Discussion: Ben Twist

Responses from Benjamin Twist, director of the 2001 Prime Productions production of Sunset Song to the questions posed to the actors.

Character

Not applicable

Describe your main character's 'journey' through the play. Are there key scenes or relationships that define the character for you.

Not applicable

General

What is your general approach to acting, your 'method'? How do you do it? How does it relate to your work on this play?

I will answer this in relation to directing rather than acting.

As a director I am perhaps most interested in audiences. I look at a play almost as a set of instructions to the audience to feel certain emotions and to have certain understandings at certain times. It is our job as actors, director etc to pass on those instructions so that the audience feels, understands and so on at the right moment and in the right order and to a sufficient degree. So whatever technique or way of presenting the work is right to pass on those instructions and elicit the required response in the audience is the one we should use. This means that very different styles can appear in the same production - a scene can be naturalistic at one moment, then be followed by an anti-naturalistic song or a more stylised scene. As long as the audience feels or understands the right thing, the play will work.

I am interested in what the audience sees, hears and understands, rather than in what the actor is feeling. As long as the actor is showing me (as a representative member of the audience) what I think the play requires at that moment, I am not terribly interested in how they are achieving it. So if the play requires that the audience understands that Chris Guthrie is feeling confused about the conflict between the two Chrisses in her head, I don't mind whether Cora Bisset is thinking about confusion or about what she will eat for dinner, as long as the audience is reading that confusion on her face and in her actions.

This doesn't mean that I don't check what the actor is trying to do with a particular line. I regularly ask an actor 'Why do you say that?' in rehearsal. I do this to make sure that I understand what the thought process of the character is and to make sure that the actor is portraying it. I do think the actor needs to be absolutely clear about the mental state of the character they are playing at that precise moment. It is not however necessary that they are themselves in that mental state.

I also think in stage pictures. I have in my mind pictures of the stage at certain points in the play. These arise during my reading of the play whilst I am preparing. Often I will know that this picture will show precisely what I want at a certain point. It will tell us about the relationship between the characters who are on stage, or about how Chris is feeling. Then another picture will be in my head for a scene a little bit later. I go into rehearsal not knowing how we will arrive at these pictures, and then slowly work towards them.

Finally I am always interested in what I call the action of the scene. I ask myself what the point of any scene is - why is it there, what is it doing to further the plot? This tells me what we need to show in the scene. It also allows me to say to the actors, this is what we are trying to do. Then we can all apply our imaginations to find the best way to achieve that, and we can be clear about why different solutions don't work.

What are the particular challenges of this play?

One of the challenges is that at times the scenes don't seem to forward the plot very much. At the beginning we are given a lot of exposition and information which isn't very plot driven. I had to work hard to find ways to give these scenes an action and a movement forward. To do this I think I worked on Guthrie's desire for Chris to do well and the effect this had on the rest of the family. Other scenes that were tricky were the burning of Peesie's Knapp (Scene 19). I don't think this really needs to be there (and I have now discussed this with the adaptor!) so it is just a scene that looms large in the book but has little point on stage. The important thing is that it provides an opportunity for Ewan to kiss Chris. However, I chose to continue to include the scene, and the difficulty here was keeping it clear, short and pointful while trying to make it dramatic and in some sense true.

A similar challenge was an image suggested in the script showing the whole community scything at harvest time. This had been a successful moment in the original production. But I felt it was an image for image's sake rather than an image that showed what needed to be shown. So I reduced the importance of it and rather made sure that it demonstrated Guthrie's urge to show he was better than any other at scything. He needs to show his power over his son and the tinker. A smaller image was sufficient for this.

Music is a big challenge in this show. We needed to find a way that the music could be organic and come out of the world of the play. This took lots of discussion and trial and error. Should Chris' songs be accompanied by a musician who could be seen? Was the music for the songs from the same world as the music accompanying other bits of the play?

Another challenge is stopping the play seem like a series of narrations. I became tired of storytelling theatre some years ago, after it had been for some time very popular. I longed to see actors act, rather than be removed from the character they were playing. I wanted to see Stewart Porter playing John Guthrie rather than being Stewart Porter telling me about John Guthrie. It would be easy to treat the narrations in this adaptation in that way, but rather we worked on an approach that meant the actors narrated but were inside the moment that they were narrating about. My constant cry in rehearsal was 'keep it in the present'. That way the removal from the character didn't happen, but the narration still occurred.

The big challenge in any production is casting. I found a talented and versatile cast. But most important was the casting of the person who played Chris Guthrie. Without someone in that role who the audience wants to watch for two hours or so, the production is doomed.

Does the play seem current? Why should a production of Sunset Song go on tour in 2001?

The play seems current to me because it is about universal feelings and ideas. Change is all about us constantly and Chris Guthrie is neither the first nor the last to have to deal with it. Her discovery of her sexuality, the delights and pains of love, the fears of childbirth and the pain of bereavement are all true today.

I also wanted to try to show how the experiences of a young woman at the time of the First World War can have meaning to young audiences today. I am pleased that Cora Bisset's portrayal of Chris is a very modern one. She seems like a girl of today, but she is experiencing and reacting to circumstances that can seem alien to today. I think the production can help us understand not only our own experiences, but also get a better grasp of how life might have seemed to someone living in Scotland in 1914.

Also, it is a great story. It moves me to tears and laughter. That is rare enough in theatre, tv, film and a good enough reason to produce the play today.

How did you go about doing your work on this play? Take us through your process.

I read the script many times. I read the book, and its sequels, a few times. I read other works on Lewis Grassic Gibbon and the culture he was writing about. I read a history of modern Scotland.

All this was going on while I was casting. Talking to actors in auditions, listening to the way they read bits of the script and the things they said about the play gave me more ideas. I discussed the design with Neil Warmington and the music with Dougal Lee. Once we had the design ready I worked out how the scenes would work on the proposed set.

I then sat down and made notes on the play, first dividing the scenes up into 'units'. A unit I see as a thought or a beat. A new unit starts when a new thought begins, or a new character takes control of the scene, or the action leads off in a new direction. I always do this, not because the notes are useful (I seldom look at them again) or because I use the units in rehearsal but because it makes me read each sentence carefully and think about it fully. My notes include ideas for stage pictures, exact meanings of unusual words, the action of scenes and units, thoughts about characters' motivations etc. Anything that comes to mind.

Then I went into rehearsal and it all changed. Then it is just responding to the ideas that flow, trying things out, discarding the bad ideas, listening to the actors and solving problems. We had a good atmosphere in rehearsal where we could try anything and could risk ideas not working. This allowed all sorts of ideas to come and go.

We worked through the play three times. I like to work through quite quickly at first, to get a map of the play and see where the difficulties lie. It allows everyone to see their journey through the play, work out their character's story. It also helps get a consistency. For example, the script suggested that the scything image in act one should be reprised for the scene of war in act two. But I wasn't keen on the scything scene, so I said we would look at it again in week two after we had worked on the war scene. When we got to the war scene the idea of poppies seemed much more interesting. So I was able to ditch the scything image in favour of something more valuable and develop the poppies scene that I wanted for the war scene. If we had just worked through slowly, we could have spent ages devising a scything image that then had no reprise towards the end and was therefore redundant.

Gender

Do you feel Lewis Grassic Gibbon and Alastair Cording have written complex and real female characters or are they stereotypical? How do they compare with other characters you have played?

The main characters generally seem well rounded. The Speak characters we allowed to be quite stereotypical as they are used ironically. Chris is clearly not stereotypical and she is certainly complex. There is plenty to discuss about why she acts the way she does and what her make up is. Jean has less chance to establish herself, but she too takes an unconventional decision (to kill herself) and has a clear power in the relationship with Guthrie that is unusual, although in the end he does overcome her resistance.

I think Chris' character is the foundation on which the book and the play are built. It is braver and stronger than many female characters, and this has contributed to the continued popularity of Sunset Song.

Do you think characters in the play are forced into stereotypical roles by events or other characters in the play?

Chris is forced into a stereotypical woman's role by the death of her mother and the demands of her father. She has to keep the house. But she takes an unconventional decision to stay on at Blawearie when she inherits the money. It could be argued that Long Rob and Chae are led into roles of martyrdom or sacrifice by the coming of the war. However, neither joins up for simple reasons. I think Lewis Grassic Gibbon's writing is strong enough and detailed enough to avoid accusations of stereotyping. We learn enough about the reasons behind actions for them to become rational and real rather than stereotyped, even if the actions themselves are typical.

How do marriage and the experience of family life affect your character(s)?

We get two pictures of marriage in the play. Guthrie's marriage to Jean starts well and ends in tragedy, because of his religious views combined with his sexual appetite. The bitterness that grows affects the whole family, leading to Jean's suicide and infanticide, Will's departure and Chris' unhappiness. Chris' marriage to Ewan is more optimistic but cut short by outside circumstances.

How do Chris'/Jean's experiences relate to the life of modern women?

The advent of contraception has removed much of the fear of childbirth and the constant cycle of pregnancy, childbirth and childcare from most women in the developed world, but these concerns remain powerful in the developing world. Lewis Grassic Gibbon was aware of the development of contraception when he was writing (he wrote Sunset Song around the time that Marie Stopes was opening the first family planning clinic in London). This change has also affected the relationships between men and women in marriages.

Chris' experience of her sexuality and of love are not different to those of modern women, I believe. The way we portray those experiences in the production I think comes from our own experiences and imaginations, but the portrayals are also true to the script and the book.

Do the male/female relationships in the play strike you as real? Do they shed light on current male/female relationships and experience?

We set out to create characters and relationships that would strike the audience as true. I think they are real. I think the fact that we can imagine them suggests they have some connection with contemporary relationships and experience.

Are women powerful in this society? Are they shown as powerful in the play?

The women I believe are more powerful than we might imagine. They have particular roles to play in work and the home, without which the home and farm would fall apart. We also discussed at some length in rehearsal how Jean does have a hold over John Guthrie. He loves her, or at least starts out doing so. He feels great guilt about his lust and the effect that has on Jean when she falls pregnant. So she can use this against him, can exert some control over him at least when his fierce temper is not too roused.

Chris has power because she has money but also because she is stronger than Ewan. She only realises this later on, but it is there throughout and we tried to show this in the production. It is she who initiates the sexual moves both before and after the wedding. It is she who threatens him when he returns from training a brute.

In the first half Chris has little power, but I think that is more because she is a child (at least in Guthrie's eyes) than because she is a woman.

Are there characters that you would describe as Romantic Hero/heroines or Symbolic Martyrs in the play?

No, I think the characters are stronger than those descriptions suggest. Chris might be a heroine, but I am not sure she is a romantic one. Ewan might be a symbolic martyr, but his martyrdom is unwished for and fairly unsymbolic.

I think the book has often been overloaded with symbolism and I tried to avoid that when working on the play. It is very easy to read Chris as symbolic of woman or of Scotland, but it flattens and diminishes her character.

How did you explore the differences between the individual and the establishment in your work on the play? Does the individual's gender have bearing on this?

The play is all about individuals fighting the establishment and I don't think their gender has any bearing on this. Chris fighting for her right to assert herself as she wishes; Long Rob refusing to give in to pressure to make him go to war until there is nothing left for him to stay for; Chae going to war for socialism and Guthrie fighting for his proud independence; these are all individuals. I think we worked on this by doing a great deal of detailed thinking about their motivations and actions. The establishment is represented by the Speak and to some extent by other characters - the lawyer Semple, the foreman at the Mains, Aunt Janet. Their actions are far less fully worked out and explored.

Overall though, we didn't think in this way about the play. We worked on telling the story, which itself deals with the differences between individuals and the establishment.

How is the sexuality of your character(s) important in the play?

Chris' sexuality is clearly crucial. It is an important part in her growing up, which is a large part of the story that is told. She takes strength from her enjoyment of her sexuality and it is connected with her relationship to the land.

Guthrie's sexuality affects his whole family. His need to control his lust and his impregnation of Jean embitters him, her and their children to the extent that she commits suicide and infanticide and his children hate him for it. We tried to suggest in the production that Guthrie takes out his sexual frustration on Will when he beats him. We also make clear that he has sexual interest in Chris. This is easy to show on the stage and is perhaps more clear than in the book, although it is fairly clearly stated there.

How did you work on the relationships your character(s) have with other characters?

I don't think we really did. We worked on the plot, which is the constant companion of character but looks at it from the other side. The relationships come from the complex interweaving of different characters interreacting and having their own motivations.

One relationship we perhaps did work on more was that between Chris and Ewan. But even then it is worked on by examining the detailed thoughts of the individuals rather than the relationships as such.

Do you feel your character(s) are oppressed in any way?

They are financially oppressed and Guthrie religiously oppresses himself and his family. They are strangely classless, however, in their independence.

Use of History, Nostalgia and Popular Tradition

In your work on the play did you attempt to make sure it was historically accurate? Is that important?

No, we didn't work much on historical accuracy. The costumes are reasonably authentic in style, but aim at a theatrical impression rather than true authenticity (they would be much dirtier and more ragged). We try to give the impression of work rather than imitate real work. With the role of Chris we sought for a modern reading rather than an authentically period characterisation.

I don't think it is important. The important thing is to create good theatre - moving, emotionally true, exciting to watch and true to the script and the book. Historical accuracy might be possible to combine with all those, but wouldn't add much to the night out at the theatre.

How did you work on the play to give a sense of period?

We looked at accents. Rural people will have pronounced consonants more fully than 21^st century people do. We sought to find a period sense of community, expressed particularly at the wedding, through the speak and to some extent through the use of music in the production and the way it evolves out of everyday life. The costumes seek to give a sense of the period, without being slavishly accurate.

Do you see the play as nostalgic? Did your work reflect this?

No, it must not be nostalgic. Lewis Grassic Gibbon isn't. He makes clear that the life was hard and often brutal. I tried to bring out some of that brutality, in the treatment of Andy the Daftie, in Guthrie's puritanical tyranny of his family and his sexual interest in his daughter, in Will's effective abandonment of his sister and of course in the loss of the men in the war. There are moments to savour when the loss of the community and its way of life can be regretted - the pleasure of the wedding, the simplicity of Ewan and Chris' life together after they marry. But nostalgia is not something I was seeking in the production.

Did you use satire in your work on this play?

The Speak are a satirical device, just as they are used in the book. Our playing of the Speak gives an authorial (or directorial) voice, suggesting that although these characters believe what they are saying, the audience should listen to them with an attitude.

Is the use of Scottish song, music and dance important? How does it affect your character?

The Flouers o the Forest is a crucial tune in the book and the play. A lament usually connected with funerals, it creates an immediate impact when Chris chooses to sing it at her wedding. It is a brave choice of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's and has a strong effect in performance. It is then used in the production again to underscore the war scene and at the end when the piper plays it after the memorial service. It unites cast and audience in a particular way. It would have no such effect in England, for example, where the tune has no widely understood meaning or context. The use of the bagpipes at the end also makes a strong point about the location of the story.

The use of dance at the wedding is important. It is not a real dance, nor is it meant to be particularly well danced. However it does work to create the sense of an occasion that we all know from many Scottish weddings. Again, it creates a sense of community that is particularly Scottish. However, the idea of dancing at a wedding would probably have a similar meaning in another country.

Other songs are less Scottish. Long Rob's main song Ladies of Spain is actually English, as is the hymn we used for the church scenes.

How does the impact of the modernisation of agriculture affect your character?

The impact of the modernisation of agriculture only really comes in at the end of the play. In the last two scenes it is talked about - the farmers who buy up the old steadings plan to farm them with tractors, but the slump comes and they put sheep on the fields instead. It seems to me that this became possible partly because of the other events in the play - the war meant that the men weren't there to continue working their small fields, the whole world had changed, so the bigger farmers took the opportunity to enlarge their farms and change the way they worked the land.

The only character that we see this have an effect on is possibly Long Rob. Somehow he knows that the change is coming and that is surely one reason why he goes off to war after all - there is no life for him here. When he leaves he knows he is not coming back (and in the book we learn that he dies bravely, holding off the enemy while his compatriots escape). He knows there is nothing here for him now, the war has changed everything and there will be nothing for him to return to. So he chooses in effect to die, partly because he can see the change in agriculture coming.

Social, political and religious

From your personal experience, do the religious pressures in the play, and the effects they have on the characters, seem real? Do they have any relevance to Scotland today?

I have limited experience of such religious views and pressures, but I do believe that in some religions the strain of reconciling the given moral strictures with one's own appetites and desires is damaging to the person. There is evidence of this in heavy drinking and sexual abuse in some more remote northern parts of Europe, where the religious rules are particularly strong.

How important is religion to the your character(s)?

To Guthrie of course it is crucial and has great effect on his character as played. It has little bearing I think on the other characters - even the Reverend Gibbon.

Do you think the historical events and background to Sunset Song are important to us today? How did you explore this in your work on the play?

The First World War casts a long shadow. I still find it moving to think about the way men went knowingly off to their deaths and the way the women bore the personal tragedies. The war memorials that you see in villages and towns are grim and moving still. The changes in agriculture and in society of the time are still with us and they haven't stopped. As I write the Foot & Mouth crisis fills the newspapers and it could be argued that the current agricultural practices that are exacerbating the problem are simply further developments of the industrialisation of agriculture that started around the turn of the century. The emancipation of women (especially through the widespread use of contraception) started around the time when the play is set and has had enormous effects on society. Even if we are not aware of the importance of the events and background to the play, they do have bearing on our world today.

We didn't do specific work on these aspects to the play. The subjects came up continually in rehearsal, to highlight particular points or phrases, to answer questions or to give information about what might happen and why. The general background was there, but we didn't study the period or discuss the theory. We worked on the story.

Do you think the historical events and background form an important part of the play, or are they simply a backdrop? Did you research the area?

See above.

Do you think Sunset Song is a political play or story? Can a political play be entertaining?

It is mostly not overtly political, but it is of course political. The last speech by Colquhoun is a clearly political speech, although it is probably less effective than he hopes (and I think Lewis Grassic Gibbon deliberately wrote it so). But the general tenor of the play cries out against the terrible things that war does to people. It also shows working-class people to be strong and good people as well as petty and small-minded, and that is important. It is less so now than it was when the book was written. Working class drama is less unusual than it once was. What is perhaps more important is the fact that it is a play about rural life (and rural life in the North East of Scotland), which is unusual.

The production is in a sense political. The tour is going everywhere in Scotland, but is playing mainly small towns and villages rather than the city centres. This is unusual and a deliberate decision by the company, Prime Productions. It has had an effect on the set, the lighting design and the nature of the production, that must be able to change shape according to the venue being played. Although this circuit is fairly regularly toured by contemporary Scottish theatre companies, few have undertaken such a long tour or such a wide ranging one recently. What was once a radical touring circuit has become a more comfortable and slightly more standardised one.

I think political theatre must be enjoyable. If not, no one is going to come to see it, which limits its political effect greatly. And even if they do, they aren't likely to take much political message from it if it is dull, dry and boring.

Is Sunset Song a nationalistic play?

No.Sunset Song should not be seen as a nationalistic piece and I hope the production isn't either. It is a play about a particular woman at a particular time, but the emotions it draws on are far more universal. It also is not very kind about Scotland and Scottishness. Many of the characters are unpleasant and the lives they lead are not necessarily good ones.

How important is the Scots language to the play and the production?

The play is actually written mostly in English, with a few Scots words to give a sense of the language. We took a decision early on in rehearsal not to go too far down the Scots line, nor to play the piece with strong North Eastern accents. This fits with the language in which Lewis Grassic Gibbon wrote the book. We also wanted to make the piece accessible to a wide audience, not just one that understood North Eastern dialect. But it was important to give a sense of the setting and the north east. Few plays are written in this dialect, although it is widely spoken. Using the rhythm of the dialect and some dialect words gives a strong sense of place that is very important to the story, which is partly about sense of place and connection to the land.

Scottish Theatre & culture

Where do you think Sunset Song fits into contemporary Scottish theatre?

There have been other plays such as Sue Glover's Bondagers that show rural life in Scotland. Sunset Song was also quite important when it was first produced by TAG Theatre Company in 1991 and then as part of a large scale production of the Scots Quair trilogy in 1993, including performances at the Edinburgh International Festival.

The style of the adaptation fits into the era in which it was written, and it is interesting to note from 10 years' distance how that era has passed. There was a period around the late 1980s and the early 1990s when narrated, storytelling theatre was popular and important. It was also an era when a physical style was often used and 'dance in theatre' was fashionable. TAG actually employed a choreographer as a member of the permanent staff, and the original productions incorporated a great deal of dance or movement. This has an influence on the adaptation, although it can easily be produced without using dance or movement. I feel the use of dance in theatre in this manner is less current in 2001, and this production doesn't really make use of that style.

I have an idea that the style of theatre used by Communicado Theatre Company had an influence on the theatrical conventions of the time that the adaptation was written. This was a self-consciously theatrical style, relishing in the presentation of theatre to an audience. But from around 1989 there was also a series of visits by Peter Brook productions to the Tramway in Glasgow and I believe this also had an effect on directors in Scotland. His style is more simple, less overtly theatrical (though still very much theatre) and has led to an enjoyment of more simple ways of representing events and perhaps more of a focus on emotion.

The tour of Sunset Song is long and follows in the footsteps of the heyday of 7:84 to an extent that few companies now attempt. Is this important? Has that affected your work on the play? Did it affect your decision to take the job?

The raison d'etre of Prime Productions is to take theatre to audiences throughout Scotland, following in the tradition of 7:84 and other companies since. That has been something I have done since I started in theatre, always seeking to play to wide audiences in all sorts of places. It seems an important thing to me, to widen the audience for theatre and to play in venues where people feel at home. It then becomes their theatre rather than the company's. It also seems important to me to play the rural venues and the North East particularly, since the play is about those communities.

This aspect had some influence on the production, but mainly in technical terms. We had to come up with a set that would fit into those smaller venues but would also make a big splash in the larger ones, making a theatre space out of somewhere that might be rather drab and better known to many of the audience as the place that they meet in to discuss the mundane matters of the parish council. We had to find a cast that would relish, and they would have to prepare for, the challenge of playing very different spaces to very different audiences and staying away from home for long periods of time. The production had to be flexible so that it could work in all those different spaces. However, at heart the play is the same wherever it plays in Scotland, so in larger terms the work on the play is much the same as it would have been had we been doing a very different tour.

How important is humour in the play?

Crucial. It is important in all plays. When you are working on a tragedy, find the comedy. When you are working on a comedy, play the tragedy. Two hours of theatre without a laugh would be a very long two hours.

Apart from the subject matter, do you think it is particularly Scottish? In style, content or any other way?

There is an awareness of the audience that is quite Scottish as opposed to certain styles of English theatre, which tend to be a bit more naturalistic. The mixture of songs, music and different styles of theatre is also quite Scottish, perhaps relating back to the Communicado style that I noted above, but also to the more recent history of variety in Scotland than in England. Scottish theatre has also probably used dialect and regional accents more than English theatre over the last twenty years - here it became a political issue in a way that in English theatre it has not.

Discussion: