12 January 2012 (Theatre Interview)

Interview by: Lauren O'Toole

2011 was an extremely prolific year for THEATREclub. With barely a chance to take a breather after their involvement in the Absolut Fringe and the Dublin Theatre Festival towards the end of the year, they have taken 2012 by the horns with The Family, which puts the Irish household of today and yesterday under the microscope against the aesthetics of 1950s Americana. I spoke with deviser and director Grace Dyas about the show, which previews in The Project Arts Centre from the 13th of January.

So beyond the singing, dancing, chips flying and plates crashing, what is The Family about?
The Family is a show about your family. We're looking to interrogate what the structure of the family does to the people within that structure. It's about what those roles are in Ireland now and what they have been and how that makes us feel.

Does The Family strive to call into question or support the importance of the family unit in society or are you leaving that to the audience to decide?
We are trying our level best to create a piece of theatre that fully interrogates the topic. We're trying to open it up so that the audience can bring their own thoughts and their feelings about their own families to it. The style of performance we're using is one in which no-one particularly plays the Mam or the Dad or the brother or sister, they're all switching roles and flipping between them. Hopefully that will enable an audience to identify with it better, to look at it and think "Oh that bit's like my Da" and someone else to think "Well, no, when Barry does it it's more like my Dad".

The development of Heroin and 2010, your last shows, involved a great deal of research. Have you taken a similar approach to The Family?
With the family being something that we know about we didn't need to approach it from such an academic point. Even though we did look into some sociological and anthropological studies and reports, we mostly used our own stories and experiences. We then picked the group of actors based on the diversity of their life experience. We were looking for people with a diverse wealth of experience; Age, class, religion, background.

The cast in The Family use their real names. Does this authenticity carry right through to the core of the characters? Should the audience assume then that the actors are essentially playing themselves?
Absolutely, it's in how they approach the roles. There's an awful lot going on, the show comes from loads of different bits of material. So in some bits what you're seeing is how that particular actor would approach being a father and some of what you see going on is based on the storyline. It switches back and forth.

Would you say that THEATREclub work solely as an ensemble piece? How much of an input do the performers have into the finished product?
It's completely devised by the ensemble and then the narrative is set in place by the company but the piece itself is entirely improvised on the night. The cast have certain things they need to talk about but it's up to them when they do it, there are no cues.

The show is accompanied by a series of complementary talks and events – what should we be looking forward to most?
For us theatre is about starting conversations and it always has been. So while we're starting conversations with the work we're also hoping that people talk about the topic and what they've seen afterwards. The post show discussions are a way of facilitating this process. These discussions aren't about the show, they're more about the subject: One is about the role of masculinity in the family which obviously links into gender, there's one about the economy and so on.

2011 was a fairly hectic year for you guys with this show and your involvement in The Fringe Festival and the Dublin Theatre Festival in the form of 2010 and Heroin. Is there a magic formula, so to speak, behind your incredible productivity?
The "magic formula" is to work really, really hard and to do what you want to do. We're not under compliment to anyone to do keep doing this; we do it because we love it and because we are infested with manic ambition.

So should we expect a lot more to be born of this manic ambition in 2012?
That's an interesting question actually because we've always had a lot of stuff in us to make and now that's sort of simmered down a bit and instead we want to explore in more depth the things we've already made. So 2012 is going to be more about touring The Family and Heroin. On top of that though Shane (Byrne, company member) is in the process of making a new solo piece called Hungry Tender which is about Elvis Presley and Shane's relationship with food and we are also making a new commissioned piece for St Michael's estate called History. We were approached by St Michael's estate to commission this public art piece. History is about the history of Ireland and the history of that particular flat complex. We're beginning to look at it like a sort of trilogy, with The Family being the first one, then Heroin and then History.
 

 

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