Camden New Journal
Publications by New Journal Enterprises
spacer
  Home Archive Competition Jobs Tickets Accommodation Dating Contact us
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
spacer
The Review - FEATURE
 



Leigh’s Two Thousand Years sold out before it even had an ending

Leigh and the art of ad hoc film-making

As part of Jewish Book Week, Mark Lawson spoke to film director Mike Leigh about the collaborative nature of his work, writes Matthew Lewin

ACCLAIMED film and theatre director Mike Leigh gave his audience a fascinating insight into the unique way be puts together his award-winning films and plays at a sell-out session of Jewish Book Week last Sunday night.
It included the revelation that, for example, none of the other actors rehearsing for the film Vera Drake had any idea that Imelda Staunton’s character was an abortionist until the actors playing the police came to take her away.
“Not only is that true, but it’s true of every single situation that has ever occurred in every project that I have ever done,” Leigh said. “That is because the actors never know anything except what their character would know during the development stage and the improvisations. That’s what makes it real. For me, that’s standard procedure.”
Earlier in the discussion with BBC arts journalist Mark Lawson, Leigh was asked whether his recent play at the Cottesloe Theatre, Two Thousand Years, which had a Jewish theme, together with his appearance at Jewish Book Week constituted any kind of public statement about his Jewishness.
Leigh replied: “If you are asking me whether I am deliberately ‘coming out’‚ as a Jew, the answer is no. If I haven’t dealt with Jewish issues in the past it has not been a question of avoiding the issues.
“I would say that all of my work is quite Jewish in its way, without consciously being concerned to present itself as such or indeed advertise itself as such – in the sense that I deal with life in its tragic-comic perspective and in a way there is something quite Jewish in that.”
But when he was invited to create a play for the National Theatre by artistic director Nicholas Hytner, he decided that perhaps it was time to deal more specifically with some Jewish issues, with characters drawn very much from a world that was familiar to him.
And when he set about casting the play, he insisted on using only Jewish actors. “I have had a bee in my bonnet for years that, on the whole, Jews are often played implausibly by non-Jewish actors. I decided to get together a gang of Jewish actors because I needed people who could bring to the project experience which was more than just acting.”
He also revealed just how terrifying it was when the booking opened for Two Thousand Years and they had only just started the process of creating it.
“Within a week all 16,000 tickets had sold out, despite the fact that we didn’t even have a title for it yet,” he said. “I have to tell you that at that stage there was no play! It is terrifying to be told by enthusiastic people that all the tickets had been sold, when we didn’t yet have a play!”
Then came the revelation that the reason why the play’s first two preview performances were cancelled last year was because they had not yet decided on how the play should end. “Nic Hytner, who is a pretty sophisticated guy, spotted that without an ending, it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to put the play on,” he said.
The play has since been acclaimed by most of the critics and has been touring the country before coming back to the National Theatre and the larger Lyttelton Theatre in a few months time.
But the bulk of the discussion centred around the unique way Leigh works with his actors to produce his plays and films, and it amounted to an absorbing master class in the art of dramatic creation.
“All art is a synthesis of improvisation and order,” he explained.
“You put a mark on a canvas and then you work on it and put order to it, but it started as an improvisation. All artists interact with the material and go with what happens, although, at the same time, they have a notion, a preconception or a conception of what it should be. That conception might shift and change and grow and expand and contract, whatever the medium is – and that is what I do.
“There are some ideas about what might happen in a play or film, but the name of the game of what I do is create characters and put them together to create a whole organic world that lives, and through which things develop and ultimately happen.”
Eventually, however, a finished product does emerge that becomes permanent. “Yes, there is now a play, and it is at the printers at the moment. They all wind up being very precise and distilled and written down, so that anyone who now comes into the play as a new actor, comes into a finished play. But there is always room for good actors to bring some improvisation to their parts.”
Asked by Mark Lawson whether there had been a “lightbulb moment” when he discovered this way of working, Leigh replied: “Not really. It happened over the course of the first half of the 1960s, when I was very interested in all kinds of things, including what was happening in the cinema at the time. What was perhaps closest to a lightbulb experience for me was Peter Brooke’s production of the Marat/Sade.
“I saw a film about how he had taken his actors to a mental hospital and they had all chosen a case to use in their characterisation.”
Leigh dealt forthrightly with members of the audience who appeared to irritate him. One man, who suggested that socialism and Judaism had never been very happy bedfellows, was told he had made a “ridiculous statement”.
And to another man, who expressed surprise at the number of “f-words,” as he described them, in the recent play, Leigh replied: “I have nothing further to say, so fuck off.”

• Jewish Book Week runs until Sunday at the Royal National Hotel at Bedford Way, London, WC1. Call 0870 060 1798.

CLICK BELOW TO SEARCH FOR ACCOMODATION

book online
 
spacer
» A-Z of Theatre
» Local Reviews
» Local Listings
» West End Reviews
» West End Listings
» Theatre Tickets
» Theatre & Hotel Packages













spacer


Theatre Music
Arts & Events Attractions
spacer
 
 


  up