanness, memories, identity (and the fragmentation of it), leave-taking, loss (there are laughs). I hope the audience will think about and feel any or all of that.



The Dramaturgy Questions


How would you explain the relevance - or otherwise - of dramaturgy within your work?
I work closely with the co-artistic directors of the company, who are its designers. And the story develops in concert with their input, so there’s an ongoing dramaturgical process. The relevance of it is in starting the collaboration process as early as possible. Collaboration is everything.


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?
I’m old-school. I like stories. I like spare and efficient writing. And a broad reach that tries not to be cheap. It’s graft. The hard stuff is revealing character through dialogue and plotting - those traditional page-turner elements that look easy, but aren’t. I want people to care about the characters after the play is over. Abstraction and spectacle come second and have to be earned.

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?See above. But in writing terms, if the premise comes easily that’s a good sign. Everything after that is a hideous, often depressing mess that has to be endlessly tidied up, blind alleys, false dawns, and the poison of post-rationalising. But the rule is – write. Anything. No matter how shit. Or embarrassing, or irrelevant. You can’t improve on something which isn’t actually there to be improved on in the first place.

What do you feel the role of the audience is, in terms of making the meaning of your work? 

Well, without an audience there is no point. But beyond that the audience have paid to have a story told. Provided that they’re human, that should be enough. I acknowledge that there’s often an indefinable chemistry between a piece, a performance and the communal ‘personality’ of an audience, the unknowability of which creates the repeated tension and excitement that makes theatre worth sticking with. 

But if work requires creative input from the audience to have meaning, (e.g. if a piece is so abstracted as to mean everything and nothing) then they should be paying to go on a course of devising workshops. Or we should be paying them.

Are there any questions that you feel I have missed out that would help me to understand how dramaturgy works for you?
That’s a tough one. Maybe – at what point does it feel safe, or worthwhile, to let another person’s dramaturgical input into the room. Often it will feel like never. But it will almost always turn out to be earlier than you thought. In theatre it’s not about you. It’s about it.