DRAFF filmmaker José [and creator of visuals for the show under discussion here] sat with Hamnet director duo Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd, just thirty minutes before the second performance of the show at the Schaubuehne theatre in Berlin. They talked about the demise of experts in popular culture, exploitation in performance, but mainly the show’s primary performer: untrained actor, 11 year old Ollie West.
Bush: I’m trying to think... what angle is useful to talk about, without it just seeming like an interview to advertise the show or something like that, you know?

José: Yeah, yeah...

Bush: Or it just being a sentimental reflection on, well, Ollie’s done great you know like, which is a big part of it. We’re proud of his achievement, you know? And uh.. and feeling great relief that the instinct that this would be something that he would flourish in and feel great joy doing is true and has been matched by excellence on his part. He wants to be good. 

Ben: Was that ever doubted? 

[Interrupted by the waiter.]

Ben: I love that guy.

Bush: It was doubted to the extent that there was an unknowability in him, you know, there was unknowability about whether... it was always clear that he has dramatic instincts you know, that he’s a performer in that sense. But what was in doubt was that the technical demands of the performance - a monologue near to an hour - would that sap the joy out of him, crush him... be a negative experience for him. You know, that was the question really, so there was great satisfaction in realising that he took to that challenge and, as I say, he flourished in it. Really, I’m just interested now in what’s he going to do next [laughs]. 
​

​Ben: Yeah, it's fascinating to think of when he’s old enough to have some perspective and understanding of what this process was, he might look back at this experience with a degree of pride and joy, and bafflement, rather than a sense of exploitation.. hopefully!

Bush: I’m just trying to think of how this could be interesting outside of... because this is only interesting if you’ve seen the show and it’s sort of like an interview about oh that’s what that kid is like, but I’m just thinking of this as a process question. 

José: I’m thinking now that you’re talking about Ollie’s achievements, and I remember that for the preview presentation you were sitting next to me and, like, two minutes before it you said he might not do it, man. 

Ben: Oh yeah, well you were sitting there going Oh fuck man, oh fuck, fuck, the video, man, the video, fingers crossed, fingers crossed and I was just like Never mind the fucking video man, he might just turn around and look at it all and go ‘NO WAY’ and walk out. There's that assumption you make that people won’t do that.

Bush: But I have to say that for me, the idea of putting a child so young on stage was not - look, although it did present itself as a possibility that he might not go through with it, or that things might be unusual in the middle of a performance, like that he would want to stop doing it - that in itself was not something I was interested in pursuing, in that sense of presenting his real fear over the event. You want to have his untrained vulnerability as a performer, of course, and to integrate and work with that, and for that to resonate with Hamnet as this character who feels that he is not a great person. So in that sense his lack of experience uh, and his age in terms of being on stage... That would want to complement and be part of the show, but no, not a genuine question as to whether he would do it or not. If I really thought that was the case, I don't think we should have done this show. Because I don’t think that, certainly not in this context, is interesting. It would just be cruel actually.

Ben: That’s not a thing though is it? People do? 

Bush: What?

Ben: Exploit the possibility that the performer might not be able to go through with it...

Bush: Well, I don’t know. I haven’t got a log of everything...

Ben: No, I just have never heard of it. I mean it would be extraordinarily cruel wouldn’t it, I suppose...

José: Yeah man.

Bush: Well, I’m saying that that, in relation to the possibility of a young performer stopping in the middle of a show, was not something that I thought was interesting to pursue. What I was interested in was somebody going through a journey, with great joy, but it being, um, an unusual experience for an audience. When I would usually make shows, I hope for two things - you want the audience to see something they’ve never seen before and for the performers to have an onstage experience they’ve never had before. In this case, the one side was true, as in you trust what might be interesting or original for an audience, but because Ollie had never done a show before, there’s no way in which he’s found this process to be refreshing or new, because it's not like he could cast off all those old boring shows he’d been doing, you know, in period costume and now start doing a... So it was always hard to assess what it would mean to him. But you could just hope it would be exciting. 
José: Because there seems to be, like em, the idea of capturing vulnerability or the untrained body on stage... It kind of crosses over with the idea of like, audiences on stage, like an audience member being brought onstage. Because that could potentially be another occasion that someone might go, like, this is exploitative...
​
Bush: Hmm, yeah, imagine picking an audience member to be the main character in your show haha. [Dead Centre used an audience member as the main character of their 2015 show Chekhov’s First Play]. 

José: No, well, he could have turned off the headphones [the audience member was guided by instructions through headphones] at some point and said there you go, you know? But there seems to be an interest in the untrained, vulnerable...

Bush: But I think still though, the idea in this case was - because we still bring an audience member up on stage in this show - the idea is to flip that, whereby what would be strange would be if a young untrained performer did a full monologue usually only done by a trained actor. Technically demanding, long, durational, and in that sense, you remember at strange intervals that ah this is an 11 year old as opposed to what!? And so, when he brings the audience member on stage, he’s the director in that scene. 

Ben: He’s the professional...

Bush: He’s the professional. So that would be an odd framing or inversion of what you might expect. 
​
Ben: But it’s part of the drive isn’t it? Everyone has that drive. It’s in the culture to get rid of experts. There’s Michael Gove, a famous British politician, who famously in the lead up to the Brexit referendum was on a talk show and someone was telling him that every single economic expert says that Brexit will be a disaster and he says Britain is tired of experts. And it became this famous meme of how pathetic - but, yeah of course, obviously artists have been trying to mess with the - or attack or... 

Bush: So you think Ollie should run the country.

​Ben: I think Ollie should run the country. Well I think he would win more votes than eh... you know, a lot of experts. Because hopefully there’s something there! You know, there’s also the paradox in that yeah he’s gotta do it right, so you know, in that way he becomes the expert. So it’s this weirdly kind of nasty paradoxical desire, to harness - which is really a desire you have with any performer anyway - harness everything that makes them vulnerable and crap and unsuited for the task and ensure that they perform the task completely perfectly. And of course, the thing you get for free, which you don’t realise, is that in the second part of the show, again this isn’t interesting to anyone who hasn’t seen the show, but the thing that he does in the second part of the show, standing on those marks, doing all that bollocks... some actors would kick up an almighty fuss about that and they would get all oh it’s just impossible, oh I can’t do it I can’t follow these rules because of their own reasoning, or their own sense of process. But because Ollie has no sense of process whatsoever, he doesn’t really have anything apart from the immediate present, what you get for free is his tolerance to that. And yeah, you know again, he’ll be so different in three years and that of course, is so intriguing. 

José: This is the thing though, if he got too good, too actor-y, then it wouldn’t be as good anymore. 

Bush: Yeah, I think my instinct is that the runs are not long enough really for that to happen. They’re so fragmented. Like after tonight there’ll be months off before eventually two more venues. I don’t think that there’s going to be long enough for him to find, uh, tricks..

Ben: Proficiency...

Bush: ...or to settle down. Maybe by the end of a ten-show run... maybe, we’ll see. But I’m not worried about that. But long term yeah, it could become an issue. Because I think he’s an artist and I think whether he decides to be an actor or not will be up to him. But I think that will be his journey. He’ll lose himself and then find himself again, you know? Because he’ll lose his talent by becoming very self-aware of it, but the talents themselves won’t go away. He’ll just need to learn how to harness them again, yeah... 

Ben: Hopefully he’ll read it when he’s older - oh what?

Bush: [laughing as Jose tries to switch off the tape recorder]

José: No, no, no keep going, keep going...

Ben: Oh so that’s DRAFF! Well anyway, hopefully he’ll read it when he’s older and go ohhh right yeah I get it, I mean I think it’s stupid, but I get it... Or maybe he gets it all now, I genuinely don’t know. No idea, no idea. 

Bush: Ok, let’s go. 

José: Beautiful yeah, let’s get in there. 

*Showcall for Hamnet’s second performance*
Hamnet by Dead Centre showed at the Schaubuehne theatre in Berlin on 5th and 6th April 2017 as part of FIND. More on Dead Centre here. Images: José Miguel Jimenez

​Posted: 8th April 2017