Discussion: Stewart Porter

Discussion with Stewart Porter, actor playing the part of John Guthrie in the Prime Productions production of Sunset Song.

Interviewer
How you do acting?

Stewart
How do I do acting?

Interviewer
Do you have a method?

Stewart
No.

Interviewer
How did you approach this play?

Stewart
Well, this was a different one because having done it before you don't end, you don't start off with ‘Here’s a load of pieces of paper and in 21-25 days this is going to have gone from being a piece of paper to we're doing it in front of people’. You've kind of got an idea when you've done something before ...

Interviewer
Even although you didn't play Guthrie before? I was aware when we rehearsed that with Colquhoun - you had a whole load of stuff to draw on. From having played that part previously. But Guthrie was new, and also you're very different to the person who played Guthrie before .....

Stewart
Yes. Yes it was ..... Having done it before, and because we did it for so long, for eight months, you hear it every night, I was quite determined to do something entirely different to what had been done before. But when you actually get the same words put down in front of you, and the same scenes, it becomes very difficult to do something different and sometimes you find yourself saying to yourself "I'm doing something different here" or "I'm doing what I'm doing only to be contrary" and do something that wasn't done before rather than do what perhaps might be the right thing.

Interviewer
But how do you find the right thing?

Stewart
The right thing is I would say 7 times out of 10, to pluck a statistic out of the air, your first instinct is usually the thing that you end up going with. And you'll have an instinct, I mean I always try to read and know as little about it on day one, because if you go in with preconceptions then you've got to start unlearning things and clearing your minds of things that you've put in there beforehand. You can think it all through yourself, but when you get there everybody's got different ideas and then, "Well mine doesn't fit in with that", so if you've already started going down a path, you've got to find yourself ways to walk backwards and then go in the direction that everybody else is. So, I try and come in not having any preconceptions and just see what everybody else is thinking about it, especially in something like this where everybody is working together, so much depends on everybody's dependence upon each other. It is as important to get a chemistry where everybody is all working together, as it is for you to be marching on, you know, the perfect thing, your own part ...

Interviewer
So acting is reacting in many ways?

Stewart
Depending on the part or depending on the play. In something like this it definitely is reacting.

Interviewer
Something like this because it is quite an ensemble piece? You're all on the stage most of the time.

Stewart
And you don't have a lot of big speeches you serve to the audience. It's all about the inter-relationships between characters. But then again in something like this, where it's such a big book that's been adapted and there are so many subtleties in the book and so many scenes that you would like to see kept in but can't be there because of time; you've got to make compromises. And a lot of the scenes - they're not - the characters, or I feel that Guthrie doesn’t really drive the scenes on, isn’t the motor behind the scenes, and sometimes you know in mostly a play you find that somebody's driving a scene or controlling the scene. But this doesn't seem to be quite like that. Even Chris who you would expect to be the character, isn't, because she's there taking in all these stimuli ...

Interviewer
It seems to me - I know what you mean there - and I think we had a problem with this in rehearsal. I think we found this difficult. Certainly earlier on in the play, the first few scenes, where there didn't seem to be much forward motion - it was things happening rather than somebody pushing it forward. But it does seem to me that Guthrie dominates the first half. Almost as much as Chris. In a story which is fundamentally Chris's story. But nearly everything that happens, happens because of Guthrie's conflict between his religion and his sexuality. And not just his sexuality, but his desire for work, his religion, his sexuality, his appetites if you like. And so while Guthrie doesn't quite drive it - and I know what you mean - a lot of his attitudes make things happen. It's Guthrie in effect that drives Will away. It's Guthrie that scares Chris. And you could say it's Guthrie that scares Chris so much that she wishes for his death and in the end ....

Stewart
And also is instrumental in the death of his wife.

Interviewer
Absolutely. So he does dominate in many ways doesn't he?

Stewart
Yes. Although it's not that driving thing. I think in the first act, probably in the second act as well, but more so in the first act because she's grown up, Chris is surrounded by all sorts of experiences and things are happening to her and she is growing as a person through that rather than pushing things on ...

Interviewer
Yes, she drives it more in the second half. She moves Ewan along and ...

Stewart
Once she's then in a relationship with somebody else, and has matured, then yes she's moving things on and making decisions about when they have kids, what to do with her life and that, and she's much more settled as a person, possibly because she's not got the influences about her that she had in the first act. So yes, even in the first act, she's not pushing things along.

Interviewer
Yes, as you say, it’s happening to her.

Stewart
And everybody seems to move through life without pushing it but everybody is experiencing from other people, whether it be the war, you know, second hand through the news all those sorts of things; it's a story of people moving forward and experiencing life at the pace of this book at this time.

Interviewer
Yes, so as an actor, that was a problem, a challenge if you like, in this play?

Stewart
A challenge to .......?

Interviewer
To make it work, to keep it moving in some sense ....

Stewart
Again, having done it, I would have been worried more if I hadn't done it before, but having done it before and knowing that it's a sort of successful package ....

Interviewer
It works .....

Stewart
It does work and it will work, and audiences will appreciate it. And also that so many of the people who are coming will know the book or will have some knowledge of it so will be quicker to come to terms with the way that it's spoken; they'll know bits of the story, so they’ll be able to follow it more easily I think. Because if you were to turn up and know nothing about it, it might be a bit "What's happening now, and who's who?" So yeah, it was not so much less of a challenge but less of a worry, and if you feel confident that it's going to work and that it's a successful package, then .....

Interviewer
You can concentrate on other things.

Stewart
That's 70 percent of it - the confidence that it'll work out.

Interviewer
So are you aware of doing anything in order to keep it moving, although you can't drive it along .... even in rehearsal or in performance?

Stewart
I would say mostly technical things, like always to be trying to be on time on cues, trying to move, you just feel a ... it's a tiny indescribable thing, just trying to keep things just ticking along a bit, and you become aware if maybe the scene's, yeah, a bit slower, or if somebody else is deciding they need space for pause (laughs) then perhaps for the benefit of everybody, we'll just move things along a little swifter in the second half of the scene. But then other people will end up doing that for you as well.

Interviewer
One of the things that I like very much about the way you act is you way you do nothing very well. I think I've said this to you a couple of times in rehearsal, but without doing anything much you seem to me to express a lot, or you allow me to understand a lot. Do you do something in order to do that?

Stewart
That's what I would ideally I would aim for, is to do nothing. That sounds absolutely ridiculous but when you start off you do things and if you think "Well that's good", and then you think "Now I've noticed that that's good so maybe I shouldn't do that any more because that sticks out", and try and pare it back and if you need to do that then okay you can do it. But I hate to get tied down into doing things and doing the same every time. Where was it we were the other night, Strathaven? some place we were the other night, I can't remember. And it was a smaller place and a different acoustic and everything and I absolutely felt like doing nothing and it was like .... and making it so little because it was so readable in the space, and ......... kind of said "That was fantastic tonight, that was just absolutely breathtaking, because you just did nothing at all and it was so menacing and it was so much more scary than doing a lot of big stuff". And, you know, in a tour like this when you're playing in so many different spaces and you get the opportunity to do that and you've also got to be able to play assess different spaces and everything, stand out and put your foot down in some place like Perth and do big acting or, you know, in the wee-er places like Strathaven or that ......

Interviewer
There's a certain - you worked quite a lot in the Citizens in our youth - and I'm aware there's a lot of non-acting going on at the Citizens which I admire and which is connected to some of what you ... Do you think you learned it there? Does it relate to a style ...?

Stewart
Yes, yes. And I think a lot of it comes from the fact that I started off there as an extra and so your job is to move whatever is to be moved or to stand here, stand still, don't be noticed and don't distract from what is going on. And I've always held to that, that when it's somebody else's turn let them get on with their turn and try and do as little to distract from what they're doing, because sometimes you'll find yourself acting. So there is an element of that, of doing nothing, and then I think a lot of it also comes from the films and everything you watch when you grow up; you know, all I got was Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Robert Mitchum. They never do any acting, they just themselves.....

Interviewer
They stand there and say their lines.

Stewart
...... themselves and every move they're wearing a different costume and it always looked good to me.

Interviewer
Jumping ahead a lot and connected to that question about the Citizens. Do you think there's anything particular about Scottish theatre that is Scottish in style or whatever, and do you think this production is particularly Scottish?

Stewart
It's difficult to say because we see very little non-Scottish theatre of this scale, in the same way that very few large shows go down South, very few smaller ones come up to Scotland...

Interviewer
But you must have seen work in London and so on when you were there...

Stewart
Yes, and I mean I'm thinking of shows that I did down there that are quite, maybe in the 80s, that had a similar style, but I think a lot of that comes through necessity and economy. I think it's a style that has evolved nationwide, this kind of small scale touring. Everybody's got to chip in and get on with it and everybody's ambitious and wanting to do bigger projects than perhaps the budgets allow for but it's really trying their best to eke every penny out of it. So I wouldn't say in that way it was particularly Scottish. Funnily enough I went to see Casanova last night and that struck me as being particularly Scottish.

Interviewer
Why?

Stewart
There was just something missing but it was pompous, it was self-indulgent, and celebratory where it had nothing to celebrate. It was sort of self-congratulatory. And it was .... There seemed to be a.... We can do anything, therefore we will do anything. It didn't seem to be addressing an awful lot to me. But it was full, it was packed, and I think it is a bit of a case of a big fish in a small pool. But it did seem a bit like Emperor's new clothes.

Interviewer
One review said that Prime Productions is one of the least of the least touring companies in Scotland which I think is probably true. How does it fit into Scottish theatre, this piece, this tour, this company?

Stewart
Scottish theatre is changing so much isn't it? You see companies that were the stalwarts, like Wildcat, Borderline marginalised and now it's your Suspect Culture, Theatre Babel, and they'll carry the torch for 10 years and everybody will get bored with them and then it'll become somebody else.

Interviewer
I'm aware that 7.84 set up this touring circuit of the Highlands and Islands and what have you, that then became quite a comfortable circuit; it started off being radical, it became quite comfortable, everybody did it, it was all set up. This tour is recreating a bit of that because it is a long and wide ranging tour, and also a lot of the companies that used to do that no longer do, because 7.84 for example no longer really does political theatre in the way that it once did, they now do community theatre or whatever it seems to me. And Communicado, who would have been that company going out doing small scale touring, it’s not. I think things have changed haven’t they, and Prime Productions seems to be, by default almost, doing that 7.84 type tour.

Stewart
Well I did one very similar, and it was nearly all Highlands and Islands, for a couple of months, for Greycoast and George Gunn, and that was all wee halls and fishermen's missions and that was great. And that was subject matter pertinent to the area so we got a good crowd. A lot of tours nowadays seem to be - money's the first thing, you've got to make it pay, because there's got to be a job for everybody afterwards; education, that seems to be a way to get money in - give things an educational slant and you'll get loads of money from here there and everywhere, and also Highlands and Islands because you'll get some Euro money and because they've got so much money pumped into things that they can afford to pay you at a loss to come up there. So then you've got to have things that are pertinent to those ....

Interviewer
So that affects your choice of subject matter and so on?

Stewart
That's bound to affect the choice - it's like every theatre in Scotland just about, after panto they do a Shakespeare, make some money, get the schools in. They might not want to do a Shakespeare but they know that they're going to get bums on seats because the kids are all starting to revise for their exams and everything. Even at discount prices for the schools, they're going to fill the place week in, week out. Now that's a choice that's forced on them by economic necessity rather than, you know, they might want to do a Shakespeare, but they might want to do Corialanus rather than Twelfth Night again. So things, choices are held in check somewhat by, like any business, by finance.

Interviewer
Theatre has never been a pure art form has it?

Stewart
No.

Interviewer
It's quite commercial, even in its subsidised way it's a ... you've got to get bums on seats.

Stewart
And people, administrators and directors, want to keep their job, because their jobs are as much at risk as anybody else's.

Interviewer
I also want to do shows that attract people. I don't want to .... it was clear to me that this would attract large audiences. I get a buzz when I hear that we've sold 300 on a cold Wednesday in Kilmarnock, you know. It's better that than playing to 3 men and a dog.

Stewart
Yes. I mean there's no point in doing a show in front of 15 people, not unless it's in a school room in the middle of nowhere, but for all that, you know, if it touches one person... (laughs). On a cold winter's night, no, it isn't enough actually. I mean you've got to put a show on that is going to attract people but then how do you attract people with something new, because you don't have TV advertising pumping, pumping, pumping for months on end; all you've got is some posters (if you ever get those) and the fact that you know people might turn up, they might be interested, which is why so many things now are adaptations of books, because you've got a head start .....

Interviewer
You've got a brand, haven't you? Sunset Song is a good brand.

Let's go back to the play. How is the sexuality of your character important in the play.

Stewart
I think it changes radically. I think a lot of it is tied up in the biblical duty, sort of thing, the Old Testament, the obsession that there is in the earlier parts of the Old Testament, multiplying and multiplying. As with all sorts of sex at that time, they were all wanting to get as many of themselves as they could so there could be more of us than there are of them. And I think that tied in with the agricultural thing of seeds growing. Those two tied together, he feels it's his duty to have as many kids as possible. He's somebody that has lived on the land all his years and ....

Interviewer
He’s expecting to leave it to his son and ....?

Stewart
Yes. Continuity is very important and I think he's a person that doesn't understand the way that the world changes around him. I think he feels probably short-changed in that he was told when he was young that the world was this way and now that as he grows up he's finding that the world is changing around him and he's not somebody that finds it easy to change himself.

Interviewer
He's also, I would say, a reasonably highly sexed man, isn't he? He uses that duty of procreation to justify his sexual urge, but the urge is there nonetheless?

Stewart
Yes. I mean I think the urge is probably there naturally ...

Interviewer
Because later he seems interested in Chris ... he is stirred by Chris, isn't he?

Stewart
Yes. That I think comes out of the frustration of no longer having a wife and the frustration of being bed-ridden, the two together become too much for him. How common that was at the time - probably a lot more common that people would imagine but then there's no documentation for it. It's like, is it now that it goes on more or did it always go on then, do we just hear more about it now? You never know.

Interviewer
One of the reasons I say that it seems to me Guthrie dominates the first half is because there's the business of his lust and Jean's desire not to have more children, and his frustration. Whether he manages to control his lust and therefore they don't have sex, or whether he forces her to have sex is unclear, but either way there is a frustration isn't there and a conflict, and then that also, her death sours your relationship with your children, Will and Chris ...

Stewart
Yes.

Interviewer
... When Chris gets old enough to understand what's going on. There are a number of times when we have played this in the production, and we may have laid this on quite thick. When you see Chris in her underwear there's a certain look that you give her that suggests that you see her sexually; whether you want her sexually or whether that disturbs you or whatever it is in unclear, but there's a certain moment there. And then we also play, when the tinker is there, that you sort of see him off, and she is fearful of you in the night, she is aware of your presence and you are hanging around outside her door. And then towards the end of the first half you are actually calling to her.

Stewart
Yes.

Interviewer
So it seems to me that that sexuality is one of the things that blows the family apart in a way, partly because of the lack of contraception and the frustration that that leads to. I think what I was beginning to say is that it is his sexual urge that leads to sexual frustration that leads to you fairly mistreating Will and to some extent Chris. Is that fair to say?

Stewart
Yes, I think so. I think a lot of the - he's a sort of very elemental character, I don't think he's the most well-educated man; the only book that he will probably have any knowledge of is the Bible. And I think to a certain extent, like country-folk, not so much in this country now but other places - and he says this towards the end of the first act - "You expect to get comfort of your children in your old age". I mean that's why people had such big families, so that they ....

Interviewer
Yes, it’s their pension.

Stewart
And with the mortality rates in those days - you had to knock out five/six children to make sure there were two or three left to look after you when you got old and they were of an age when they were going to be the providers. So I think that was one of his reasons for having so many kids, but I think he is just an elemental guy, he's a man that's worked with the land, and he feels, you know, weather, soil, procreation, all these things ...

Interviewer
He's in touch with all that isn't he?

Stewart
Yes, harvest, germination, you know, I feel he might not do an awful lot of things right but he's probably a good farmer, but like so many other things there will be one way to do it and that's his way. It's either right or wrong. And it's the same with his beliefs on everything which I think are founded round the Bible, but also in a sort of mutual interdependency which farming communities have to have, which are shown a couple of times in the play - with the thrashing scene ....

Interviewer
The burning ...

Stewart
The burning of Peesie’s Knapp, everybody has to depend on everybody else. You can't in those circumstances, you're so close to the brink of survival, you could be on the edge one year or another, everybody has to muck in with everybody else. He finds that difficult I think because in a lot of ways he is an idealist and he finds that he can't match his own expectations of himself, and other people fall woefully short of his expectations of what a decent God fearing, hard working person, how they should live their life. And I think a lot of that is, he's a failure to himself because he can't match up to what he's been told is the proper way to live your life.

Interviewer
I do wonder - it does seem to me that quite a lot of his anger and his darkness if you like, the darker side of Guthrie, is because of that frustration at himself and things that haven't turned out right. When we see him with Jean when they first get married, he's a loving, a kind, a gentle - more gentle person, I don’t know whether he’s ever gentle, we know he has a hot temper, but actually the difficulties in his life harden him and embitter him.

Stewart
Yes.

Interviewer
And I think the sexuality and the religion have a lot to do with that.

Stewart
It's reconciling the two - his lust and his desires with the religious ....

Interviewer
.... constraints and requirements?

Stewart
Yeah, the oppression that's going on that he's been, that have been drilled into him ....

Interviewer
I'm interested, there's one sort of contradiction in a way which is about - he's keen on that education for Chris. Is that a contradiction? Where does that come from? As you say, he's not an educated man.

Stewart
I think that he is, I think there's probably an element in most parents of ... they want what they didn’t have....they want for their children, and they want somehow to live ... they want their children to have the life that they wanted and live it through them. And also that's part of his religious duty to try and make things better. There's also a pride thing, especially in small communities, of you want to see yourself... and I think he's that kind of guy that would ...

Interviewer
He wants a bit of status - my daughter's a teacher.

Stewart
Yeah, although I don't think it would be important enough - I don't think he's too worried about what people would think about him if it was something bad but he would know that if his daughter was a teacher then that would be something that they would have to admire. I don't think he'd give too much weight to people's opinion if what they were saying about him, him personally, if it was bad. Although he does say later on about the shame of Will having perhaps got somebody pregnant. I think he's using that more as a stick to beat Will with, rather than something that he's truly worried about. If anybody was to come and say and I'm sure they would you know, they'd get as good as they got.

Interviewer
Do you think the male/female relationships in the play are real, are true? Particularly with reference to Guthrie?

Stewart
It's always a difficult one isn't it because you can only go by your own experience. (Laughs) Yeah, I think, it's that kind of "who knows what goes on behind closed doors". People do the strangest things and you know truth is often stranger than fiction and if you could see behind some folks' doors, God knows what goes on. So it's difficult to say is that real or is it not real. There is ... because the scenes are so short I think it's difficult to get an awful lot of depth and subtlety into them, and also because it's such a period of time that's covered, things jump so quickly, that it's difficult to try and keep any kind of connection between the scenes. You sort of get snapshots of ... a deterioration ...

Interviewer
Can you, going back to the "how does one do acting", if you like, and how does one produce a show, can you give an idea of how you think we, or you, worked on making them real? For example, the relationship with Jean? Were you aware of working on that?

Stewart
I think the first thing that I thought was ‘That all goes wrong’, so we try and, like you say, from the beginning, try and make the beginning of their relationship as positive and optimistic as possible. And then there isn't an awful lot of interplay between the two of them; it's almost by the time Chris reaches the age of 12 or something it's just a business, they've been at it, they've been together so long, there's obviously no real love there left; it's just a long hard life together that they both seem to have accepted. And in those days you know there was no possibility of being divorced or one of them going off with anybody else because there was nobody else to go off with, and they just had to get down to a rather..... unpleasant... just marriage of attrition.

Interviewer
And are you aware of playing all that? How did you, how do you, how did we make the difference between the beginning and later on? How do you think the audience get that? What do you do in order to get that across?

Stewart
Behind the scenes you see ... he gets angry with her... he does it, when she says things, he thinks .... it's just tiny things, its looks and that rather than a smile, its a quizzical glance of ....

Interviewer
Ignoring her sometimes ...?

Stewart
Yes.

Interviewer
She's said this before.

Stewart
And it's not of, you know, any interest. You can say what you want but nobody's listening to you kind of thing, because what I say will go.

Interviewer
By contrast with the earlier, the scene at the beginning of the marriage, where you lift her up and you laugh together .....

Stewart
What I always find is an interesting scene is the birth, because he so doesn't want to be involved in that and yet it's a particularly natural thing. I'm sure he's seen cows being birthed and sheep and everything but it's that thing of when it comes to being a human being.... and I think that's probably a biblical thing - animals are all right but human beings are, you know, God-made animals.

Interviewer
Of course animals do it quite easily whereas humans find it hard and he made her suffer. That's the other thing. And he's responsible for that pain.

Stewart
And that's ..... seeing humans like this, that's making us animals as well, we're supposed to be higher and better than that and if we behave this way it's the same as animals, that must trouble him, ... must give him some kind of Darwinian dilemma. And that would have been just reaching that part of the world at that time. Those sort of teachings, and people actually talking about ... But I think he does feel a genuine pity, and I think he genuinely does want to relieve her of the pain of childbirth, but can't because he knows in a fortnight he's going to be wanting her again and a fortnight after ... or every day or however often ... you can't just say, you know, "no more". It's just not possible, it's not a rational request from her either though; what option is she leaving him? It's not possible. Obviously the two of them don't talk so there's no compromise. And, yeah, contraception then ......

Interviewer
Was something people did in London.

Is it a political play? Or a political production?

Stewart
I think it's ... taking it in context with the two following in the (Scots Quair) trilogy, it's a very non-political play because the next two become very political. It's set against a backdrop of political change, and through the war and through the sheep question raised at the end, so you get political influences in it ... I suppose the political influences do rob Chris of her husband and the other men that shape her life, Chae and Rob ...

Interviewer
It becomes political at the end doesn't it? It's a personal play for the first two thirds and it becomes political later on. And overtly so in that last speech.

Stewart
And I think that's .... maybe that's something to do with the way that life is when you are growing up. When you're younger, as you know, you're not interested in politics, politics, who cares. Then you reach a certain age, once you get to about 20 or that, then all these things that they're talking about in the TV and the papers do actually have an effect on your life, whereas when you're younger it has an effect on your parents and that gets filtered down to you by, you know, how much they’ve got left in their pockets at the end of the week. So I think it probably does become a more political play and that probably does reflect the changing society in the time after the war. Less so maybe in the rural areas, which is why the second one becomes a town and then a city and becomes much much much more political. But I think it probably fairly reflects the growing political awareness of the ... also the fact that people now seemed to know more about what was going on in the world. When the play starts off, nobody knows anything about ....

Interviewer
Yes, it's a tiny little world ...

Stewart
They’re talking about what's happening in the next field, whereas by the end we're talking about France, Germany and people have actually been to these places and come back and told you about them, and people are starting to hear the truth about what goes on overseas rather than what's written in The Times or whatever the papers are. And then people didn't come back for a long time after the Boer War or the war in Sudan or things like that. So, yeah, I think it's showing a growing awareness of people of what's going on outside their own little community. And that again grows throughout the three books - by the time you get to the third one you've got radio and everything and communications and people coming from different places, rather than people who've only got one place that they've ever lived and know everything about it and know everything about each other.

Interviewer
Yes, there's an expansion of the world isn't there? For Chris particularly, because she's a girl growing up, but also for the people. You know, people like Long Rob and so on have to start having to take a part in the world; the world comes to them and comes into this little village.

Stewart
And takes them away.

Interviewer
Yes, yes. Is it nationalistic?

Stewart
I don’t think it’s nationalistic, it's from that ....

Interviewer
.... internationalist tradition really.

Stewart
Yes. I think it's people are people and you know you can set it anywhere in the world and people who have been through these troubles ... Been through growing up and, you know, the difference between the country and the town but at some point all over the world people have undergone the same, you know, griefs and joys and had to learn the same lessons and make the same mistakes. And although it's so set where it is and it's so relevant to the tiny little area that it's in, it does, I mean I think it speaks for peasant folk all over the world.

Interviewer
It's the universal and the specific isn't it which is what theatre does very well ?

Stewart
And as that it works perfectly because I remember reading it and never for a second thinking that it was only about these people - always thinking that it was about everybody and it was a story that applied to everybody and told everybody's story from whatever point in development, whatever country it was in, or whichever part of the country. I always thought about it as being a universal piece. Very cleverly placed in one specific spot but definitely for everybody.

Interviewer
Thank you Stewart.

Discussion: