0
My Space
5 May 2019 2.00 h

Actors, co-founders of escapade theatre

(Barcelona)

Sue Flack & Caspar

Sue Flack and Cas­par, British ac­tors liv­ing in Cat­alo­nia, co-founded Es­capade The­atre back in 1997. Since then, they have pro­duced top qual­ity, ac­claimed the­atre in Eng­lish. Often provoca­tive, and with a high dose of satire and dark hu­mour, they’ve never left their au­di­ence in­dif­fer­ent. Their lat­est ad­ven­ture, is the play Si­lence, run­ning at Teatre Alme­ria in Barcelona from May 8-26. We asked Sue and Cas­par to talk about them­selves and their ca­reers, through a few ob­jects that rep­re­sent them most.

Sue Flack

1. Photo of Sue as Ubu Roi This photo is of me at the age of 19 play­ing Ubu Roi, by Al­fred Jarry, in Lon­don in 1981. I had been think­ing about act­ing as a ca­reer but had never re­ally thought of it as a se­ri­ous pro­posal. I had been to art school and was work­ing as a part time tex­tile de­signer and was “mess­ing about” in a local the­atre youth group as a hobby. This was a great part to play. It opens with Ubu shout­ing “Merde!” which was a real shock for au­di­ences when it de­buted in Paris in De­cem­ber 1896. The play’s open­ing night at the Théâtre de l’Oeu­vre was also its clos­ing night, as a com­mo­tion - often de­scribed as a “riot” - broke out amongst the au­di­ence, who were ac­cus­tomed to nat­u­ral­ist the­atre and were hor­ri­fied by the play’s shock­ing and crude na­ture. Nonethe­less, the play has gone on to be seen as a deeply-in­flu­en­tial work of the­atre, and is cited as one of the pre­cur­sors to mod­ernism and such artis­tic move­ments as the The­atre of the Ab­surd, Dada, and Sur­re­al­ism. Play­ing the part of Pa Ubu, in this pro­duc­tion where Ma Ubu was played by a man, was the de­ci­sive mo­ment for me to be­come a pro­fes­sional ac­tress.

2. Bot­tle of “Es­capade” wine.

My hus­band is a som­me­lier and he found this bot­tle of wine which is called Es­capade, in France. He found it a few years ago and Cas­par and I have been sav­ing it for a first night. We plan to open it on 8th May when we per­form Si­lence to an au­di­ence for the first time. First nights are ex­tremely spe­cial and we hope plenty of peo­ple will come down and enjoy a drink with us. We’ll drink the bot­tle after the per­for­mance, of course!

3. Ac­tions: The Ac­tors The­saurus by Ma­rina Calderone.

This book is my act­ing bible. I use it all the time when work­ing on a char­ac­ter or di­rect­ing a play. The basis of the Stanislavski Method, which is what I stud­ied at Drama Cen­tre in Lon­don from 1984-87, is that with every line of text you are try­ing to af­fect some­one or some­thing else on the stage and that you play an ac­tion on them to get what you want. For ex­am­ple: Lady Mac­beth wants her hus­band to kill King Dun­can. She em­ploys a va­ri­ety of ac­tions to­wards Mac­beth in the scenes to achieve her goal. Each ac­tion is used as an in­cen­tive i.e. to hu­mil­i­ate, to se­duce, to bully and if you re­ally keep this clear in your head while work­ing on the scene it stops you “play­ing the emo­tion” and makes the scene much more pow­er­ful and truth­ful.

4. Es­capade mug.

Being Eng­lish I love tea, and where I work at IPA Pro­duc­tions, Cat­alo­nia’s lead­ing The­atre in Ed­u­ca­tion in Eng­lish com­pany, every­one tends to steal your mug. So, I thought if I’m going to man­age to get a clean mug I will stamp my other com­pany’s name on it! Now every­one knows not to use my mug and I al­ways have a nice cup tea in the af­ter­noon with­out hav­ing to wash up a mug!

5. Oscar.

I use this fake Oscar as the char­ac­ter Lil­lian Law­ford in Si­lence. She is a grand dame of Hol­ly­wood who is pre­sented with an hon­orific Oscar to cel­e­brate her long ca­reer in the movies. Lil­lian started act­ing in the 1920’s, when the play is set, and had to over­come many ob­sta­cles, en­dur­ing bul­ly­ing, black­mail and abuse. This play is the story of Lil­lian and how she breaks her si­lence about this sort of be­hav­iour in the film in­dus­try. But the play is not only about Lil­lian’s re­fusal to speak, but also about so­ci­ety’s si­lence with re­gards to the abuse of women in the film in­dus­try and in the work place in gen­eral. I think the Oscar is a sym­bol of how the lure of fame and for­tune can be such a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence to the way peo­ple act and react to cer­tain un­pleas­ant be­hav­iour. Cu­ri­ously the Oscar statue is patented and these repli­cas are no longer avail­able to buy!

Cas­par

1. DVD “The Pas­sion of Joan of Arc”. A film made in 1928 by Dan­ish di­rec­tor Carl Theodor Dreyer which made an in­stant im­pact on me when I first saw it at the cin­ema. A pow­er­ful work of art that tells of the trial, tor­ture, ex­e­cu­tion and moral vic­tory of an ex­tra­or­di­nary woman. I’m not very ma­te­ri­al­is­tic but this is a trea­sured pos­ses­sion. It re­ally is an ex­cep­tional and very mov­ing film full of close-ups and with a dev­as­tat­ing cen­tral per­for­mance by Renée Jeanne Fal­conetti. I’ve been to­tally ob­sessed with the cin­ema since an early age and this film has def­i­nitely been one of the most in­flu­en­tial for me. As “Si­lence” deals with the world of silent films, this is a fit­ting entry in my film col­lec­tion.

2. Book. “Three Uses of the Knife” by play­wright and film di­rec­tor David Mamet is a won­der­ful book that shares his the­ory on the writ­ing of drama. Mamet has al­ways been an out­sider, es­pe­cially in Hol­ly­wood. He is out­spo­ken and fe­ro­cious in his crit­i­cism of both the the­atre and film world and the role of crit­ics. A source of in­spi­ra­tion for all of my writ­ing that served me well for the writ­ing of “Si­lence”.

3. Tele­phone. I have al­most al­ways lived with a bake­lite tele­phone. Beau­ti­ful ob­jects to have at home (who would think to use one these days?), they have be­come col­lec­tors items. In “Si­lence”, Hol­ly­wood pro­ducer Sam Kamin­sky is con­stantly in de­mand and needs to con­duct his busi­ness on the phone. This is just one of the many phones he uses.

4. The Mime Doorstop. I picked up this doorstop in Por­tu­gal some years ago. As I at­tended mime school as part of my train­ing in Lon­don, the fig­ure at­tracted my at­ten­tion. I’m not ac­tu­ally a great fan of clas­si­cal mime but with Es­capade The­atre Com­pany we have al­ways put our phys­i­cal the­atre tal­ents to good use.

5. Type­writer. I wrote a novel when I was 18 on a ma­chine very sim­i­lar to this. Some­how it was much more sat­is­fy­ing than using the com­puter that I do today. I don’t use a type­writer any­more but am often re­minded of the end of William Bur­roughs’ book, The Naked Lunch, when its hero, also a writer, is stopped by the po­lice and asked to sign a doc­u­ment. He re­alises that he’s un­able to use a pen be­cause he’s spent all his life using a ma­chine. This ma­chine is used by Linda, Kamin­skys’ sec­re­tary in “Si­lence”.

Sign in. Sign in if you are already a verified reader. I want to become verified reader. To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader.
Note: To leave comments on the website you must be a verified reader and accept the conditions of use.

Published on

Most Viewed