Discussion: Dougal Lee

Interview with Dougal Lee, actor playing Long Rob in the Prime Productions production of Sunset Song.

Interviewer
What's your approach to acting?

Dougal
My approach is, principally, how does it look to the audience, or how does it sound to the audience? I think that's the most important thing. You can be emoting and doing all sorts of things for yourself, completely oblivious to the fact that the audience isn't taking it in. I suppose that's an actor's job and the director's job and the job of your fellow cast members, to tell you that what you're doing looks stupid and to be in loco audience. Secondly, I think it's useful to know the lines, know the moves, turn up on time, make your entrances when you're meant to, but also to think about what you're meant to be feeling and what you're meant to be doing, and to do it with a degree of truth, insofar as you can.

Interviewer
I've been talking with one or two of the other actors about being in the moment. Does that mean anything to you?

Dougal
If it means, appearing to do something with a spontaneity which would convince the audience that what you're doing you are doing for the first time, yes.

Interviewer
I think what I mean by it is knowing absolutely the mental state of the character at that moment. Not necessarily feeling that emotion or being in that mental state, but knowing what it is so that the next line or action derives from that.

Dougal
Yes. And okay, I do know what you mean. I think that's something that can probably change from performance to performance. There is a degree of feedback that you get from an audience which might be registered by laughter in a comedy, or might just be registered as a feeling in a tragedy, but it can cause you to change what you habitually do. It can cause you to do something differently in the hope that your fellow actor - whoever happens to be on stage with you - will react to that in a way which is in the moment.

Interviewer
And that's the thing. If what is happening on stage, what the other people are doing, is part of the sum total of the moment, then anything else that happens on stage, anything unusual or whatever, you will respond to. It seems to me to be at the heart of Stanislavsky. I'm not particularly interested in Stanislavsky, but it does seem to me that one of the things he talks about, is inhabiting the character such that when something happens you respond as the character would.

Dougal
That makes a great deal of sense. I'm afraid I've never really managed to plough my way through enough Stanislavsky to discover that bit! I'm wary of Stanislavsky having worked on occasion with actors who obviously convince themselves that they are the character in any given moment on stage. And thereby they become completely unreliable because there is no predicting what they're going to do. They have no outside view of themselves which will allow them to see that they are acting in a ridiculous or over the top manner. So I tend to be wary of Stanislavsky as a method. But yes, what you've just described does make a good deal of sense to me.

Interviewer
I think that thing you described about those actors is a bastardisation of Stanislavsky. So the outside eye is important.

Dougal
Very important.

Interviewer
And are you aware of how you go about using that outside eye?

Dougal
Yes. I remember appearing in a play, a musical in fact, at the Royal Exchange in Manchester years ago. It was directed by Braham Murray, who in the course of five weeks rehearsals gave me one individual note which was about how I was smiling at a particular moment and he wanted great big greedy smiles from the five of us who were doing this number. I was convinced I was doing a great big greedy smile and he said, 'No you're not', and I said, 'Yes I am', and he said, 'Go and look in the mirror'. So I went and looked in the mirror and indeed what registers in my brain and probably to people who know me very well as a great big smile was a sort of bemused look. Sometimes one thinks one knows oneself better than one does, or at least one's perception of oneself is allied to how one feels rather than how one actually is perceived to be by complete strangers. So, I wouldn't say that I go and check what I'm doing in mirrors constantly but I certainly over time have checked out one or two things in terms of how I act or react on the stage, in terms of how I think the audience will be perceiving it as opposed to how I am feeling.

Interviewer
It seems to me that that's the difference between Brecht and Stanislavsky. Brecht thinks from the outside and Stanislavsky from the inside. Brecht is more interested in the outside eye and it doesn't matter how you feel but it matters how you look and Stanislavsky in some respects is the other way round.

Dougal
Yes. I think if you're sitting in an audience and you can't see what is being done or being felt it can be very offensive sometimes. This is one of the problems I think of for example, theatre in the round - you can do things in theatre in the round which you can't do in proscenium arch but at least you're almost certain to be able to see what's going on in proscenium arch. I remember seeing a farce in the round and there being a big laugh from one half of the audience for a physical gag, which was not visible to that my half of the audience. And I spent the next five minutes wondering what had been funny rather than concentrating on the piece. What the audience is seeing, or perceiving, must be more important than what the actor is feeling.

Interviewer
How aware are you of what I sometimes call the physical text. The stuff that isn't written down in the script but that we derive in rehearsals - the movements that you're making, the stances that you're taking, the looks that you're giving and so on?

Dougal
I think it's almost certainly every bit as important as the text, though it probably varies from play to play. If you have Mercutio and Tybalt fighting with each other in Romeo and Juliet one knows that that has to be a good sword fight, that Shakespeare is not providing choreography, but you need to get a good fight there, you must work to make sure it is a good sword fight. That's an obvious but extreme example. Smaller examples abound on every line of the page. Just as emphases in a given sentence will change the meaning of a sentence, then a gesture can imply the meaning, or further the meaning, or underline, and so yes, I think physical text is very important.

Interviewer
What were the challenges of this play?

Dougal
Well I suppose the most obvious is, that one is effectively transcribing for the stage what is a novel, a different medium. Now, if we were going to be entirely faithful to the novel I would play the fiddle rather than the whistle and whatever else I play and I would have a large moustache. There are limits and limitations to what one can provide. So one needs to be faithful to the novel, in spirit if not in actual fact. Secondly, being faithful to the novel means that it is not quite like a conventional stage play. You talked yourself at one point about the way in which there are various different styles of drama going on - conventional scenes, much more stylised scenes, so one has to be prepared to jump from acting style to acting style. Also, quite a number of scenes are very short and one needs to try and imply a richness of meaning in those short scenes. That can mean that a gesture, that the physical text becomes much more important than it would be if one had more text to play with. And it's impressionistic as well; one needs to have movement about the stage which is going to imply 30/40 people at a wedding party rather than 6 or 7 actors desperately trying to look as if they are 30 or 40 people. So it has its own problems but then every play does have its own problems.

Interviewer
Tell us about your character, Long Rob.

Dougal
I think he's Diogenes updated.

Interviewer
Expand!

Dougal
He's a cynic. But he's an amiable cynic. My favourite Diogenes quote is the one where he was found begging in front of a statue and somebody came up and said "Why are you begging from a statue?" and his reply was "I am practising disappointment", which implies a humour. Rob's quite a happy man but he doesn't expect a great deal of life and of people. Or his expectations are realistic, so he expects people to like him for what he is and certainly the people he cares most about do. So he is able for example to have what seems to be a close and good friendship with Chae Strachan, though Long Rob would appear to be at least an agnostic if not an atheist, whereas Chae Strachan is certainly a keen churchgoer. He would appear to be - well, he might have Left Wing leanings but he certainly has no faith in Socialism as a movement which is going to save the world, whereas Chae is a passionate believer in the power of Socialism to do good. So they have these political and religious differences which really ought to mean they don't get on with each other at all but of course they get on very well since they have a regard for each other's ... probity I suppose, a respect for each other's views. It's the people who speak without thinking that, or without applying any intelligence, that Long Rob doesn't seem to get on so very well with. They try to break his windows when he's raised perfectly legitimate doubts about the wisdom of World War I. So when he gets dragged off and put in prison I think he's disappointed rather than surprised that it's happened. And I think he is pleased that Chris doesn't hold that against him. In fact I think he's impressed by her willingness to accept him in a way that other people don't accept him when he comes back from prison.

Interviewer
Do you think that's a surprise to him?

Dougal
No I don't think that's a surprise to him, I think he's impressed by her moral - what's the word? - I think, because she's young, younger than him, because she's alone, I think he wouldn't blame her if she went with the majority opinion.

Interviewer
Yes. Are there any defining scenes do you think in his journey, the ones that really are important turning points or crucial to him?

Dougal
Oh well. Yes. It's probably the smallest role in the show in terms of the characters with names, and it's nicely written but it's economically written. So just about every time he's on stage it's quite important to his character but I think what has to be important is there is notion throughout that he is a confirmed bachelor. Not in terms of not wishing to get married but in terms of the opportunities perhaps having passed him by. And I think, at the point when Flouers o' the Forest is sung at the wedding, it is dawning on him that his way of life is - he is rapidly becoming obsolete.

Interviewer
Why does that dawn on him at the wedding?

Dougal
I'm not sure that it dawns on him at the wedding. I think it's becoming clear to him; I think the implication is the advent of mechanisation and improved communications ...

Interviewer
Guthrie has gone, already Ewan is there and Ewan is the one who is going to buy the reaper and the binder.

Dougal
Yes, that's right. That things are going to become more and more centralised and therefore these little mills that operate in just about every village are going to start disappearing. And then when the war breaks out, I think he tries to resist the fact that it's going to wipe out a generation and tries not to accept that, but when eventually he has made his stand and it is clear that nothing much more can be done, I think he gives in to it. And it's at that point he helps Christine get the final harvest in and then says, "Right, I'm going to go" and I suppose his defining moment is the fact that she expresses a fondness, a physical love for him, which is something which we are unaware he has ever had before. But it's not just a physical love, it's as if the physical love that he finds with her is an expression of the sort of quasi married state that he has had with her over the previous month or however long it is when he's been helping getting the harvest in.

Interviewer
Yes, he's become her man in another way.

Just going back to the play, do you think the play expresses that, or how do we express in the play, that growing redundancy of Rob?

Dougal
I think it's a very difficult one to play because I think most people are not really aware of what the function of a mill was around about then. It wasn't just for milling the corn and making the flour and all that sort of stuff; it was for germinating and providing animal feed and all that sort of stuff, and there is no way we can represent the workings of a mill on stage.

Interviewer
Many have tried ....

Dougal
I'm sure... So his obsolescence is, I think it's more taken on trust. I think it's part of the whole society's obsolescence... It's expressed in that final scene where we discover that one or two of the farmers have found the funds to buy up the land of the other ones and what they're going to do is farm the fields with the tractor. Well, that's one sort of obsolescence - no longer do you have the horse pairs and the ploughman and all that sort of stuff. We know that Rob is desperately 'tearing up the moor'; he's trying to get all the stones off, so that he has some land extra on which to grow crops and keep his pigs, but it may well be that there is so much land becoming available because fewer and fewer people are needed in the workforce by the end that his work of tearing up the moor is surplus to requirements. I'm not sure that we do represent his becoming obsolete on the stage; I think it's reported and implied.

Interviewer
And in the end in the last scene, it's symbolically represented, isn't it, by the fact that his songs are no longer needed?

Dougal
Yes.

Interviewer
He never came back but his songs are no longer needed, and it's not actually said but in a way the mill is no longer required, is it? The mill isn't mentioned, nobody has bought up the mill and is running it. It's just ignored, it's useless.

Going off at a tangent slightly, with all the business about foot and mouth at the moment and BSE recently, are you aware of connections between the advent of industrialism in agriculture and our current situation? The time of the play was when agriculture really started turning into agribusiness in Scotland wasn't it? Certainly in that area. Are you aware of connections between then and now?

Dougal
I'm not sure that I completely agree with you. I think that the business of the ongoing sort of mechanism of farming is something which may not have been constant, may have been spasmodic but it's something which has always happened. And the fact of the matter is that at the time when Sunset Song is set agriculture is quite labour intensive but only quite labour intensive. A hundred years previously, they wouldn't have had a thrashing machine, they would have been using a thrashing floor and all that sort of stuff would have been done by hand, so I think it is implicit in the book that there is a move away from the land into the factories and that this has been an ongoing thing. But, Gibbon does see it as a brutalising process. As for connections with the present, well, it's interesting that there is little reference to the animals in the play except as, well, they are commodities. 'The stirks', that's all we hear about, the stirks. 'One of my horses is dead' - well, that's forgotten about in the play very quickly, it's forgotten about in the book very quickly; in fact, in the book, from what I can recall, it's set up as being - you know, this is an old horse and therefore it's no great loss. But we do see that there is that paean of praise to the scythe in Act 1 which is reflected in Ewan's 'Up and down the rigs with my new binder' in Act 2, and we see that things are getting more and more mechanised. I think that's just an ongoing process and I don't think it's necessarily one that Gibbon would have been surprised to see if he were here today. He'd be sad about it but it makes sense.

Interviewer
Is it a nostalgic play? Thinking of Gibbon being sad about it? Is it a nostalgic production?

Dougal
Yes and no. I think there is an acknowledgement in both the play and the production that there were aspects of time past which were perhaps more humane, perhaps more honest, but there is also an acknowledgement that within those things being more humane and more honest there was the opportunity to be very dishonest, the opportunity to be very inhumane.

Interviewer
Can you identify some of those things in the play?

Dougal
Well, I think it's bound up for example with the music. This notion at the wedding for example that everybody gets together, and having a ceilidh. I think there's a feeling of an entire community paying tribute to two of their younger members in singing songs which are chosen to be entertaining but also chosen to be appropriate about love, some of them a bit naughty, some of them a bit mawkish, but they're all there, and everybody stands up and does his bit and there's a feeling of a community which knows itself well enough to be able to do that sort of thing and that's quite rare nowadays. But, it's also probably the sort of community which turns a blind eye to a bit of wife beating, and I think we can see that. We imply it I think; very early in the play there's the point where those of us who are already inhabitants of Kinraddie are keeping an eye on the new inhabitants, the Guthries who have just moved in. And Chae Strachan says that "Mistress Gordon is the best midwife for miles around" and there's a moment of tension when Jean Guthrie says "I hope I'll not have need of a midwife" and John Guthrie says "What's that?" and there's a moment of tension which we acknowledge between us, a moment of silence, which might mean "Ah, so he's that sort of a man". We don't do anything about it, we don't proceed to do anything about it. There may be a great deal of widespread sympathy, but I think the problem is in a small sort of community like that if you rock the boat it can have major repercussions whereas in a biggish town you can allow the authorities to take over.

Interviewer
I'm also aware that when you play the dafty Andy, there's quite a brutal response meted out to you, which I think we found in the book but we show with that single punch to you, and then the way that Cuddieston drives you around the stage.

Dougal
Yes. That's to do with the change of time as well isn't it? In 1910, 1911, 1912 or whenever that particular incident takes place, the perception of a dafty from an asylum in Dundee is probably generally less humane than it would be today. That is not to say that nowadays a dafty from an asylum in Dundee wouldn't be badly treated by people who are taking advantage of that dafty from an asylum in Dundee but if that maltreatment were discovered it would be more outrageous now than it was 90 years ago.

Interviewer
Do you think women are powerful in this society, in the play, and how do we show that?

Dougal
Well, it's funny, it goes rather well with the tour, funnily enough, because of having to get this very big floor out of the back of the van every night and putting it back in again. What inevitably happens, and what only makes sense, is that after a while the stuff for which one needs more strength, devolves upon those people who have more strength. And so, if one were to take an outside look at the way society is stratified in Sunset Song one would say that women are in a downtrodden position, but actually they are doing jobs which are very important and I think perceived as being very important within the society. And it makes sense for them to be doing the cooking and the housework and that sort of stuff because a lot of the farmwork is exceedingly hard physical labour and the men are probably stronger than the women. One of the things that is so impressive about Chris when she takes over the running of the farm is that she's willing to take that on, she's willing to seek the help that she needs to do it and accept that help, so she's mentally very strong but she's also physically strong because she's willing to take on the farm. But when Ewan comes along as a possible person to help her run the farm she jumps at the chance. But because the society is one which is much more dependent upon physical strength than modern society, because if you're a strong man you're presumably very useful when it comes to throwing hay bales into the hay loft or whatever and a weak woman wouldn't be, it also means presumably that the difference in strengths between men and women can mean that women are put upon and seen as less worthwhile in certain respects.

Interviewer
Do you think the characters have been drawn and played stereotypically or not?

Dougal
Well, for the most part, not, though I think Gibbon and Alastair Cording quite happily would say, some of the Speak, some of the minor characters, some of the people who have got the funny little lines here and there are stereotypical. Probably Aunt Janet is quite stereotypical, but deliberately so.

Interviewer
Are they satirical?

Dougal
I think they are satirical of the pusillanimity of certain aspects of an early 20th century society. Yes.

Interviewer
Are you aware of having worked on satire in the play?

Dougal
Not really worked on it but there are certain lines that crop up which are obviously and deliberately satirical. There's the - 'The Germans will no doubt surrender when they hear that the Reverend Gibbon has become a patriot'. Certainly, Lewis Grassic Gibbon is not fond of the Kirk and makes considerable use of satire with regard to the Kirk. And in the characterisation of Gibbon, the choosing of the texts for him, and the way in which he is misunderstood; that satirises the Kirk, but I think Lewis Grassic Gibbon in his portrayal of Colquhoun also happily sees the caring, loving, good socialism can emanate from the Kirk, but this is more in Cloud Howe. He's quite happy to see that actually the people completely misconstrue what's being said by any minister.

Interviewer
It seems to me that one of the ways in which satire comes across in a book is that you have a sort of authorial voice don't you, which is not quite there in a play? And it does seem to me that we play those satirical lines, particularly in the Speak, in a way that the audience knows that even if the character who's speaking them believes them, the audience needs to take that with a pinch of salt and watch the character with an attitude.

Dougal
Yes, I think that's right. I think that's right. It comes back to what you were saying earlier on about the different acting styles as well. Iwatch Estrid and Doug doing it during the harvest madness act, where they assume a completely different physicality to how they are during the rest of the show; it's a sort of, it's almost a commedia moment, rather than being naturalistic.

Interviewer
I was wondering how we tell the audience that we're being satirical, how we tell them to have an attitude which is other than the one we expect them to have with the characters. When we look at the main characters we ask them to make up their own mind, whereas when we ask them to look at the Speak, we're somehow telling them something - think about this with a rather cynical eye.

Dougal
Well, yes, I think it's as much as anything in the physicality, which goes into the voice as well. This doesn't apply to me I think but mostly Estrid and Doug, and to some extent Tommy, where there is a physicality which is foreign to the naturalism of the characters that they mainly play. And a physicality which is unnatural, as if to flag the notion to the audience that these people are not to be taken seriously as real people, so that they can choose to interpret as representing a type.

Interviewer
Is your character's sexuality important?

Dougal
Yes. I mean I think Long Rob has suppressed it, I think he's given up on the idea, or he has sublimated it in his attitude to his horses, his singing or something, but when he is allowed to discover it, this is a considerable surprise ....

Interviewer
Is it a political play? Have we done it politically?

Dougal
It is a political play. I think the politics of the play are obvious enough that one doesn't need to do it politically in the way that one might flag up the politics of Brecht, or Brecht flags up his own politics, I think. I think what Gibbon has done and what Alastair Cording has tried to do in his portrayal of the characters that he's written, is conceal - well, not conceal - but make the politics implicit in the characters that he has written. So, Chae Strachan obviously represents the keen, enthusiastic Socialist; he is representational of the man who does his best to live according to socialist tenets. But Gibbon chucks in a few provisos about Chae's ability to live up to those tenets and I think Alastair has kept a few of them in the stage adaptations - the moment that I imply that maybe Chae caused arson to burn down Peesie's Knapp himself because he was short of money, which would not after all be terribly honest. But, Chae is standing there as... he is fulfilling that political purpose within the play, but the characterisation is sufficiently strong for the character of Chae to cease to be a stereotype and to become a real character with various notions.

Interviewer
I'm just aware that, for example, to take something like Richard III, you can do a very political production of that. Do you feel there is scope for a more political version of this? Could we have played it more politically ....?

Dougal
I think it would have been difficult because everybody in it is of much the same social class. There is not that conflict of existence that you would find in a Shakespeare history play between the peasants and the nobility.

Interviewer
They also don't have power in the same way that the nobles do in Shakespeare.

Dougal
And there are hints about it - 'Chae's a socialist creature', rather disparaging, 'One man's as good as another, and suchlike nonsense', but those are just little lines that are chucked in here and there. I don't think there is the opportunity in the way that there is in a Shakespeare history play.

Interviewer
Is it a nationalistic play?

Dougal
No. Except in that like all great novelists, Gibbon is portraying the world he knows. The world he knows is specific, definitely not English; that is not to say that it is nationalistic in separatist terms. It is appreciative of a particular part of Scotland he knew well at a particular time. I think it harks back to the politics; his sympathy is with the ordinary working man, wherever that ordinary working man happens to be, and if he'd lived longer perhaps he'd have written a play or a book about the Tolpuddle Martyrs, or ....

Interviewer
Or Red Clydeside, or ......?

Dougal
Yes.

Interviewer
One thing that I was thinking this morning was that the wedding is a particularly Scottish event, but actually the format of it is probably much the same all over the world, with different sorts of songs and different sorts of dancing.

Dougal
Yes, yes.

Interviewer
So it could be recognised by anybody.

Where do you see Sunset Song fitting into contemporary Scottish theatre? Do you think it fits in?

Dougal
Oh, I think it's an important piece of contemporary Scottish theatre. There is an opinion with which I have some sympathy which says that what we really need in the theatre is new plays, not adaptations of novels. But, we also need to be popular, or attempt to be popular, and I think if one's got a good adaptation of a great novel, then I think that is absolutely justifiable as a piece of theatre. I think it's good in its contemporary terms in that it makes use of music in a contextual manner, in an exemplary manner, because I think they have in quite a number of Scottish plays in the last 15 years where playwrights have mistaken the opportunities of the music. Or have used music in the same way as they would have used for a television drama or a film.

Interviewer
Are you prepared to name names?

Dougal
It may not be playwrights, it may be musical directors. Well, I'll name one and I do not mean to disparage the piece at all, or indeed the music. A few years ago I was in a production of John McGrath's "Silver Darlings" which was an adaptation of the book for the stage, though I think he would be the first to admit that his ambition was for it to be a film and what we were putting on to the stage was probably more film script than stage play. Ron Shaw - who's a brilliant musician, very good cellist came up with the music. Now the music tended, a lot of the music was absolutely right and absolutely good, but some of it was background music rather than representing something that was happening on stage; or being directly a part of the action. And I think when one starts going down the lines of music in plays being background music one is indeed, you're distracting the audience rather than helping them out, and for me, that was something that happened quite a bit in that. I don't know whether everybody who saw it would necessarily agree with me but it felt to me that too much of the music had been written in advance of rehearsals and some of it didn't get rehearsed properly during rehearsals.

But to return to your original question, about where Sunset Song stands in contemporary Scottish drama, I think Alastair's adaptation of the novel gives plenty of scope for music which is absolutely right because Gibbon writes a lot about music. He mentions lots of songs and all that sort of stuff and, so that's absolutely right, but I hope that in this piece we've not over egged the pudding, which could be a temptation. I think most of the time the music should be there.

Interviewer
What else, apart from music, in other ways - style of production, or adaptation, or whatever?

Dougal
Well it's one of a group of plays that I can think of and I probably couldn't name them all, that have brought a reflection of the matter of Scotland.It's both an awareness of the countryside or at least, you know, an acknowledgement of the fact that there is a lot of country out there which isn't Glasgow or Edinburgh. It's got an attitude to the First World War which puts it in a historical context as far as Scotland, the country, is concerned. The events that take place in the society in Kinraddie, are surely mirrored throughout Scotland, or throughout rural Scotland. This is, let's face it, just about in living memory for some people, and so it's worth recording that before that living memory is completely expunged. I think from the style point of view, that's probably more, well ...... Gibbon's writing is very stylised and Alastair Cording's adaptation reflects that, though what he does is make something more conventional because he needs to hang it on a conventional framework of a play. I think that's one of the clevernesses of the piece. He has come up with some dramatic unities which would be very difficult to apply to the novel. But it's also got a lot of dramatic incident in it which I think is very good; there's a time in the 70s, early 80s, when a lot of plays were Talking Heads and it's probably still the case sometimes. It's good to be reminded that drama is sometimes about drama.

Interviewer
I'm interested in the effect of Communicado and of Peter Brook on theatre in the 90s and this play was written at a time when Communicado was not far from its height, it seems to me. Do you think Communicado and Peter Brook had an effect?

Dougal
Well I think the use of music and that sort of thing, I think Gerry Mulgrew of Communicado was good at doing that and I don't think all directors are or have been. And I think that the sort of, certainly the other thing that we had in the 60s and 70s was a lot of kitchen sink, sub Osborne, or Osborne himself, or whatever you know, a lot of realistic stuff. I think from what I saw of Communicado there was a willingness to use physical theatre, a willingness to use expressionist or stylised drama, which ran counter to that. It seems to me that in this production we've basically got a sort of marriage of the two in a way and there's quite a lot of realistic naturalism, but, given the fact that we're inside a theatre, rather than out on a field, it's got to be stylised at the same time. And I think that's good.

Peter Brook, well, let me see. I suppose in our adaptation, our production, one has these moments which - one of my favourites is the dance, the long dance, the Strip the Willow, whatever, where you are trying to do a dance which would involve eight people using only five and you've got three people standing with their backs to the audience and two other people dancing up and down and actually I think probably giving a very good impression of a whole load of people dancing.

Interviewer
How does that connect to Peter Brook?

Dougal
Well, maybe it doesn't, maybe it connects more to Communicado than Peter Brooks.

Interviewer
I'll tell you why I asked about Peter Brook. I think he has had an effect on all of those of us who saw that whole series of his pieces in the late 80s and early 90s that came to the Tramway. Communicado now looks to me a little busy and a bit over-complex in its theatricality and I wonder whether that simplicity of Peter Brooks, that is not necessarily a good thing but I think is there, has had an effect on people like me, directors who were around and watching stuff at that time.

Dougal
Well, it may have done. I would have to say when you were talking about Peter Brook, the only one of those things that I saw was his La Tempete, which I thought was a piece of Emperor's new clothes, and it was very dull and I couldn't work out why most of the audience were laughing. I thought they were a whole bunch of people who - Emperor's new clothes I thought - and so when I think of Peter Brooks what I think of is Marat Sade and other stuff in the 60s I suppose.

Communicado I certainly saw something of in the 80s; what I enjoyed about Communicado then was the theatricality of it. I thought possibly sometimes the cast were not always up to doing it. I remember seeing Danton's Death. There were moments in that where, I mean I probably couldn't do it myself, but there were moments in that where tableaux were formed as if after Davide or someone and they were stunning moments, but there was one guy in that cast who had done the full two years at Lecoq and all of a sudden he stood out a mile. And it's interesting in our Sunset Song there is a moment at the end of the burning of Peesey's Knapp, where everybody relaxes or reacts to the end of the burning and, because I'm playing music at that point, I'm just an observer and I can see that everybody is doing naturalistic, coughing away, going you know, that was bad, and Estrid who has done the two years at Lecoq is doing a very simple thing, just putting her hands over her face as Kirsty Strachan. And I think the mixture of acting styles at that point in our production, because we have a whole load of different acting styles is absolutely fine, but if it had been Communicado in the late 80s .......

Interviewer
I think, it's interesting you mention those sort of images, those tabloid things, because I think it's that side of Communicado that I'm less interested in. And I think that's possibly because of the theatre history that I've seen later. It seems to me that around the time of the late 80s you could spend time doing a tableau and it would be very impressive. Actually now we want to get through the play more quickly and I think in a way that's what has changed in those years.

Dougal
I think you also have to think about who you're talking to. If I go to the theatre I am much more comfortable being an actor with stuff that I couldn't do myself because if I see an actor doing something that I feel I could do myself I think about how I would do it, or why I'm not doing it and somebody else is. And so, if I think about going to see Communicado's Blood Wedding for example, there are elements of that which were pretty extraordinary and I wouldn't have wanted to attempt them. And therefore I found them very interesting and exciting. But I understand what you're saying and I hear where you're coming from, this is not to say that I wouldn't prefer to be in your production but I might prefer to see Gerry Muldrew's production, but that's not necessarily a criticism of your production if you see what I mean.

Interviewer
This tour follows in the footsteps of 7.84. Are you aware of that? Is that of interest to you? Does it affect things?

Dougal
Well, yes, I'm aware of that. I think of the idea of barnstorming about the place is great. You can't beat theatrical touring for getting about the place and seeing places and all that, and yes it did affect things. My agent can't understand,but I'd much rather do a tour of one-night stands and takes in places like Skerray and Aultbea that I might never have been to and might never go to than a week in Dundee and a fortnight in Aberdeen. I was doing something up in the frozen North last September which I was filming and I was in Durness for three days and then went to Orkney so we drove past the end of the road with the signpost that said Skerray on it. Well, that's one of those instances when you drive past the signpost and you think "I don't suppose I'll ever go there" and now I am! It's interesting to go to places that are up roads that you wouldn't, you know, places that you can't pass through, places that you have to go to.

Interviewer
Do you think it's a particularly Scottish play, production, tour? Apart from the content?

Dougal
Yes. Many years ago I was in a lovely play by Brian Friel called "Philadelphia, Here I Come" which he wrote I think just before the outbreak of the present troubles in Northern Ireland and that was one of the most interesting things about doing it. I was in it at the height of the hunger strikes and so the troubles in Ulster were at the forefront of everyone's mind; there were Ulster people in the show, and it was a sub-text, it was heavily there, but here was this play which didn't say anything about the IRA. It was about a small-town shopkeeper somewhere in Northern Ireland and of course it was extremely Irish in terms of its vocabulary and some of its whimsy perhaps, but if one had translated the whole thing into the West Country of England or Northern France or somewhere like that I don't think one would have noticed any great difference. There are of course elements of the history that - or what has become the history - since Gibbon wrote Sunset Song which make it peculiarly Scottish but the play itself is universal.

Discussion: