Electra
The
Cambridge Greek Play 2001
Jane Montgomery-Griffiths
talking with Lorna Hardwick
about the Cambridge Greek Play
Transcript
of an interview recorded with Jane Montgomery at the Open University
for the Reception of Classical Texts Research Project on 22 May,
2001 when she was at an early stage in her thinking about the
production. To this interview was subsequently added a post-production
response which documented Montgomery's reflections on the
experience (21 February 2002).
LH: Jane,
could you tell me how you first came to get involved in the Cambridge
Greek play?
JM: I was a student
at King’s College, Cambridge, about twelve years ago, studying
Classics and I wasn’t involved as a student actually in the
Greek play. There was quite a bit of anti-classicists prejudice
amongst the student Thesps, and we very unfairly dismissed the
Greek play as being about sheets and safety pins, partly based
on the very dim memory of seeing one several years before, which
was maybe not the best production I have ever seen, and I had
just been involved in what was then the Cambridge Classical Film
Unit’s strange black & white movie, The Bacchae,
directed by Andrew Bamfield. So, when it came to the Greek play
in 1989, Dictynna Hood was doing The Bacchae and I thought,
well, you know – already done it once, so not again. But
I watched it. I went to see it and I was astonished by it. It
was a wonderful performance, very, very, well directed and I remember
sitting there in the Arts theatre thinking, damn! I really should
have been involved in that, that was very good. So then I disappeared
off to be an actress for six or seven years and got a phone call
from Simon Goldhill who was my old supervisor at Kings, asking
me to apply to direct the 1998 production. That was three years
before, so this was what, 1995. I applied first to do Electra,
and was told to come back with another play, and then came back
with Trojan Women, really out of desperation because I
couldn’t think what else to do. And I remember at the committee
meeting being asked to come up with some ideas for the staging
and I didn’t really know at all then, what I thought the
play was about. So I had this idea for… I wanted to do something
about shifting environments and unstable settings. So I had this
idea for an absolutely massive, huge, big industrial block of
ice that would melt onto sand throughout the whole show, so that
what they thought was stable sand, would turn into mud by the
end, which if you say to a production manager, they’ll start
twitching and say ‘Have you thought about the Tec? How difficult
it’s going to be to time this?" So I got the job in 1995
while I was still a resident actor and associate director at Harrogate
Theatre and I started talking to one of the designers there called
Michael Spencer. Michael works in a very post-modern way, I think,
as a designer and the two of us together started to brain-storm
ideas and we kept having this idea of wanting an environment that
you think is stable but then shifts. So we played around with
all sorts of ideas about something that would convey subverted
expectations and eventually we came up with a swimming pool. The
idea, that, you know, several years before you could put kids
laughing and playing with bouncy balls there, but you drain the
swimming pool and you start to see the nasty bits in the corner,
and you murder a lot of people in the swimming pool and you get
even nastier bits in the swimming pool and you chain a load of
women up in the swimming pool and it’s a very, very, unpleasant
environment. We then took that idea and elaborated it and tried
to, with all of the characters, all of the costumes - the entire
design - look for something which was going to be culturally significant.
Either it signifies that in our culture we could appreciate but
then they could be twisted and subverted because the one thing
we didn’t want to do was something which was overtly Greek
– sheets and safety pins. Not because I’m particularly
against that, and I know it sounds disparaging saying sheets and
safety pins and that’s actually the professional actor’s
prejudice, more because it’s such a great opportunity to
explore a play like this you might as well start to experiment
with different things. So, the Trojan Women happened in
October 1998. We changed the format – usually the Greek play
before, happened in the March of each year, which meant that there
were only two to three months in each year to rehearse it. I was
very keen that we got good actors, rather than classicists, so
we changed the date to have ten months to rehearse. So, out of
the cast of fifteen only five, I think, spoke Greek, so the rest
we taught the Greek from scratch making sure they actually understood
it, it wasn’t reciting parrot fashion. This process is being
repeated now in 2001, where..... (LH: Where you’ve actually
got to do Electra) I’ve got to do Electra. Yes…
it was again vetoed, by the same member of the committee, who
thinks I am mono-maniacally obsessed with the play and that I
should not be allowed to do it. He’s come round, but the
other option I gave them was the Andromache which I’d
also love to do, but various members of the committee thought
it was a rubbish play, and so it wouldn’t go down very well.
LH: What attracts
you especially to the Andromache?
JM: I think it’s
such a peculiar play. It’s so fascinating. To me it’s
got the peculiarities, the tragedy and the comedy of something
like Pericles, with the late Shakespeares. I think it’s a
very beautiful and a very brutal play all at the same time. I
love, I’ve always loved, the character of Andromache you
know, ever since reading the Iliad, she’s such a gorgeous
women. And her predicament at the beginning of the play is as
heart rending as anything I’ve read in Greek drama. Then
you have the wonderful, political, polemical, sophistic debates
about ownership with Menelaus. And of course it’s all about
let’s bash the Spartans, a whole load of Athenian propaganda.
Then from that it moves into this beautiful, bizarre, dream play.
So I wanted to do it, and I still want to do it, for its oddness.
I don’t know how I would do it – I had absolutely no
ideas – sort of just trust the play that you’ll get
the ideas eventually. But understandably, the Greek play committee,
although they're very generous with experimental directors, also
need to appeal to schools’ audiences and as Andromache
is never a set text I think, certainly until we’ve got a
large audience base, it’s worthwhile going for the better
known plays.
LH: I’m interested
in what you say about the audience base, because there are quite
a lot of recent examples of companies who have started off knowing
that they have to appeal to the schools audience, you know, have
something which is a set book, as it were. And they have either
developed from that, or they have gone under because they can’t
produce something which is going to attract teachers to bring
their students. Now, isn’t there an argument that the actual
historical and cultural status of the Cambridge Greek play, actually
does give a very firm base that people are going to come anyway,
and that therefore to use that as a springboard for more experimental
work or lesser known plays, might be a real possibility?
JM: Oh, absolutely,
you’re completely right, that’s why they allowed the
Trojan Women for instance. And also because in the 121
years of the Cambridge Greek play the Trojan Women had
never been done. Unfortunately, because of some problems with
the Arts Theatre which at backstage was going through a real upheaval,
we were scheduled in the school half-term. So immediately our
audience base was… well, it was far more than decimated.
We were expecting to play to seventy – eighty percent houses,
and ended up playing to, I think, forty-five percent. We simply
didn’t have… the schools weren’t there. So, we
needed to come back from that. It was a great shame with the Trojan
Women, because artistically it was a surprising success for
everyone. I don’t think anyone really expected it would go
down so well. At various points I did expect to be lynched, actually,
because it was a big, big, change in artistic direction for the
Greek play. This time though, we’ve… I don’t think
it’s playing safe at all by going for something as well known
as Electra, and particularly not the way I’m approaching
it … but we’ve made sure the schools are coming, and
in fact for the first time we’re trying an outreach programme,
whereby the schools book tickets for the play, I go to them and
give them a free workshop. And this isn’t just about wanting
to get bums on seats, it’s actually something that I feel
really passionately about – that if you want to get the next
generation coming to see Greek plays, especially non-Greek speakers,
you’ve got to realise there are other ways to appreciate
it. Just like say, the outreach programmes that the Royal Opera
House are doing at the moment, which is very exciting. Why not
do a ‘Bollywood’ tour? So great, its got a lot of Southall
kids coming to opera. And that’s, sort of, how I feel about
the Greek play. Some of the pick-up, I mean it’s to be expected,
that many of the schools who have taken up the offer, would already
be coming anyway. And we haven’t quite had the non-Greek
speaking, non-classicist drama school base which I was hoping
for, but we’ve still got a bit of time to work on that. My
aim is to have as many English students, drama students, Classical
Studies students as Greek speakers.
LH: I want to explore
for a minute, this apparent tension, between the fact that you’re
doing a play in the original Greek and yet in the approach to
the play, the staging, the design and so on, you’re doing
something, which is, it seems to me, sounds as though it’s
going to be very far from an archaeological reconstruction of
how it might have been, etc. Do you think that presents particular
difficulties, or opportunities? How do you see that contributing
to public perceptions of what Greek drama is about?
JM: To me, it opens
up massive areas of freedom. I – despite my classicists training
– I can see absolutely no point in trying to have an historical
reconstruction. You know, even something like the Peter Hall Oresteia
– of course it wasn’t an historical reproduction. You
know - great, you’ve got masks, you’ve got rhythm and
it was very exciting but it’s not how it was done two and
a half thousand year ago. So why should I try to do the same now?
My aim is to try to find a coherent theatrical vocabulary for
the production, which is going to be a very different theatrical
vocabulary from the Trojan Women or from, indeed, the Electra
I was in as an actress two years ago. I mean completely different,
couldn’t be further. I am aware that in some respects we’ll
be throwing some things, some of the babies out with the bath
water with this Electra because I’m very interested
in making it a memory play, almost a dream play. So, maybe we
will lose some of the political content of the play, and it’s
possible we might lose some of the gender content, but we will
also, hopefully, gain other things. I would just like audiences
to be able to come along and think, OK this isn’t my Electra,
but it’s an Electra and it’s kind of interesting.
It’s the old thing, you know with actors and also directors,
they don’t mind if you love it or hate it as long as you
don’t have a bland response, and that’s how I feel about
it.
LH: When you say
‘theatrical vocabulary’ what kinds of thing have you
got in mind? What kinds of communication are involved?
JM: For this play,
for the first time we are …the first time I’ve ever
done it anyway… it’s relatively multi-media. We have
large plasma screens which will be, from time to time, showing
video of Electra’s memories. Not actually for the audiences’
benefit, but for Electra’s benefit. I can see no purpose
for the chorus in this play, apart from as adjuncts to Electra
– almost as part of her bi-polar personality.Every time she
looks at the chorus she sees what she could have been. Almost
like a sister. Somebody who is moderate. Somebody who doesn’t
have bruises all over her because if you compromise then you’re
OK. And I’ve just noticed this movement in the play: that
every time Electra almost calms down, the chorus says something,
with the voice of moderation, that gets her going again. That
made me think - what if the Chorus is actually a meta-theatrical
illustration of Electra’s schizophrenia? So they can manipulate
the video screens to force her to recognise her memories. Now,
this is a really dodgy and potentially very dangerous, and also
a really naff, idea and we’re very conscious to try not to
overgild the lily. I mean we’re at the stage of rehearsals
now, where it could be disastrous. It could be brilliant –
I don’t know, but I think it is worth exploring this, because
I don’t otherwise know what the chorus is doing in that play
for us now. It’s not the same as it was in Sophocles’
days. I was in the Deborah Warner production, as understudy and
then in the Chorus for a while and I remember being in the Chorus
and none of us actually knowing what we were doing. Now, that
production was one of the most brilliant plays I’ve ever
seen. I thought it was stunning, a definitive production of the
play, to some extent. But the Chorus, for those of us in it, didn’t
work at all because we didn’t exist - we’re not characters,
we’re not functionaries. So I want to try to do something
different with the chorus. Now of course that changes the entire
theatrical vocabulary. So, instead of it being a naturalistic
piece, it’s overtly meta-theatrical. That’s aided by
the fact that this time, for the first time in the Greek plays’
history, we’ve got surtitles above the proscenium, but we’re
also hoping to have surtitles actually on the stage in Greek going
on at the same time. So you get the idea that you have different
levels of framing and different levels of mimetic reality. And
that’s an interesting one, mimetic reality, that you’re
both inhabiting the moment as a real person but also interpreting
it and representing it, as the audience is of course. So, the
theatrical vocabulary of it, certainly for this play, is based
in probably, post-modern performance de-construction. Now, having
said all that, I think it’s absolutely crucial, that we get
to the core of the play, which is one woman’s suffering.
Without that there’s no point in the play and the thing I
kept…. before we had any ideas about the video screens or
the memory the thing we came to was that this was a woman being
vivisected for our pleasure. So the integral… the only really
essential part of the set, is the Petrie dish that Electra inhabits
for the entire play. Because it’s like you’re taking
a knife and opening her up and just when you think the wound is
going to start healing you open it up again a bit more –
and that’s the whole play. So, it’s going to be quite
challenging, I think, to work out exactly how to view this play.
LH: You referred
just now to your own experience as an actor, as well as a director,
and I’m very interested in that for the implications of how
you work with your cast, how you conceive of the performances
emerging. Do you see it as some kind of co-operative, interactive
process? Or do you stand aside as Director? How do you approach
it?
JM: Oh, it has to
be co-operative. Absolutely. The great thing about having been
in a chorus is I know personally how awful it is to be in the
chorus. Even if it is a brilliant performance, brilliant production.
So I’m very, very, conscious of trying to make the chorus
feel as valued and as integral to the piece as, say, the actress
playing Electra. Now, the other thing about playing Electra of
course is that I’m very worried about this poor actress who’s
having to go through this experience. When I played her, I had
bruises all over me for six months, I lost two stone, I was in
a right old state. As a director and also as a tutor, because
I’m dealing with a student cast, I don’t want this young
woman to go through that process – I want to look after her
– but I’m also aware as an actor, that you sort of have
to. So, it’s a very delicate balance. The thing I don’t
do, and I will never do, is say well actually, at this moment,
you should be thinking this or you should be doing that, because
they have to find their own route. I might be able to guide, I
mean for instance, just the other day we were in rehearsals, and
I had to stop and say just take your shoes off for a minute, because
actually being barefoot will change this entire scene for you.
And it did. There’s something being rooted to the ground.
But that’s sort of as far as it goes. And we work in a way
that is both very textual but also quite method based to try to
get them really inhabiting the parts. The actress playing Clytemnestra,
who is a Mycenaean Linear B scholar, which I love, was saying
the day that actually she is going to find just doing the play
frustrating, because they’ve done so much character work,
on say the relationship between Aegisthus and Clytemnestra, that
the fact they never meet on stage is really going to bug her.
Of course that’s great, I really like that. It’s just
how to channel that so it doesn’t go off the rails. So you
know, when somebody walks on stage, they have a complete history
behind them, but that’s not what you see, you see the text.
There isn’t a moment, other than what’s happening in
the play.
LH: The other point
I’d like to take up at this stage, is to ask you about what
you said about the meta-theatrical aspects of your work on the
play. You said that a significant proportion of the audience were
probably going to be school students who perhaps are not particularly
experienced as audiences and haven’t studied a great deal
in terms of theatre. How are you going to explore these meta-theatrical
aspects without perhaps in a sense manipulating your audience,
and that’s putting it crudely?
JM: The issue of manipulation
is very interesting because I sort of wonder whether it’s
possible for any actor or director not to manipulate and audience,
whether it be consciously or not. The music has to play a big
part in bridging the gap between the audiences’ expectations
and the actual experience of being part of what is both a theatrical
and a meta-theatrical process. I would probably not do this at
all if it were in English. I would probably have a completely
different idea about the production. The point is here, that if
you are doing a production that is in a dead language, which very,
very, few people are going to understand, that makes it meta-theatrical
in its very form. People don’t understand it in the same
way, so I think the more ways of decoding the sign system the
better. Now, it might be that some people pick up on some things
and not on other things, and I’m hoping that it will be…
and we’ve got a good enough actress playing Electra that
actually you will very quickly forget about the trappings. They’re
not trappings – they are ways of turning the screw on her.
None of these is being done with a sort of Hey look at me, I’m
a great meta-theatrical director, at least I hope it’s not,
that’s not what we’re intending and I would be really
worried if that’s how it came across because everything on
the outskirts of the Petrie dish, which is the real world of the
play, is there to underline what’s happening in the Petrie
dish. So, I’m hoping for schools’ audiences – they
will understand the story, they will pick up on the emotions.
But they’ll also hopefully think that’s interesting,
there are other ways of approaching a text like this, and that
actually the only limitation is your imagination. I’m also
expecting there will be some initial confusion. But this is the
interesting thing about the experience with the Trojan Women.
One or two schools’ parties did manage to come, despite being
in the holidays, and we had Cassandra coming in, at the back of
the auditorium on a trolley, in a wedding dress cum straight jacket
pulling behind her a six-foot blazing wedding cake. And we were
just waiting for the laughter, you know and that was followed
by Andromache coming in dressed as Doris Day, and we were just
waiting for the guffaws. Never once. There wasn’t a laugh
from any school party at any schools’ matinee. And I think
that there’s something so … I spent a long time thinking
about that. Why did that happen? Why didn’t we get the laugh?
Because I’d said, get the laugh, use it, subvert it. But
it never happened. I suppose it’s because it’s so unexpected.
You don’t think anyone is going to be stupid enough to have
a six-foot wedding cake coming into the Trojan Women. When
it does, that takes you so long to get used to it that by then
you’re actually in the scene then anyway. So I’m hoping
when they have six chorus members dressed in 1930s ball-gowns
coming on the same process is going to happen. I don’t know,
we’ll have to wait and see about that one.
Classical Receptions in Drama and Poetry in English