The last time we spoke to the Scallabouche Theater Company’s Alexis Latham, he was knee-deep in interactive impro productions and workshops here in Budapest – and had been for quite some time. He’s since appeared in a scripted collaborative piece and will be starring in and directing Ionesco’s classic tragicomedy, Victims of Dutylater this month at Szkéné Színház. We asked him about his recent work, where impro fits into it all and his upcoming projects.
The last time we spoke you were about to embark upon a series of your impro piece, The Story Room as well as your usual impro workshops. You’ve since taken part in a scripted collaborative piece and will be starring in and directing Ionesco’s classic tragicomedy, Victims of Duty later this month at Skéne Színház. Are you beginning to move away from impro work?
As with all types of work, change is important; in order to keep being creative and fresh you have to stretch yourself and take risks. That was the main reason I chose to do a scripted piece and work with a bigger group of people. It’s important not just for me but also for the people I work with that I stay fresh and that also I can bring new people in to work with us. For example, we will have a brand-new impro show called the Naked Impro show, and we will be working with Hungarian actors Szalontay Tunde and Ruszina Szabolcs in that, alongside Ben O’brien and Andy Hefler, who are the regular members of the impro team. Also, I choose and direct a lot of my own work and I felt last year that I wanted to be in other people’s work just for a change, which was why we also chose a scripted piece and why I chose to take part in Pornography and just enjoy being a hired actor for a change. I was lucky because I also had the chance to work as an actor in a main role in an English-Hungarian co-production film called TeamBuilding and will also premiere in a Hungarian version of Sartres The Devil and the Good Lord this February.
After ten years of working without a script, something in particular must have drawn you to Victims of Duty. What was this, and how did the perfromance come about?
Status is a hugely important vehicle for Ionesco and it is one of the most useful tools in improvisation; there are many, many status games. So, I saw an opportunity to play a lot with status in the production and use that as a comic vehicle. Also, there are many absurd moments, obviously, in an Ionesco play. As a writer, he is very aware of the visual imagerey he creates on stage and uses it quite ambiguously. It’s a bit like tag impro: a couple who have just made love suddenly become a doctor and patient where a woman is having an abortion – physically they don’t change, only the attitudes in the situation. This is very similar to an impro game and it is great to bring the same energy to it as in an improvisation exercise.
How do you see your impro work as informing the production?
If you create an impro show it is definately live and unique for the audience who watch it. They would be missing something if they saw the production on television, and that is not true of all drama these days. That is what we are exploring with this show – how to take a scripted piece and give it the fun, spontaneity and uniqe feeling that an impro show has.
Audience participation has been such a large element of your work in the past. Can we expect it to play a part in Victims of Duty?
No.
The play was written in 1952. How do you see it as translating into today’s society?
At the time, it was all about too much state control taking away people’s notion of personal responsibility. Now, I think it is very important to think of our own responsibility in terms of a sense of duty. We are encouraged not too think too globally about our actions. Recently, I was working with a company where a chief financial officer was outlining the cuts he was going to make; when asked how he felt about the people who he was going to make redundant his boss said that’s not his responsibility. Yet one of the reasons we are in such a crisis is purely because of such tunnel thinking and vision, then people are surprised when it comes back and hits them from behind. Just as Choubert is in the play when the fact that he doesn’t consider the name of the previous tenants of his flat important and gives a flippant answer and it opens up an evening of torture and nightmare for him.
And do you see the play as particularly relevant to Budapest in any way?
I think it is a European story; it could be any 30-40 something couple anywhere in a city in Europe.
People have come to expect, amongst other things, a lot of humour and a fast pace from your impro work – what would you say people can expect from this new production?
No humour, no pace and a very dull evening. No, pace is very important; we have learnt to use that well, slowing things down and speeding up, and it is the same with the Ionesco piece, which is of course absurdly funny.
With Victims not being an improvisationsal piece, a huge difference for you must be the fact that here, you know what’s coming next – unlike in things like The Story Room. How does such a difference feel, and in which way do you prefer working?
During rehearsal, we’ve worked on ways to surprise each other; most scenes also have a strong starting point, but depending on the night, where an actor takes the emotion or energy of a scene differs – and these are the unkowns.
The relationship you have with an audience must also feel very different to that which you’ve become used to in your interactive impro work. Can you speak a little about this?
There are moments where the boundary between audience and stage is broken down just as in improvisation theatre, so hopefully there is still the same feeling of danger and anarchy as in an impro show, for the audience.
And what have you got lined up for the future – any more scripted work on the horizon?
In April, we’ll premiere a co-production with an American company called Firefly. This will also be at the Szkene Theater and we will be devising the play ourselves. We will devise a third of it here, they will devise a third in the States and then the final third will be devised together here in Budapest; it’s called Moment House. On February 10th, we’ll premiere our brand-new impro show The Naked Impro Show at the Merlin Theater. You can see all the info about that at www.scallabouche.com.
And what workshops can people look forward to in 2010?
Drop in Impro Club has been a great success and so we are keeping that running every two weeks, usually on a Sunday. People can come and go as they please and try their hand at improvisation. Occasionally, we do a show from drop in club for other people to see.