Series 4, Episode 6: Oedipus

[Music] This is Not True, Bit Useful, a podcast from Cheek by Jowl. I'm your host Lucy Dawkins and over the course of these series I've been chatting to artistic directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod about what they've learned about life and theatre in four decades of making plays all over the world. In a couple of weeks they will open a new production of Sophocles Play, Ederpuss Rex at the National Theatre Martin Surescu in Romania. I sat down with Declan just before the start of rehearsals, Diffier more about his hunches for the show. [Music] So, hello Declan. Hello Lucy. So today we're going to talk about your next production, which is taking place in Romania. And that is Ederpuss. Yeah. What is it about Sophocles that really appeals to you? It's difficult to say that something transgressive and something that's very subtle about him. And it's again comes back to this business of judgment that I'm always hearing on about. He does suspend judgment and he doesn't allow us to blame very easily. And people are very often in these extremely intense situations. And he sees them quite objectively and he asks us to see that as well. So it's I think it's great tonic. Also the plays are very very exciting. They're very kind of political. They'll be very, very interesting about families and about politics. And they start off as does Ezekelis actually. This incredible thing between you and my relationship with myself, with my family and with the state. And what Ederpuss in particular? The plays always fascinated me. There's an extraordinary thing about Ederpuss when I see it. I've seen it so often and so many different kinds of so many different languages. And I don't know why, but I know the plot. We all know the plot very well. But it's still always managed to surprise me. It's extraordinary. I don't know how. Sofie Pils that off. And he puts you through the process that I think Ederpuss goes through in the play. Which is you discover what you already knew. And that's what I find really frightening about Ederpuss and really important. It's the way that we deny things that we know. Cover them up and we kind of know them. And then we discover them. They're a big shock. But then you think, but somehow I've kind of always knew that, didn't I? Did I? And that's the most extraordinary thing in Ederpuss. And just to do that is a great privilege to be able to do that. So do you think that part of Ederpuss knows from the very beginning of the play exactly what he's done? But he knows what the reality is that he is sleeping with his mother and that he's killed his father and that the source of the plague of the city is him. That some part of him recognizes that. And he's just trying to run away from acknowledging it. Yes, that's exactly what I think. That somewhere I think they all know. And that's what's so creepy about it. Because if it was a big shock, you know, like in a murder series on TV, you know, oh, he did it. It doesn't have that unsettling effect that's deeply shocking. So there's such a misleading thing I think said about Greek tragedy, which is that in Greek tragedy, the dramatic action always takes base off the stage. And on stage we see people reacting to the dramatic action which has taken place off. That's complete nonsense. And the dramatic action of Ederpuss is his slow realization of what he's done. That is what the dramatic action is. It's not the fact that he's sleeping with his mother and must murder his father. It's him realizing it. It's him bringing it into his conscious mind in front of us and his terrible desperate, increasingly wild attempts to deny what he already knows. I find that incredibly moving in Ederpuss. And so Ederpuss is also a very good post-pandemic play because it starts with the plague. It's true. If we are post-pandemic, yes, of course it is. And that's why he starts on this thing. He's desperate. He has to find the cure for the plague. And then he's going to discover that in this strange way, he is somehow responsible for this disease. Nietzsche brilliantly said that we invented human's invented guilt in order not to feel out of control. Because if we felt that we brought something like the plague on ourselves, that didn't mean we were the victims of some random universe that we somehow had to say in it. And I think there's a lot to be said for that that we will do anything to give ourselves some sense of control. But it's definitely implicit. There's a magical thing implicit in the play that what Ederpuss has done is somehow responsible for the plague and that his denial of what's happened is causing this huge disease to take over his city and the city of somehow him. And I know you've got a quite interesting hunch. You want to put two characters on stage that don't have any lines in the original Sophocles play. Who's that? Yes, I just want to talk about it because it's in the future, but at the moment what I think is that his supposed parents who were called polypus and meropel are alive and well and we've cast two actors, we're very lucky to have two wonderflats to play those parts, but they will be mute. The real problem is that one of the reasons we can never get a new idea into our heads is because there's an old one already there that we can't get rid of. And the reason that Ederpuss can't, one of the sort of stoppers that keeps his bottle blocked is that he doesn't need new parents because he's got perfectly good set of parents who are polypus and meropel who he's left back in Corinth and he believes that these are his biological parents and in fact they're known as adoptive parents and his real parents are Lyos and Jocasta. So he can't get the new idea into his head because he's so obsessed with his parents as so many of us are, but he can't get them out of his head, he can't let the new thought in because there's an old one in his place and it's to do with kind of shifting old certainties and that's one of the reasons why he's frozen and he has to give up this idea that these three parents and that's why they are I think central to his experience of the play because they're alive and he's run away to save them and like a lot of terrible things that happen in the world they're done to protect the ones we love and so that's something we'll say to be thought about that just because you're doing something to protect the one you love doesn't mean to say you can't be doing terrible damage as well. And what excites me about this idea of bringing them on stage is something you said several times before in these podcasts which is that an idea doesn't exist on stage unless it's embodied it has to live in bodies for it to be legible. So bringing them on stage as living breathing bodies means you can actually create that dynamic, politely in the middle of the play. Yes that's exactly what I'd like you to do. I don't make them carnal living things because they are in an e-dipers' imagination and it's very important that I can put on stage somehow what's happening in e-dipers' imagination and he's he's absolutely obsessed with these two parents and he has heard the prophecy that he's going to murder his father and sleep with his mother and he imagines just these two people and that's a complete fixation for him through the whole play and so he can't let them die. He's identified as bound up with the fact that he mustn't do this terrible thing to his father and he mustn't do this terrible thing to his mother and he's so wound up in the catastrophe that might before him if he does these things. He can't actually see the slow catastrophe for these bringing about in the present moment. So it's like he's so frightened of this catastrophe in the past that he can't live responsibly in the present. And yet some part of him really knows what's happening all the time. Yes. The part that he can't admit to you. You know the one thing that I think I say to the directors when I'm teaching them which I've started to do now is terribly unpopular and I say the problems you probably know already all the information you need that you possibly need to learn to re-autriciate in a different way. There's no kind of new magic thing I'm going to give you but I can maybe reorder things that'll help you maybe think about things somewhat differently. So yeah that's very important for me. And I know you've also got another hunch about this play. It's going to be a play. The moves. It's going to be slightly different. I'm thinking that he's yes. I haven't heard it out yet and they can I notoriously, notoriously change our minds at the last minute. So he could end up being absolutely static. I never I never know how it's going to work out. So without any promises that it's going to move. What was the hunch behind exploring that read for this play? The either person himself is on a journey and he's on a journey to discover himself and he doesn't know that he's on a journey to discover himself. So it's good if he can displace and move in the space and the audience moves with him. But maybe we can't do that. We'll do something else. We'll discover something better. We've been talking a lot in these podcasts about this idea of thresholds. Yes. Either literal or metaphorical places in the scene where everything changes. And you talk a lot about how in the theatre crossing a thresholds is a very stressful thing to do. Like just getting people on an off stage. Yes. Because so much is that play whenever anybody enters or exits a space. Yes. It completely changes their body. It involves either an escape or being pushed. And there's something really exciting in this idea of following either person around as he crosses into new spaces. Because he's crazy. Yeah. You have to get through a series of escapes with him as he tries to find a solution to the situation. Yes. Just pick up that point for directives particularly that getting people on stage and off stage is almost as important as at the actual scene. Goodness, isn't it though? It's really I know. You know, Lucy. But you know, I must say that Nick always solves that for me because he and we don't ever even talk about it. But it's like where the entrances are. It's sort of always sort of there somehow in this very simple set like the three boxes in measure for measure that people wouldn't move around. It was incredibly clever. I hadn't really worked out how useful it was until I've tried started to use it. But it's the implication of where you enter from is really important. When we did mouthy we had it was like a chessboard on the floor but it was skewed to one side so that everybody was standing at an angle so everybody had to kind of come on to this chessboard not full square to the audience which gave a kind of sickening feeling to the whole thing that nobody ever stared out full front or if they did it was very unusual but people always met on this diagonal so just the getting people on and the getting people off is really really difficult but it can open the whole scene. Absolutely and there's nothing worse than a dead exit or a dead entrance because there's so much potential there to basically create the starting gun for the next moment. Exactly in a movie you don't have that because people can suddenly start in the scene but what does matter in the movie is the cut the cuts the threshold and it's absolutely crucial the moment you cut not too soon not too late where from what what shot do you start with it's incredibly important and you can completely destroy or completely make a movie in the car and what's so interesting about having this conversation now actually is that you were thinking of doing either as a whole 18 months ago completely different production of either was with the completely different companies yes yes and there were some early hunches for the design there which couldn't have been more different from this production of either person. I can't remember a hunches for the side of the movie. It was interesting putting them on a white background and doing sharp blackouts between scenes so you never saw entrances or exits you just saw classic movie class so which is almost the exact opposite of this approach did yes I've I think I've got to I think suppose it's a survival mechanism I sort of white previous versions out of my life otherwise I go crazy you have to commit to the one that we're doing at the moment but we'll go along with this idea and the photo around with the actors and see what happens and see how well it works but it's another joyous thing about having conversations with you and Nick about the work that you do because you are so playful and free in the way that you will light upon a really powerful idea explore it inside out and then chuck it over your shoulder if it's not going to work for what you need in that moment or if your interests change or if the company gives you something else to work with the new expected you hold on tightly to things but you let go so likely and that's a that must be really difficult to do I think in a way it is but I know I think nothing gets thrown away all the different ways you've done it all go into a stew in your imagination your your imagination is continually being nourished by all of these things so in a way afraid I'm not sure we ever can throw anything away I think on the whole we forget nothing and you're right because in a way these two opposite ideas are a fact running laps around the same fascination in the play which is the entrances and exits in Eater purse are breathtakingly crucial and the two radically different approaches that we're talking about one in which the audience follows Eater purse through every entrance and exit and the other in which you never see the entrance and exit at all you just see the jump cut between the two yeah both of them you're actually circling the same yes there's the same kind of site anxiety which is the coming on and the going off but it's something I find really inspiring because it's so deliciously appealing to have a great idea and then hold on to it it's very it can feel very comforting as a director in a way yes actually what I would say though is that a great idea is a kind of oxymoron that ideas aren't that much it's life that's important and I think there's no such thing as a great idea that actually they come they go theories cheap the important thing is life and there's also a kind of haunting thing in this play that I'd love to talk to you about which is that once Eater purse discovers the horror of what's really happened and once he finds the body of his mother and wife jacasta hanging from her own underwear in their bedroom he doesn't choose to kill himself he chooses to blind himself why do you think that is well first of all it's a very discomforting play because Eater purse is truth costs jacasta her life so I think it asks us questions is it always a good idea to be a truth champion on the whole we feel it is because the truth is good and lies are bad but there is collateral damage I think the terrible thing about the blinding of Eater purse it reminds me of a lion as you like it when we were a resident says just silly about Orlando I cannot live out of the sight of Orlando it's like the image of her in his eyes keeps her alive and such an extraordinary image and that's the terrible thing that happens when somebody that we love dies because they don't just die they take the image they had of us with them into the grave and so part of us dies with somebody because we'll never see that person smile again Eater purse I think he cannot bear the sight of his children seeing him and he blinds himself so that he can't see their eyes seeing him back that's why I think he does it and I think that's incredibly moving because it does remind us how relational we are but he can't it's like he can't live without the loving look of his of his daughters his manion and tick him he can't he can't deal with that and he blinds himself so you won't have to see them you won't have to see that facial expression so I find that incredibly moving at the end of the end of the episode and we imagine things in people's eyes when they see us the look the expression of people's eyes when they see us he gives his life and it gives his death as well thank you for listening to this bonus episode of Not True but you saw if you've enjoyed what you've heard you can find lots of past series on the Cheek by Jail website or Spotify Apple or wherever you get your podcasts and the music you're hearing now was composed by Sergei Czechoslov for Cheek by Jail's production of Three Sisters look out for more bonus episodes in the weeks to come