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Discussion: Estrid BartonDiscussion with Estrid Barton, actress playing the part of Jean Guthrie in the 2001 Prime Productions production of Sunset Song. Interviewer Tell us about your main character. Estrid Jean. I feel very sorry for Jean because I think she is a wonderful woman who gets a very raw deal. And she's very much of her time, and if she'd married somebody who'd cared for her more she wouldn't have done what she did. She is the side of Chris that belongs to the land. I think that she's quite a simple soul. Interviewer She loves him doesn't she? Estrid She loves him to begin with, yes. Interviewer And he loves her? Estrid Yes. Interviewer And does that go completely? Estrid For her eventually it does. She's just ground into the earth. Interviewer That business of pregnancy and childbirth is just too much? Estrid Yes, yes. Interviewer Can she forgive him for that? Does she blame him for it? Estrid I think she accepts it, that that's her lot, but can't cope with it. Whether she blames him .... I think she blames his dourness, his ... I think to say that she blames his insistence on his marital rights would be wrong - that's placing too modern a viewpoint on it. Because when she says there'll be no more, how do you think, it's obvious what she's insinuating there. When he says, 'You'll do what is your ... I claim my conjugal rights', she goes along with it. Interviewer If this is too personal you don't have to answer but, you're a married woman today, ... Estrid ... are there parallels? Interviewer Yes. Are there parallels? Estrid None at all. Interviewer It's changed so much in the last hundred years ...? Estrid Not for a lot of women. I think I'm one of the lucky few who is married to somebody who is very much a 50/50 person, which I don't think is the common lot nowadays. What I noticed being brought up in the north east was that because my father was Austrian he very much ruled the roost - the man ruled the roost - but I noticed with all my friends at school it was their mothers they were feart of. It was the mothers that ruled the roost. Interviewer Was that because the fathers didn't have so much to do with the children? Or because the mothers ruled the whole family? Estrid Maybe a bit of one and a bit of the other. I know I've been told that in Dundee for example, because it was the women who went out and worked they were the ones who wore the trousers and maybe that just permeated along the east coast. But it is an east coast thing that the women are extremely strong. Interviewer It's interesting isn't it because I remember watching Men Should Weep and comparing the very strong leading woman in that with the women of Irish drama and thinking there's something similar here ... Estrid Yes. Interviewer ... which I don't see as much in English drama. I think it's perhaps more Scottish and Irish than English.... so, and Men Should Weep is a Glasgow play ... Estrid It is yes. Interviewer ... so I wonder whether it is an east coast or whether it's actually - a working class thing, or a Scottish thing? Estrid I don't know because like I said in the home I was brought up in a very Austrian way. Outside the home it was very Scottish. So in a way if I identify with anybody in the play, it's not Jean, it's Chris. Interviewer Why? Estrid Because she has this double personality which is something I very much had when I was a child. Interviewer Right. Do you think that's a common thing, that split self? What was your double personality? Estrid The Austrianness of home and the Scottishness of everything outside the home and the dichotomy that that .... Interviewer Have you seen that in other people? Estrid Some. And I have an affinity with them. But no, not many people I don't think. There has to be something out of sync. Interviewer Yes. And you were unusual because of your different background? Estrid Yes. Exactly. But I was a good chameleon and I am a good chameleon. Interviewer That's probably why you're such a good actor! Estrid Oh ... I don't know about that. Interviewer Could you talk about your main character's journey through the play? Are there key scenes? Estrid It's interesting how some of the people say, it's a natural(istic) play - it isn't in the slightest because Jean is actually only on the stage for about 20 minutes, if that even. So in those 20 minutes I have to portray somebody who starts off being the mother of a 13 year old, however old Chris is meant to be then, but we go back to when she meets John Guthrie. I see her then as a very happy quine who falls hook line and sinker for this rather gorgeous man and then, in the space of, well that little bit near the beginning of the play, she goes from that - it happens in less than a minute - she goes from that to being at the end of her tether. And it's interesting how people think it's naturalistic when in actual fact ... Interviewer Is that hard? Estrid Not if you do it technically. You can't indulge in emotions because you have to fake them. Although there are little smidgens, there is a very special moment, I don't know if it's special for Stewart because we've never discussed it. It only takes about two seconds, when we stand holding each other and look into each other's eyes and you can just feel the love that they have for each other. And then 10 seconds later, he's shouting at her because she's said four children was enough. Interviewer So there's a challenge there as an actor isn't there, playing that very quick deterioration of a relationship? Estrid Yes, and making the audience go along with it. Interviewer Can you say anything about how we managed that or how you managed that? Have we managed it? Estrid Gosh, by - I hate using this word - but by playing the truth of the emotions in all the very few seconds of time. What I personally find fascinating as an actor is that by portraying truth you're telling a lie. So in this for example, I am relying totally on technique to get me through it because there's no other way of doing it. Interviewer You can't emote fully in all those different directions ... so quickly, bang bang bang bang bang. Estrid No, absolutely not. There are a few occasions where Jean is given licence to do that but they're not that many. I mean there is that scene - her ultimate scene, we don't see her after that, but you hear that she's committed suicide - where I can dig a bit deeper there, I'm given the luxury of digging deeper. Which means that I don't quite know how that scene is going to come out night after night, it's always a little bit different. It depends on the moment. You were very kindly saying yesterday that I'm a consistent actress; well, I'm consistent because the other characters I'm portraying, you are required to portray them technically rather than emotionally. Interviewer That's interesting. I think my statement about should allow for that freedom: that moment when Jean realises that Guthrie has just looked at his daughter sexually can be very powerful, it can be different but it must also be consistent if it is to give the audience the right understanding of the moment. Estrid Yes. Interviewer As can the moment when you've just given birth and you say "I can't go through this again." Estrid But that again relies heavily on technique. Because there is a gulf, in places like where we were last night. Maybe not so much here where doing it naturalistically I will possibly only croak or whisper out what I say, yet [in some places where the audience is further away] it has to be given a little more just to carry over the footlights. I never forget that it's a false situation. Interviewer Yes, well, that's one of the interesting things about being an actor isn't it - it's being, as you say, it's lying and playing ... Estrid The truth ... Interviewer ... at the same time. Estrid Yes, I'm skilfully lying. Hopefully. Interviewer And that's one of the strange things about rehearsal isn't it because you possibly do more truth in rehearsals and then when you go into performance you have to recreate that truth night after night. Estrid And to get to where you want to be you have to stick your neck out and really go for it and maybe make yourself really quite vulnerable to get to where you want to. Remember what that emotion's like and duplicate it. Interviewer Yes. Yes. So as director, I'm quite privileged, I have sort of privileged access don't I to actors' vulnerable moments which the audience doesn't get in quite the same ... or they see a different way .... Estrid It helps if you're working with a director you trust. There's something very scary about having to do something like that with somebody that you feel - dangerous. Interviewer When you play your other parts, Marget to some extent but more the speak parts, do you have to apply different techniques because there isn't that characterisation? Estrid Well I suppose approaching Jean is very much from the inside out. The other characters - it's from the outside in, it's the physicality of them. And I suppose it's my training. I tend to approach different characters through their physicality whereas for a lot of - maybe not so much Scottish actors but English actors - it's through the voice and what is spoken. Because I was trained at Lecoq as well as Bristol Old Vic, characters like the Speak characters are of paramount importance to me. Maybe not to the director, maybe not to the other actors, but to me, when the audience see me, it's not just a case of 'Oh she's got a different hat on therefore she's another character', but that hopefully through my physicality and my voice I will have done the work for them. They don't have to worry about 'Who is she now and why is she saying that, because she didn't say that the last time - Oh right, of course, because she's playing somebody else.' Interviewer I always think that what our job is to do is to not require the audience to do any thinking because if they have to think for a second, then we've lost them for five seconds while they catch up with the story. And we have to tell them very clearly straight away so they know exactly where they are and what's going on. It may be they don't need to know very much, they need to know just enough that this person is an older women, or a younger women, or whatever .... Estrid And I was slightly concerned, shall we say, that with the Speak characters that it would end up being sort of comedy moment No.3 and there would be no truth there. But I have this picture of our old neighbour - she's not old but from when I was a child, Mrs McLean - a real Doric North-East wifie - and she's my mentor and if I think 'Would Mrs McLean have gone as far as that? Yes!' then I know it's grounded in reality because this woman is like this. And we went to see her for a cup of tea when we were up in Huntly and afterwards Dougal said 'Your character is so totally this woman.' Interviewer Which was a compliment? Estrid Yes, I suppose so. But you know I was brought up with her and unconsciously I mimicked her and she just .... Interviewer Lewis Grassic Gibbon of course wrote from fact. Estrid Yes, but somebody who doesn't know that part of the world might think "Oh come on, that doesn't ..." I know that other actors in the company have talked about the universality of it and we're dealing with big issues like life, death, birth, the disappearance of the agricultural community, all these things which have happened the world over ...... Yes, but because I was brought up in that part of the world, but wasn't of that world, I was an observer of it, I can see just how rooted it is in the north-east and how true it is to that part of the world. Interviewer One of theatre's benefits is that it is the universal in the particular. That you are actually watching one person who may be a representative of or who may symbolise a greater human emotion or whatever, but actually you are watching it happen to one person - which is why, I think, it is very powerful. So in a way I would connect the universality that some of the other members of the cast have spoken about and your saying that there is a particularity about this by saying 'Yes, absolutely, what makes it a good play, or good book, is that he has found a microcosm that we understand in the particular, but it also has bearing has resonance with the wider ....' Estrid Absolutely, if it were only the particular then it would only have resonance for folk in Arbuthnott and nowhere else, you know, why bother ....? What you said made me think that you've got, let's say, for example, the Holocaust, and the numbers are so mind-boggling that you just - it doesn't sink in. And then you read about one person and that one person's journey through the holocaust and what atrocities happened to that one person and that stays with you. Because we cannot empathise with the numbers, we can only empathise with other human beings. Interviewer So we weep when Chris loses Ewan in a way that we don't weep when we hear that X million died in the First World War. Estrid Exactly. Interviewer 'Are the characters stereotypes?' Particularly the female characters in the play? Estrid The Speak characters are but, like I said, they are grounded in reality but I haven't, I'm not that kind of actor anyway, but I haven't made up a life history of all the different wifies that I'm playing - I think that's a kind of nonsense. They're there for a purpose and that purpose is to portray the community and the whispers of the community and to a certain extent I think you are dealing with stereotypes. But, it wouldn't work if they weren't grounded in reality and I think they are. Interviewer What about Jean and Chris? And Marget? Estrid I suppose you might say that Jean is stereotypical in as much as she's a North-East lass brought up, used to the farmer's life, marries a farmer, and knows nothing else, but the fact is she commits suicide and that isn't something that happens every day. Interviewer No, that's true, most would die in childbirth ... Estrid Precisely. Die in childbirth or survive and just keep pleitering on. Margaret - No, she's not, because she's of that community but she goes to Aberdeen to better herself and become a doctor, which certainly wasn't stereotypical of this age. I met a fascinating old lady a few years ago who'd been one of the first to read Medicine at Aberdeen University and she would have been contemporaneous actually with Chris and she was saying how difficult it was for her to be accepted by the other students, the male students, at the University. Interviewer Particularly when you're dealing with all those bodily things - the men, a bit like Marget says, the men would get embarrassed just having a woman around when they were discussing or looking at or whatever medical items or medical conditions. Estrid Yes, obviously, impressed by her father, she is, Marget is going on for a life that is not a typical one. Chris is a one-off. Interviewer Yes. Hardly stereotypical! And do you think that there are other characters in the play or events in the play forcing women into stereotypical roles? Estrid Yes but that's so often the case, isn't it? Interviewer Can you expand on that? Estrid Oh, it's - less so nowadays but you're expected to follow a path and the path of women was to find a suitable breeder and thereby produce his bairns for him ... Interviewer As Aunt Janet suggests Chris should do - 'Some braw bit farmer from Auchterless would soon be after you for marriage.' I think that phrase is very telling "after you for marriage". Quite crude really. Estrid Yes, I mean women were just breeding machines. Interviewer Estrid Maybe they don't but for precisely that reason I think the book should be read and precisely for that reason the play should be seen. Because this happened so recently, it's in my grandparents' time that this happened. It's less than a hundred years ago and things have altered so enormously. And even in more recent times. I was brought up in a wee hamlet in the middle of nowhere in Banffshire. And we used to go to get eggs from this wee wifie and we'd say, "We're going off to Austria to see my father's family," and she'd ask, "Oh, have they got coos and sheep owr there?" They lived this very simple life; they were only, they never went further than two miles down the road; they had a wee television but whenever I went to see them all that they ever watched was the wrestling. So that was their passport to the world but they didn't use it as such. They were a farmer chiel and his wife who just lived in their farm all their lives - this was back in the late sixties. So that's only 40 years ago you know. Interviewer How do you explore the differences between the individual and the establishment in your work on the play? Estrid "Individual and establishment". The establishment I see as Speak, as how things should be done. And you still very much get that in the North East.. Interviewer I think you get it in all small places don't you? Is it typical of the north-east? Estrid Yes. I don't know but because I was brought up there I see it as very typical of the North East. But yes, now that I've moved out to East Lothian and that's a small community as well there is that aspect as well. And there is an established way of doing things. As for example in a wee place like Haddington I am not following the norm. I am seen by the other Mums at the primary school as a bit of an oddity ... Interviewer Because you leave your daughter while you go off touring the country? Estrid That's right. Or take my daughter with me. They accept it but they're puzzled by it. Interviewer Have we talked enough about sexuality? Is there anything else about - generally in the play, not just about your characters? Estrid No. It's fascinating how the topic of incest is raised and it's almost because it's so much in your face nowadays, it's almost like people have discovered it and yet it's happened since time immemorial as Guthrie himself says, It happened in the Bible, so it must be right and proper. And for Grassic Gibbon to actually write about it is fascinating. Interviewer Yes. It was a big deal then and it strikes me that it's quite a big deal even now. Estrid A very big deal. I remember when I saw the first production of it, it just floored me, I was totally shocked by it. Interviewer That's interesting because I think the rise in the awareness of incest has happened, a lot of it, in those last ten years. Estrid Yes. It would be interesting if I came to this new if it would shock me as much as it did when I saw .... Interviewer Have you had any feedback on that at all? Has anybody mentioned ...? We don't allude to it very strongly in the play - it's there - we place it ... Estrid No, but that's what I took away from it more than anything else when I first saw the play. Interviewer Has anybody mentioned it to you, any audience members or anything? Estrid No. No, actually. No, they tend to, they enthuse about the music and the quality of the acting, things like that but when they talk about the play per se it tends to be about the war and about the lot of the woman and Cora mentioned this old farmer billy who came up and said, "Oh it was just fine seein' that. We didnae treat the women right in those days." But he was talking about the fact that they were just like work horses. But maybe that's because incest is still a taboo subject, or maybe it's because it's more accepted nowadays, so it's not as big a deal. But I still ... I'm standing there with my scythe scraping away feeling sick to the core of my stomach. Interviewer I remember when we first did it in rehearsal - how affected I was. I found it quite scary. Less so now. I've become inured to it. Estrid I haven't. Interviewer There's a lot of sexuality about isn't there? In the play .... Estrid Yes, yes, a huge amount. Interviewer Estrid Well I remember saying to Cora, talking about this harvest madness, that I don't think I ever came across this when I lived in that part of the world. And I went out with quite a few farmers, in fact, one who'd got a farm right next to Arbuthnott - I was quite curious to see if he was going to come, but no, he didn't. But yes, it's one of the main driving forces in the play isn't it? Interviewer Do you think Grassic Gibbon overstates that? Estrid No, no I think it's wonderful that he creates a heroine who - admits is too negative a word - who is aware of and admits to her feelings of sexuality. Interviewer Because that again must have been brand new, mustn't it? Or not brand new but - it must have been a thing that wasn't written about, wasn't .... Estrid Well another story, I'm full of stories, but my grandmother was Edwardian. And on the eve of her wedding her mother sat her down and said "Now there's something I need to tell you about men dear, Bertie is like a bull but he's only got one horn and I'm afraid you'll just have to put up with it". And at that point my grandmother said "I think we've said enough about that thank you very much". But that was her sex lesson basically, 24 hours before she married her husband. And that was it. But maybe that was middle class. Maybe the, maybe not so much the working classes but maybe the agricultural classes, surrounded by everything shagging everything, so maybe it was just more acceptable, and yet you've got Chris saying, "What's father got to do with mother being pregnant?" Interviewer Yes, yes. Estrid And then you go to the church and there's Gibbon slavering over the words of the Bible and they're all shocked to the core but it's acceptable and they let him stay because ... Interviewer They want him! Estrid They want him. Exactly. It's great to hear these things and to feel righteous about it. Interviewer When Marget kisses Chris, why does she do that? Estrid Because she's a besom. Because that's something that girls do at that age, they practise on each other, didn't you know...? Again I think it's just Gibbon being very perceptive. I'm sure they did it in those days, like they did it in my youth, and .... Interviewer But Chris finds something sexual in it doesn't she? It's not just practice, there is some pleasure that she takes. Is that two women, or is that man and a woman. Is it different from a kiss from a man or is it just a kiss? Estrid I don't know. I don't know. I mean when Marget says "Don't struggle, there's nobody looking" so that Chris allows herself to go along with it, maybe she's struggling because she thinks this is wrong and bad because we're two girls and that's not right and proper. I don't know. Interviewer Is this a thing we make more off than they might have then, because lesbianism is a possibility now and was less thought of then? In a way I'm asking you as an actor really, what's - I suppose what you're playing there. You can't answer for Lewis Grassic Gibbon .... Estrid Well I play Marget as a complete besom. Interviewer She's just wicked and having fun, and teasing ... Estrid Yes, and she's very sure of herself ... Interviewer And she's moving Chris on though isn't she? She's also giving her a bit of an education there? Showing her that transient things can be pleasurable. Which is quite important isn't it to - Chris is learning to accept understanding of her own sexuality, which is a transient thing that is pleasurable and not bad. Estrid I think Marget is a modern woman. And if the novel had been written ten years ago I'd have gone "She's too modern, it's not of her day" but Gibbon wrote it 20 years after the event, and time had moved on and by that time we'd got flappers and what have you. But there must have been women like that. Like I said, I met that woman who went and studied Medicine at Aberdeen University. I think she's great. Interviewer Estrid No. It would be awful if it were. Because that's like saying the good old days, and things are simple, and - they weren't. I mean, we're all saying this is quite a tour isn't it. And you know get-ins, get-outs, we're working bloody hard, but it is as nothing in comparison to what these people had to put up with. They were work horses then. They got up before the crack of dawn and just worked until they went to bed. Interviewer And they used the lanterns to feed the horses in the morning and to groom them at night, certainly in the winter and spring, so they were long days, 12 - 14 hour days. Estrid When we were in Arbuthnott last week, Dougal and I walked the distance between Arbuthnott and Bervie and, maybe the fields are larger now than they were in those days, but all these fields of stubble, I said "Could you imagine that, planting that?" Interviewer Ploughing that, sewing that, scything .... Estrid And Dougal said "Yes but there'd be about ten of them", but it would have just been back-breaking. And so I think it's very important that we remember that that was as recent as a hundred years ago, less than that years ago. Interviewer The introduction of the tractor was really in the thirties and forties I think in the north-east wasn't it - in a big way, or certainly not before the twenties.... Estrid Well they certainly embraced mechanisation. Interviewer But I think the tractor being regularly used was not long before WW2. Did you use satire in your work in this play? Estrid Satire? What do you mean? Poking fun? Interviewer Well I suppose the Speak is satirical isn't it, in a way? Estrid Yes. Interviewer There's an authorial voice isn't there? And I think probably a directorial voice, when I say to you things like "You can make that funnier....". What I'm asking you to do and what you do is you are showing the audience an aspect of the Speak and saying you are allowed to laugh at this, aren't you? I think? Estrid Absolutely, yes. But then, as I've said before, if it weren't grounded in reality, I would be very ill at ease with it and these people really are like that. Now they don't only say "Coarse brute of a man", they also say "What a nice person", but it doesn't make good theatre. Interviewer But that's the difference between satire and comedy. You can be a comedy cipher where you're just coming up with funny one liners, and there are moments in the play when that happens, but I think most of the speak lines are, as you say, grounded in truth. We laugh at the ignorance of the person, or their attitudes, rather than just the comedy line itself, which requires that grounding in truth. Estrid Definitely, definitely. Interviewer Do the religious pressures in the play seem real? Do they have any relevance in Scotland today? Estrid Gosh! I don't know if they do today. I think it was part of the life that was just accepted. Sunday was your day of rest and you went to the kirk. Like Mrs McLean who I mentioned told my mother how when she was a wee girl, this is going back a bit, late thirties, they worked very hard; her father was a smithy. On Sundays they weren't allowed to do a thing. Everything had to be made ready for the Sunday, for the Sabbath, so they would just sit there and read the bible ... Interviewer Of course some religions - Orthodox Jews - will do that on a Saturday, won't they? Estrid Yes, yes. Interviewer I think in some cases they don't turn on the lights. Estrid And Wee Frees still today. Interviewer Yes, yes, so there are parallels. Estrid There definitely are, yes yes. But I don't think it's a - I may be wrong - but I don't think it's a big life force in the north-east nowadays. When I was a kid, I mean I was born a Catholic, but my parents left the church when I was very wee and went to the High Church, Episcopalian. By that time, they had four children and they were all products of the rhythm method! Interviewer Very close relevance to the play! Estrid Well maybe. So again, it was because I was an observer, I found the Presbyterian church quite curious. Because I had a good singing voice I'd be asked to go and plump up choirs and so I used to go along and see the community all going off to church on Sunday and sit there, and when the Minister started the sermon they'd pass the pandrops round, very quietly and surreptitiously. And then when they had communion out would come these little individual glasses with wine poured into each one of them, and I thought this is like a cocktail party. I was used to going up to the altar and kneeling and ... Interviewer ... swigging it back. Estrid Yes, swigging it back. It just seemed to me it had very little to do with God. But nobody really talked about it but it was all part and parcel of life and that's the feeling I get in the play. Interviewer It's part of the community isn't it, the social centre as well as many other things. Estrid Yes, exactly. It's something you do and you accept and that's all there is to it. I think it's something - I think I mentioned to you, I don't know if it's true or right but it's right for me, the penny dropped, that Jean says "Do you hear?" in the blanket washing scene, at the end before she rushes off. And I never quite knew who "Do you hear?" was for. To begin with I thought it was for Guthrie and she was saying it under her breath. "I can't take any more of this - but I can't tell you to your face, because I'm scared of you" and then I thought No, that's too modern. She's saying it to his God and maybe it's her God as well because she goes to kirk. But the Jean that I'm playing believes in God and moments later John comes in and says "Laugh you mucker" to his God and she says "Do you hear?" and they're both shaking their fists at Him. Interviewer They both have a slightly personal relationship with their God. And that action of hers to commit suicide is all the more terrifying isn't it because of that, because she is a believer, that's true. Do you think that it's a political play? Estrid Well, most plays about people are political. Depends what you mean by political. What you were saying about the particular being relevant to the universal - to my mind the universal is the political. It's political inasmuch as you have characters like Chae who's a Socialist, Rob who is a conscientious objector, Colquhoun who supports the Calvinist Union. Interviewer Is it a feminist play? Estrid Only if you want to use that terminology. I think the women are every bit as important as the men and because the heroine is precisely that - a heroine, not a hero - they may be more important. Interviewer In your view, would describing it as a political play, or any play as a political play, suggest that it would be diminished, it would become less true and more representative? Estrid It becomes political by Colquohoun's speech at the end, doesn't it? Interviewer Yes, there's a certain amount of socialism or communism coming out strongly there. Estrid Yes, and he relates the lives of the four that died and we have seen a microcosm or a segment of the lives of three of those men, and so in that way retrospectively the play is political ....You don't sit thinking this is a political play but that speech really brings it to sharp focus. Interviewer Estrid Gosh! Are we talking Brecht here for example? Interviewer Well, maybe we are. Estrid I don't know. (laughs) I like plays that are political almost by accident. And I'm sure it's not by accident but it's not, you're not getting the moral shoved down your throat, which is why I think Sunset Song is very powerful. Because you are, hopefully, entertaining the audience with a good story which is, let's face it, the most important thing, that an audience should be entertained, and then they take away so much more. I totally disagree with what [The Scotsman reviewer] Joyce McMillan for example said in her review about it's not political enough. Because to my mind it deals very much with the minutiae of one girl's life, as she grows up we see it through her eyes. So it is the childlike bits it starts off with and the older she becomes the more the world widens and the world enters into her life. And I think if it had been political as in you know, not speaking about this particular small close-knit community, the audience would have switched off, if it had been like that right from the start, that's not what it's about. Interviewer Certainly I focused on the story as the main reason for doing the piece. The story is compelling, powerful and moving and along the way you get all sorts of other stuff. Estrid And precisely because the audience have gone along with Chris's story, the death of Long Rob and the death of Chae and the death of Ewan are much more shocking. Interviewer Estrid I don't think it is but I could imagine that nationalists in the audience would pick what they would choose to pick out of it - things like 'Love him as they say in the soppy English novels, we're not like that in Scotland', and I can imagine quite a few members of the audience going, 'Yes! Bloody right!' Interviewer And Chris identifies with the Scottish side of her, the land, the language and so on. Estrid I think it is a very Scottish play. I hesitate to say nationalist. I think it's very Scottish inasmuch as it is very much of the north-east of Scotland, and the north-east is in Scotland - it's not the north of England ....And it's just something that, again, having been half an observer, half Austrian, half Scottish, I have observed all through my life just how important identity is to the Scots. And it's there. Interviewer It struggles with that. It discusses it in many ways. I mean Chris struggles with identity doesn't she? And she finds her own one, which is her own, rather than a Scottish one, it seems to me. Estrid I think it treads a very dangerous path, simply because of the way an awful lot of Scottish people regard themselves and, more importantly, regard the English. But it goes beyond that, it goes far beyond that. I don't think what's being rued at the end of the play is the death of four Scots lads, it's the death of a generation. Interviewer And of a sort of society. Estrid And I think that it's good to celebrate the Scottishness of it. But there will be bigots in the audience who will see it as ammunition against the English. Interviewer Who will misuse it? Estrid Yes. I'm always very wary of that. Interviewer How important is the Scots language do you think in the play and the production? Estrid I think it's enormously important. I'm speaking personally here of course because it's my natural tongue and it is heard so seldom that it's wonderful to hear it again. I was very aware for example last night that the language I was speaking was not the language that the audience were used to speaking because we were in Falkirk, and so I was very aware of the sounds my voice was making, celebrating those sounds. But in the knowledge that they would still understand what I was saying, or the vast bulk of it, because it isn't as strong as it could be, that's for sure. But it is so much a part of that world that I think is enormously strong, and it's Sunset Song - it's a song, okay, it's a song for other reasons but there's the song of the Doric, of the Speak .... Interviewer Which is a particularly musical accent, dialect, whatever you choose to call it. Estrid Yes. Beautiful accent. I remember saying to somebody once, and they were a bit shocked, that I thought it would be quite difficult to do tragedy in the Doric because it's an accent that just brings a smile to your face. And then I had to qualify what I meant by that. I don't know if I think that any more. Interviewer Estrid Well you could say it fits in with a play like Bondagers, to a certain extent. I would say the bulk of modern Scots plays are urban, so I think exactly for that reason it's good to have this world portrayed because there is still very much a country community in Scotland and they deserve to be given a voice as well. Interviewer It's interesting to me that we get large audiences in the towns and it may be that there are people who are recently enough from the country who have come to live in those towns ... Estrid Or maybe they want a bit of nostalgia. Interviewer And the tour is a classic Scottish tour isn't it? You've been touring for probably longer than you care to remember. How does it fit in? It seems to me that we are recreating, more than most people do now, a 7-84 tour from the seventies. Estrid Yes. I'm used to them. I toured for years and years. In fact, the last four I did which was four years ago, and that was round Scotland, I swore I wouldn't tour again .... and here I am. But I think it's terribly important that it should still be done. Interviewer How does it affect the play or the production? Does it have an effect on the style or the way of doing it? Estrid Well, you're dealing with a different space every night and so that will inform the performance to a certain extent. Interviewer Are you aware of that informing rehearsal? Estrid No. During rehearsals it was very much as we said earlier on, getting to the truth of the emotions. Once those are under your belt, then you can deal with things like, 'Oh, it's a different space so if I speak as loudly as I did last night I'll blow them off their seats'. But that's not the sort of thing you consider consciously. Interviewer It's something you do as a touring actor, you know how to do. Estrid Yes, absolutely. Yes. I'm not a cerebral actor, I don't begin to be. So I don't think. I came here and I thought Oh, it's a nice wee space. I'll enjoy it, it'll be intimate, and that's all the thinking I've done on it. It'll all hopefully come together. I actually prefer doing the small theatres. Interviewer Yes. Is it a particularly Scottish production in theatrical terms - rather than content? Estrid It's not - it certainly doesn't feel English. It's difficult, it's hard to explain this. It doesn't feel British at all, it feels very Scottish, it feels quite European. Because it is not a naturalistic play, because - maybe this is again the way I approach things personally - because it's a physical play. I'd say it was physical. Although we're not dancing and doing interesting movement, these people are grounded - they're very centred, you know their feet are boomph! on the ground - it's physical, is how I see it. And so often British plays are plays of ideas and the spoken word. The spoken word is extremely important here but so is the physicality. Interviewer As a director I think in pictures quite a lot and I recall in rehearsal saying "This is the picture that I have, this is what we're going to do ...." Estrid Well I know exactly what you mean immediately because I'm like that too. And sometimes I get into a bit of a stramash with directors because they're thinking in text, of the text, which is enormously important but is not the only thing. And I like to think that I've developed an outer eye that's always looking. We're not doing this for ourselves, we're doing it for an audience. But it has to look good, or it has to look right. Interviewer Estrid Yes. Interviewer And was there a big difference between your training at Lecoq and at Bristol Old Vic in terms of Stanislavsky and not Stanislavsky or the other way about? Estrid Stanislavsky never reared his ugly head even at Bristol. I was in second year at Lecoq with Simon McBurnie, who is Director of Theatre de Complicite. We were coming to the end of our second year and he said "What are you going to do now?" and I said "I've applied to do the post graduate course at Bristol." And his response to that was "What the f*** do you want to go there for?" I said because I'm half baked. He said "What do you mean?" and I said "Well, I've spent two years discovering that I've got arms and legs and this space that I occupy on a stage vis a vis the others, and masks, bouffant, tragedy, comedy, light, colour, sound, all of these things, I've worked with all these things, nothing on voice. I don't know how to use my voice. I can't get through a speech of Shakespeare without expiring. I didn't know that I had a diaphragm, it was all upper chest. I needed that training. I needed training I thought in classical theatre and in voice. And I didn't get that at Lecoq so I thought I can't become an actor - this is the typical teutonic side of me - until I've learned my trade, and so I went to Bristol. Now they were completely opposed, no, not opposed, different, but I wouldn't have done one without the other. Absolutely not. I did, we had a teacher who was contemporary at Lecoq with Berkoff who came and taught us a bit at Lecoq - just a wee taster. And for me it was great fun. We did it together, we'd play all these tricks for the cast and they loved it but I thought "My God"; for me it was like a refresher course, for them it was like a door being opened, slightly ajar, and then being slammed in their face again. And there was this huge side of theatre that they hadn't even considered. Interviewer That side of theatre has been important in Scotland though more recently hasn't it? And indeed in England? Estrid Yes, yes. It's getting known in England. In Scotland it came sooner simply because of the Lecoq connection because he married Fay Lecoq who is Scottish and comes from RSAMD and that was the connection. So most Scottish actors who went to Lecoq went after RSAMD. I was the exception because I went after I had studied at university because I knew somebody who had gone; when he told me about it I thought I wanted to do that. Discussion:
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