If There Is I Haven t Found It Yet A conversation with Director Michael Longhurst

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1 If There Is I Haven t Found It Yet A conversation with Director Michael Longhurst (Note: There are some plot spoilers included in this interview!) On September 15, 2012, as part of Roundabout Theatre Company s lecture series, Michael Longhurst spoke about If There Is I Haven t Found It Yet with Teaching Artist Jason Jacobs. An edited transcript follows: Jason Jacobs: Because it s such a bold visual idea that moves the play, I would love to start with how you, working with your design team, came to imagine this production? Michael Longhurst: We came to it from two points: first, how do you do the things that the script needs? And, second, the number of conceptual ideas we wanted to try. Starting with the practical things, the play has twenty-one scenes and thirteen different locations, which is an awful lot for a stage play. The script requires cooking equipment, TVs, armchairs, etc. So working out how we could use all the stuff in a way that was interesting was my first challenge. What interested me was the idea of watching the family drowning in the stuff they consume. We begin to see the build up of all the things around them. In terms of the water, I felt Anna s suicide attempt in the bathtub was a key scene in the play. Very practically, you start thinking how to get a full bath onstage, how to get it off again, could it be there from the beginning, how do we not see it? I think that suicide scene is such a tipping point for the family. The daughter is slightly invisible for the first half of the play. The parents think they re looking after her but can t see what her needs are. When her Uncle Terry comes in, he actually begins to see Anna for who she is. I liked the idea that the family s tipping point is Anna s suicide attempt and that also parallels the sort of micro/macro issues in the play: that our planet is headed toward a tipping point. I wanted to parallel those two things in the emotional release of Anna trying to slit her wrists. JJ: Once the water releases and fills the stage, how did you work with your actors in terms of their response to it as characters? ML: The water arrived halfway through previews, and we kept testing it and testing it. It proved quite difficult to keep 4,000 gallons of water onstage. But they managed to solve the problems and that gave us the chance to really ask questions about how the characters should respond to the water. I quite enjoy the ambiguity of them acknowledging it or not acknowledging it sometimes they do, sometimes they don t. In the scene where the lights start flashing before the hospital, we really tried to cause as much frenzy and splashing as possible to represent the emotional drama of the situation. I like that they splash around in the water because life is messy and I think it s quite British that a very big event could happen, like a flood, and people won t know how to deal with it. I think the beauty of Nick Payne s play, for me anyway, is that there isn t a happy resolution. The play is about: can people change? The mother is the character that makes a firm decision. She decides she has to separate from her husband, George, or at least think about doing that, because otherwise change might not happen. I think maybe George finally is able to acknowledge the irony that he is trying to make people change their behavior, but he himself is stuck in behavior that sacrifices his family for a greater good. JJ: Nick was here for the rehearsals correct? ML: Yes, he was. 1

2 JJ: And was he part of the meetings you had with your other design team? ML: I would send Nick little s with images and ideas. Suggest maybe we have a little bit of water. Maybe do a little of this and a little of that. This is my second production with Nick. I directed his most recent play in London titled Constellations, which we did with almost no set whatsoever. It s a love story set in the quantum multiverse. So you see a hundred different versions of the same story completely repeated, and the only prop is one wedding ring. Nick completely acknowledged that this was a play full of stuff and we had to do something bold to try and accommodate that. JJ: Constellations was done at the Royal Court Theatre earlier this year. And it s going to the West End? ML: In November. JJ: Is that how you met Nick, at the Royal Court? ML: We knew each other socially as theatre artists. We both had work in a festival three or four years ago. But it was Dominic Cooke, the Artistic Director of the Royal Court, who suggested to Nick that I direct Constellations. We had a good time doing it. JJ: Tell us about yourself. Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school? ML: I grew up on the Kent-London border, which is not far from London. In terms of theatre, I had aspirations to act as lots of people do when they first get involved. I went to Nottingham University and realized that I was a terrible actor. So I was just reaching around for how else I could stay engaged in theatre. I d nearly gone to art school and explored that line. I pitched to do a production of Equus at university. I was given a grand budget of 500 pounds. I handmade these horsehead masks. I had that eureka moment where I suddenly realized it was much more satisfying to give a good note to an actor and watch something amazing happen than try and struggle with acting yourself. And that s where it came from really; I felt a real synergy of art design, working collaboratively with actors and designers trying to make a piece. After I graduated, I then took a directing course in London, and started leap-frogging up the London Fringe. I worked almost exclusively on new plays. I think partly out of necessity, when you start as a young director nobody wants to see your Hamlet because you re not ready to do a Hamlet. So I reached around to try to find stories that seemed interesting and writers who would let me get their scripts done at some little pub theater with a group of friends. The press was more interested in seeing a new story of topical issue. And gradually, I worked from tiny pub theatres to the equivalent of off-broadway, which is our off-west End in London. I was very fortunate to get the Jerwood Directors Award, which was the first time I wasn t scrapping around marketing myself. JJ: Is that an award that the Young Vic offers to a new director? ML: Yes, it s an award of 35,000 pounds for directors to stage their first fully resourced productions. They encourage you to really explore process in your choice of show. JJ: Clearly Nick has a lot of trust in you, and he has given you real freedom artistically. ML: This play was done before, in 2009, and I saw the original production of it. It was in a tiny ninety-seat pub theatre. And it was beautiful and comic. I think since I first saw that production, I ve been directing it in the back of my head thinking, that was great, what they did, but I wonder if we could do this and that. You always start having those thoughts when you watch theatre as a director. I think also with Nick, because he had seen the show done before and because we had done a show together, we could be brave architecturally. When we came into this space, it became a question of how to pull off a very intimate play in a theatre this size. 2

3 JJ: Can you say a little more about that? Meaning that subtext had to be brought to the surface? ML: I think, again, it s a very British thing to talk round and round and round things and not quite get to the point. Which I think is delightful when you re three meters away from the actor, but actually when you re not that close, an audience wants to feel the momentum of the plot going forward. JJ: Were there many script changes? ML: There was a process of revision before rehearsals, looking at how the climate change issues needed updating. Essentially it was the question of whether George s quest to write a book was still credible whether or not it was the best way for that character to deal with climate change. Nick was also able to go back to the script and say, That reads too similar to this. We get it. We know what the story is. We can lose that. We can move on. JJ: As you ve gone into previews, has Nick continued to look at the script? Has listening to the play with an American audience changed anything? ML: Absolutely. George s original opening monologue referred to the idea that he had to write the book and he talked about seeing images of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Saying, Is this it? Is this what the rest of us have in store for the future? That was his motivating moment. What he said was, A city in one of the most developed countries in the world being left to, to, to and he can t finish the sentence. Which from a UK perspective is what it felt like. It was a shocking image for us to see part of America under water. Here in the US, we found that the situation in New Orleans had huge resonances that had nothing to do with climate change. We felt we were setting the play off on the wrong foot to start with that. As a British playwright and director coming over to the States, we didn t want it to feel like we were telling Americans something about an issue that we only had an outside perspective on. So we reframed the opening and now George has his polar bear speech. JJ: Essentially you ve created this world that the characters are trapped in. I think the character of Terry is the only one that comes in and out of the playing space. ML: The idea is we re on this planet, we can t get off this planet, we re stuck on this planet and we ve got a finite number of resources. We wanted to lump, like a continent floating in a blue planet, the stuff we needed for the play. Terry is the character that comes into this family s lives, forces them to look at what they re doing, but ultimately he feels like he can t affect the change that he wants to and he goes away. Terry has a lot of issues about running away from responsibility and that s his journey through the play. We wanted to embrace the idea that the family was stuck in this world and so they stay onstage all the time. JJ: Had you worked with any of these actors before? ML: No, I hadn t. JJ: Do you know how the production came to Roundabout? ML: I know that Jake had been shown the script, and he was looking to do some theatrical work. He had found this character Terry that he was very passionate about and very intrigued by. I think it s quite incredible, that as an American, he understands and got into the British cadences of the character so well. I think he does a better Cockney accent than I do. Mine s awful. But I think he had passionately engaged with this character and this story. And then he had the opportunity to see my production of Constellations when he was in the UK. Jake had the idea to try to make this happen. It grew from there. 3

4 JJ: I believe this is Jake s American theatre debut, but in London, he was in the production of This is Our Youth. ML: Yes, he won an Evening Standard award Best Newcomer, which they don t just give away! It s very exciting to have the opportunity to work with him onstage. JJ: Just before we open it up to questions, I wanted to mention that Nick Payne has won a few awards. I believe he was shortlisted for Evening Standard s Most Promising Young Playwright. ML: He won the George Devine award for If There Is which was a commission to write a new piece. He was shortlisted for the Evening Standard, and most recently won the Harold Pinter Award, which is a commission from the Royal Court. JJ: I think he has a commission here from Manhattan Theatre Club with their program with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Now, I d like to invite you all to ask Michael any questions, you may have. Audience Member #1: How did you get Brian F. O Byrne to come back to the stage? What was the process there? ML: We sent him the script. And I m thrilled that something in the script spoke to Brian and made him want to come and do this. I think he was living in L.A. at the time and wanted to come back to New York with his family. But as far as I know, he read the scene which takes place in the hospital, fell in love with it, and wanted to play that character. I m thrilled that that happened. It was a real privilege for me to get to work with him. JJ: How did you cast Annie Funke? ML: We did a lot of auditions here in America. I did a casting trip in LA, a casting trip in New York. The Roundabout s casting department saw lots of people because it s an extraordinary role. It takes real courage to come out and do what she does onstage. We knew it was going to be a massive challenge to find someone. We definitely spent a lot of time seeing as many people as we could. They researched and put feelers out far and wide to find someone who had the emotional maturity to be able to understand what the character s going through. Annie s twenty-six and I think she does an incredible job playing fifteen. I think because she s got that distance from the age she can really go back and imagine what it would be like. JJ: I know initially you were trying to see if you could find a teen actor for that role. ML: We did. We auditioned many people. I think the youngest were sixteen or seventeen. We really found that the character of Anna becomes a young woman over the course of the play. It s a huge emotional journey. We needed someone strong enough to do research on wrist slitting and to understand and convey what it would be like to go through that. I think possibly it would have been too much for a fifteen year old. JJ: Did you do research in terms of depression? ML: We were very lucky that we could get some experts into the rehearsal room. We had a number of climate change experts in, but we also had an expert on eating disorders talk to us about the types of behavior that are associated with that. Annie did a lot of work on teen bullying, which is such a massive issue at the moment. Especially suicidal bullying. Audience Member #2: When Anna slit her wrists and the stage floods, I was wondering if that was supposed to be a metaphor for life flowing out of her? 4

5 ML: Yes, I think we wanted to dramatize that as well as we could. She s literally losing fluid. George talks about the sea level rising. We wanted to try to connect those two events. She spends a lot of time in the play being hurt and going inwards. And this is the first time she ever really acts and does something. So we wanted to augment that gesture to almost operatic levels. JJ: I spoke with one of our teachers last week and she interpreted that the water was unexpressed emotions. When Anna cuts her wrist, she felt it opened up the emotional world of the play and that s what the actors are walking into. Audience Member #3: I didn t understand what the problem was between George and Fiona, his wife. Why did they break up? ML: I think the relationship breaks up because George is wedded to his work. He s just not there for Fiona. He s working so many hours a week, and as the book approaches its publication and launch, he is busy. I think he tells a white lie in the moment that his phone died because he made a choice not to call Fiona back because something was more important that day. It was a white lie that got exposed. I think for Fiona, she realizes she isn t his priority. I think at the moment when she realizes that she can t actually rely on him, she makes a choice to separate. Audience Member #4: I have a question about the title, If There Is I Haven t Found It Yet is that an answer to a question? ML: For me, If There Is I Haven t Found It Yet is an answer to an implied question about what is missing from the character s life. What the implied question is, is up for debate. I think it s probably different for each character. For me, the question is Is there a right way to live? But the characters each have a different answer to that. I think Anna s question is, Is there a way to be happy? If there is, I haven t found it yet. For George, Is there a way to save the planet without losing your family? If there is, I haven t found it yet. Audience Member #5: At one point there s a sexual attraction between Anna and Terry. What s that all about? ML: I think that the sexual attraction is more from Anna s perspective. Terry is an older man who takes an interest in her. He comes drunk into her room and suddenly tells her that she s beautiful. I think he does it with the best intentions but he unleashes a force in a maturing teenager that he wasn t expecting. I would say Terry is a character that has a lot of charm and is able to convince and change people. He doesn t have stability, he had a relationship that didn t work, he s been moving around. He has slightly shady parts here and there. And he s been away and he s come back and decided he wants to reconnect with his exgirlfriend, Rachel. I think he has come to a conclusion that what he had with her was special and he wants to step up and be a responsible person who can have a relationship. When that becomes something that he can t achieve, having someone like Anna who idolizes him and who gives him so much affection, adds to the seductive thing. While I wouldn t say that Terry has strong sexual feelings for Anna, I think that, for the character, it s very appealing to have someone like Anna hang on your every word. JJ: It seems that Terry oversteps a boundary by giving Anna info she may be too young to process. ML: Terry is able to really listen and talk about issues, but I think what he does is to dangerously empower someone who is not yet ready to deal with certain emotions. He gives Anna a condom, he makes her think about the fact that she might be expected to do something on a date. He makes a pact with her which is, promise not to go back to this boy s house. In rehearsals, we discovered that that s not really a promise you can ask of someone of Anna s age. She ends up having a very traumatic sexual experience with the boy she has a date with. Having had that experience, there s a certain barrier that is gone. Then a certain 5

6 floodgate opens and there is the desire to try and move on from that experience. Anna becomes slightly obsessed with Terry and tries to show him that she s now a woman and she becomes slightly sexually aggressive with him. Audience Member #6: I m curious about Fiona s mom and the extremes of her losing her mind and having a young girl start to move into maturity. ML: I think it s interesting that all of the people in Fiona s life are disappearing. Her husband disappearing into work, her mother disappearing into her own mind, her daughter disappearing into a cocoon. She s in the middle of this thing, trying to pull the family together. It was something that wasn t in the original production. It didn t seem quite enough for Fiona to be doing a musical as her daughter is slitting her wrists. There needed to be some other major issues that were distracting her and adding to the dysfunctional relationships. Nick writes incredibly movingly about the end of life, he does the same thing in Constellations. He is a twenty eight-year-old playwright and I m astounded at how he connects to the big questions. Audience Member #7: From my observation, prior to the suicide episode, Anna is a very depressed young woman and after suicide episode, she is no longer depressed. Is there an intentional indication of resolve? ML: I think after the suicide attempt, the family certainly notices her and puts her center stage in a way that they haven t before. I think there is a distinct difference between how Fiona tries to handle her daughter in the first school scene and how she handles her in the bedroom scene later on when she brings the Scrabble game. She realizes that she needs to be more emotionally available to her daughter. I think the suicide act is a wakeup call to the family and I think the family responds by trying to be much more emotionally aware of Anna. Which I think helps her feel validated and move forward. JJ: There s a lot of ambiguity in the play. We see her in the bathtub and then we see her in those last scenes where life seems to be getting better for her, but there are also those scenes which we don t see. ML: I would add that one in four teenage girls are depressed. The rates of self-harm and cutting are higher among teenage girls. It s a huge issue in terms of parental shame. And you know, it is often connected to mental illness, but it can be connected to emotionally unhappy situations as well. So I don t think there is an easy cause-and-effect resolution. I think the rates of suicide attempts are terrifyingly high and it s a massive subject that we don t talk about. I think part of Anna s process post-suicide is that she s less needy of Terry. In the final scene on the beach, I think Terry is more of the child and is moping around like a teenager. She sees him for what he is and their friendship is much more equal by that point. Audience Member #8: Can you talk about how this play translates from a British to a New York audience? ML: The green issue aside, I m still learning about the New York audiences. When we gave a talk-back a week ago, a few people expressed that they found it bizarre that a girl could do this and that the family wasn t hugging her. I think British people deal with their emotions in a very different way than Americans. I think the play structurally has a very uneasy resolution. It doesn t move toward a place of obvious resolution or progress. There s an uncertain tone at the end that is quite unusual for American theatre. Plus, a lot of specific British references that we had to cut or change. Things that would bring the house down in the UK got no response over here. 6

7 Audience Member #9: How much time did you spend talking about the idea of bullying? ML: We created a back story for each character. We know that Anna has changed schools recently to be at her Mum s school and so we imagined the type of circumstances that might have existed in her previous school. We imagined how moving her to this school might have made things worse rather than better. Annie did a lot of research into documentaries of teen bullying. I also think that Annie was able to bring a lot personal experience to the role, she was able to talk about things that happened to her. Audience Member #10: How did you help Annie get comfortable with the bathtub scene? ML: We talked a lot about that particular scene. When we first rehearsed it, it was a closed rehearsal. We talked a lot about why the character felt moved to do it. I think if, as the actor, you understand and believe why a character is doing something, then you are closer to being able to do it. Annie was fully invested in Anna getting to that point in her character s arc. JJ: I saw that scene two slightly different ways I think. Both times, she took off her clothes, but the choice around using the razor and when the razor came out of the bag seemed different. Has that evolved at all? ML: Yes, it s changed. We tried to tell the story of a girl who couldn t let go of how she would be found, which is why she kept her underwear on. We explored different ways she would take off her clothes and very carefully fold them up and when the razor blade should come out. In one version, she made a phone call to Terry in that moment. But we took it out because we decided that we have enough phone calls in the play. 7

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