London Calling with Champagne Charlie Dateline: 15 / 3/ 09

As the economy changes a new theatre is coming through with the public not just ready but seemingly keener than ever to see serious work and less spectacle.

This is really evident in the Young Vic’s latest staging of ‘Kafka’s Monkey.’

Staring a real ‘powerhouse performer from the Royal Shakespeare Company - Kathryn Hunter; this short story has been expanded and dramatized by Colin Teevan. Colin is one of the UK’s preeminent adaptors of classical works so critics and public alike are buzzing with anticipation over this latest work of his.

I caught up with him with only days to go before the show’s opening to get an insight into the staging of this major work.

Champagne Charlie
How did the job for adapting 'Kafka's Monkey' come about?
 
Colin Teevan
I have worked with Kathryn Hunter as writer on two previous shows with the Japanese actor/director Hideki Noda, The Bee and The Diver. We were in rehearsal with the second of these, The Diver, when Walter and Kathryn were discussing the project. They had found the translated text in the initial workshop to be unsayable/unperformable, so Kathryn mentioned me to Walter and . . .

Champagne Charlie

Many adapters have pet methods e.g. format the plot into index cards, change the order etc - do have a 'method' or is your approach different each time - could you describe it perhaps stage by stage so we get a better insight?

Colin Teevan
Such methods are simply reductive. For instance the oNe You mention might be suitable for plot-driven TV adaptations, but to apply a one size fits all to writers as diverse as Cervantes, Hasek, Kafka, Tsutsui and Chen'en Wu whose texts I have adapted would be to do the writers and the texts a disservice. One must respond to the text itself, look for the theatrical aesthetic that emerges from the prose, POV, plot, syntactic structure, relationship with reader/audience etc.

Champagne Charlie
Why is the play relevant now?
 
Colin Teevan
It’s a fable about the alien/outsider/immigrant having to adapt to his new hostile society, to destroy his memory, his past, his nature. It is, on another level a parable about what mankind does to both the natural world and himself as a part of that natural world. Finally it is a meditation on 'freedom' a word much abused in recent years. It is many other things too but these aspects in itself would be enough to make it utterly relevant.

Champagne Charlie
Will the show fronted now by Kathryn Hunter but did you know at the time while working on the adaptation - that the lead would be a woman?

Colin Teevan
Kathryn's involvement has been primary. Walter saw her perform Rockaby in the Brook/Beckett 'Fragments' and he thought this was the part for her. Kathryn has played the lead in The Visit, King Lear and Richard iii and The Bee, so she is expert at playing men. But gender is secondary to nature in this show. The major factor is not that Kathryn is playing a male, but that she is playing a former ape. The physicality of the ape that has learnt how to imitate the human has been the major physical journey in the making of this play.
 
Champagne Charlie

If so did that influence how you approached and executed the work?
 
Colin Teevan
The only aspect of knowing the casting in terms of writing the text was that for The Bee and The Diver I developed a strange kind of metrical phrasing which Kathryn really enjoys playing and knows how to play and this meant that I could devise a kind of monkey metrics for here with strange enjambments and internal rhymes and sudden changes of pace. We have a short hand for working this way.
 
Champagne Charlie

Has this been your most challenging work to date?
 
Colin Teevan
No. I don't think so. It's been a bit of a conundrum at times as Walter Meierjohann, the director, and I attempted to work out the dynamics of the relationship of MonkeyMan to audience and MonkeyMan to former Monkey self. But these discussions were highly productive in coming to realise the finished piece.

Champagne Charlie
Do you have a specific works you'd like to adapt after this?
 
Colin Teevan
I'm working on a play about William McGonagall for the Dundee Rep. he is widely considered to be the world's worst poet ever and he was born of Irish parents in Dundee. I am using largely his own dreadful writings which actually make it quite a sad piece. My adaptation of Peer Gynt for National Theatre of Scotland returns to the Barbican in May. I am also working on a number of original pieces.

Champagne Charlie
The National went through a series of massive 'adaptations' with huge casts e.g. Nicholas Nickleby etc - do you think they were of their time or does this can this more scaled down approach be just as powerful?

Colin Teevan
The RSC did the Nicholas Nickelby adaptation. The National are doing ever more elaborate adaptations these days - The Dark Materials, War Horse - but these tend to be in the area of children's work and created very much as spectacle. One would crush the fragile flower at the heart of Kafka's fable to turn it into a high tech spectacle.

Champagne Charlie

With the economy re-structuring how we work and what technology we use will we see a new form of theatre evolve or do you think audiences want to cling to the past?

Colin Teevan
Technology is always advancing in theatre. The Greeks had to watch theatre during the day because there was no artificial light. Technology changes and develops and can help create new performative experiences and relationships between the audience, the stage and the material. But nothing will replace the essential element of theatre which is the performer standing up in front of a group of people and telling/acting out a story. Any technological extravaganza that forgets that element will be still born.

Champagne Charlie

Have you had to leave anything out of the original piece or ‘inserted' anything to make it work better on stage?

Colin Teevan
Yes and yes. But I'm not saying because I'm proud of my stitch work.

Champagne Charlie

If Broadway World could wave it's magic theatrical wand and offers you ANY piece to work on - what would it be & why?

Colin Teevan
Dubliners by Joyce. Because I'm a Dubliner. Because people get fixated on The Dead which is like performing only Act 5 of Lear. I think it's possible to do the whole collection as a unity. And the first piece of theatre I ever made was Ulysses which I produced in its entirely and partly directed; most people are too in awe of Joyce's intellectual breadth to see just how funny he actually is.