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Background packBackground PackNational Theatre: Background Pack 1

Further production details: nationaltheatre.org.uk

This background pack is published by and copyright The Royal National Theatre BoardReg. No. 1247285Registered Charity No. 224223

Views expressed in this background pack are not necessarily those of the National Theatre

Author Mel Hillyard

EditorSarah Corke

Design Clare Nicholson, Louise Richardson and Michael Cranston

NT Learning National TheatreSouth Bank London SE1 9PX

T 020 7452 3388F 020 7452 3380E [email protected]

The rehearsal and production photographs in this background pack were taken by Ellie Kurttz. The rehearsal photographs were taken at the Jerwood Space.

Contents

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Welcome to the National Theatre’s background pack for 3 Winters.

This background pack introduces the process of bringing the National Theatre production to life, from auditions through to press night.

Through imaginative and innovative in-school, on-site and online activities, NT Learning opens up the National’s repertoire, artistry, skills, and the building itself, enabling participants of all ages to discover new skills and experience the excitement of theatre-making. If you’ve enjoyed this background pack or would like to talk to us about getting involved in NT Learning activities, please contact us on [email protected] or 020 7452 3388.

Jane BallProgramme Manager, NT LearningFebruary 2015

The National’s production 3

Synopsis of the play 4

Rehearsal Diary 6

Interview with Sophie Rundle and Charlotte Beaumont 12

Q&A with Tena Štivicic 15

National Theatre: Background Pack 2

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/learning

The National Theatre production of 3 Winters a new play by Tena Štivicic

Dunya (Lucy Black), Vlado (Adrian Rawlins), Lucia (Sophie Rundle), Alisa (Jodie McNee) and Masha (Siobhan Finneran). Production photograph taken by Ellie Kurttz.

1945Marinko, a communist official Gerald KydRose King Jo HerbertAlexander King Alex PriceMonika, Rose’s mother Josie WalkerKarolina Hermione Gulliford

1990Masha Kos Siobhan FinneranVlado Kos, Masha’s husband Adrian RawlinsLucia, Masha’s daughter Charlotte BeaumontAlisa, Masha’s daughter Bebe SandersDunya, Masha’s sister Lucy BlackKarl, Dunya’s husband Daniel FlynnKarolina Susan EngelAlexander King James LaurensonMarko Alex JordanIgor Jonny Magnanti

2011Masha Kos Siobhan FinneranVlado Kos Adrian RawlinsLucia Sophie RundleAlisa Jodie McNeeDunya Lucy BlackMarko Gerald Kyd

Director Howard DaviesDesigner Tim HatleyLighting Designer James FarncombeMusic Dominic MuldowneyProjection Designer Jon Driscoll for cineluminaSound Designer Mike WalkerMovement Director Jack MurphyFight Director Terry KingCompany Voice Work Kate GodfreyStaff Director Mel Hillyard

Production Photographer Ellie Kurttz

UnderstudiesKristin Atherton (Alisa/Rose/Lucia), Tracy Bargate (Karolina/Monika), Peter Cadden (Alexander 1990), George Evans (Alexander 1945/Marko 1990), Joe Evans (Marko 2011/Marinko/Karl/Igor), Jonny Magnanti (Vlado), Tracey Ann Wood (Masha/Dunya)

The National Theatre wishes to acknowledge its partner National Angels Limited

This production had its world premiere in the Lyttelton Theatre on 3 December 2014


1945Rose, a partisan, meets Marinko, a communist official, in his office. She says the general sent her, but he doesn’t believe her and makes a telephone call to a colleague to confirm this. He is told to let her pick any key she wants from the selection he has – he thinks her choice shows bourgeois taste.

Rose and her baby enter a seemingly abandoned house in Zagreb. Her husband Alexander follows, irritated that she, not him, was the one to sort out their housing, not him. It was better for her to look after it as he was drafted into the army during the war, and may now be seen as a traitor. Rose’s mother Monika wants to know why Rose chose this particular house – Monika used to work here and it’s where Rose was born. They were thrown out when Rose was only two days old. Alexander explores their new home and finds fresh ashes in the stove; this worries them all. When Monika leaves to bring in the rest of their things, Alexander asks Rose whether the baby is his or the general’s. She snaps and tells Alexander she will not put up with his suspicions anymore – she was already pregnant with Alexander’s child when she met the general. She burns the pictures of Alexander in his uniform from the war. They finally give the baby a name – Masha.

Night. Monika wakes up when she hears a floorboard creak. Alexander seizes an intruder – it is Karolina, the previous occupant of the house. Rose demands to know what Karolina is doing there. Karolina replies ‘this is my house’, but Rose reminds her that things have changed under communism and as Karolina’s father chose to side with the Nazis he is seen as an enemy of the people. Karolina finally admits she ran away from a mental hospital but that she’s not crazy – her father fled to Argentina, leaving her in the hospital when he didn’t know what to do with her. Monika is sympathetic to her old employer and Rose eventually agrees to have a word with the general about letting Karolina stay. Alexander finds Karolina’s sewing machine and hopes to start up his own business as a tailor. Left alone, Karolina apologises to Monika for turning her out with her baby. Monika tells her that Rose was looked after by labourers and worked from a young age. Rose has bad feet after walking through the snow in wooden clogs without socks when she was ten.

Monika talks about Karolina’s brother, Sebastian, who came back from war and struck up a relationship with Monika before going off to war again. Sebastian is Rose’s father.

1990The day of Rose’s funeral. Masha sorts through her mother’s clothes. Dunya, Rose’s youngest daughter, tells her sister not to worry about doing that today. Masha says she’s never felt this lonely and everything around her feels ‘sort of underwater’. Karolina has been telling Lucia (Masha’s youngest daughter) about grandma Rose’s ‘funny feet’. Lucia says a boy in her class called her a ‘commie’, and complains that her sister Alisa is in the garden with her boyfriend and neighbour Marko. Masha goes out to find them. Dunya scolds Karolina for telling Lucia such gruesome stories, but the older woman says she wants her to ‘appreciate a carefree childhood’. Dunya pointedly comments about Karolina throwing Rose and Masha out on the street, and Karolina says she has spent her life making amends. Karolina asks Lucia if she’s having a happy childhood. Indicating the house, she tells Lucia ‘all this should be yours, it should stay in the family.’

Later that same day. Alisa, Lucia, Marko, Karolina, Alexander, Masha’s husband Vlado, Dunya’s husband Karl and family friend Igor are gathered together. Karl says the whole house should belong to Masha and Vlado’s family – not shared with two other families. He predicts there will soon be a war between the Croats and Serbs and he sticks up for the Croatian nationalists who fought in the Second World War. Everyone else is on the side of the communists and can’t believe Yugoslavia will split into separate states again. Dunya says Alisa and Lucia can move in with her and Karl in their home in Germany if a war does happen. Alexander tells them about the difficulties he faced as a soldier of the Croatian army at the end of World War Two. He was put in a camp, where Rose found him and got him out. Dunya notices that Alexander and Masha are the spitting image of each other, which is a relief to Alexander who can finally believe Masha is his child. Vlado switches on the TV to breaking news: Slovenia and Croatia have left the 14th Congress of the Communist Union of Yugoslavia.

That night. Karl and Dunya get ready for bed. Karl is drunk and complains that he is a nobody – even Dunya runs his company behind the scenes. He says Dunya always puts him down in public and that he is going to defend the country if war breaks out. Dunya reminds him he can’t even run for a bus and suggests that maybe they should split up. Karl wants them to renew their vows in church. She tells him ‘you have lost your mind’ and walks away from him, but he hits her. He continues to attack her, only stopping when Vlado, Masha, Alisa, Marko and Lucia come in.

A synopsis of the play


Synopsis, continued

2011The night before Lucia’s wedding. Alisa is visiting from England, where she now lives and studies. Vlado needles her for never coming home, for still being a student and – because she lives with girls, is single and over 30 – the possibility of her being a lesbian. Dunya is also there, and is no longer with Karl. She is going to play ‘the false bride’* for the wedding, a custom Alisa is surprised her sister is upholding. There is a lot of noise from the upstairs apartment because Lucia’s fiancé, Damjan, has bought the whole house and the families who live in the other apartments are moving out. Alisa is taken aback that they agreed to move without putting up a fight.

2am. Alisa catches Lucia eating cake. They share a spliff and try on Karolina and Rose’s old clothes. They share laughs but continue to disagree over the right to own the whole house. Lucia explains that when she was younger, Karolina told her the whole house should be theirs. Alisa doesn’t think this is a good enough reason to force their neighbours to move out and says ownership ‘was never something we aspired to’. Alisa admits she is thinking of moving back, and apologises for being unsupportive of her sister. Lucia reassures Alisa that Damjan is not a bad guy.

Alisa finds Marko stacking removal boxes. They flirt a little and Marko says he is finally, at the age of nearly 40, going to move out on his own. Alisa asks Marko if he and his mother coming to the wedding – they aren’t. She says she thought she would

have an ally in him, which angers Marko. He tells her about the guilt he feels over how he treated her, but he also tells Alisa that Damjan said staying in the house ‘would not be an option’.

Masha and Vlado are in bed. Masha tells Vlado that one of his friends once invited her to run away to Dubai with him – she considered it too. This shocks Vlado. He has been happy with Masha and assumed she felt the same. Masha finds Damjan and Lucia’s ideas and ways of looking at the world confusing – ‘Trusting means stupid. Considerate means weak’. Vlado says they have to let go and suggests they move to Dubai.

The morning of the wedding. Vlado is listening to Karl who is on the radio talking about a referendum to join the EU. Alisa enters looking like she hasn’t been to bed – she says she’s been reading and trying to get her facts straight. Lucia comes in wearing her wedding dress and making a call on her mobile phone, trying to find out when her wedding cake will arrive. Alisa asks her if their neighbours were threatened into moving out. Lucia says they were given hefty compensation. They argue: Alisa believes that as Damjan is not one of them, he has no right to own their (and their neighbours’) home. Vlado says he asked Damjan whether he had threatened their neighbours into moving out, and he swore he didn’t. Alisa is surprised at how easily her father gave up: ‘you’re a historian, since when did a man’s word count for anything?’. Vlado says he didn’t want to risk losing Lucia, and in his day and age a man’s word counted for something. Masha admits it’s not been easy having Damjan for a son-in-law, but she tries to keep an open mind. Finally Lucia speaks up: their parents and aunt are not wealthy and she has been the only one smart enough to adapt to the new times in Croatia – she made Damjan buy the house so they could all stay there and the house would not be ‘a target for someone less sentimental’ and anyway, she made Damjan put the house in her name. She forces her family to get ready for the wedding as a string band starts to play.

Masha (Siobhan Finneran) and Vlado (Adrian Rawlins).Production photograph taken by Ellie Kurttz

*For more information on the false bride, see the ‘Buying the Bride’ section of the following web page:

likecroatia.com/news-tips/wedding-in-croatia-habits-and-customs/


http://www.likecroatia.com/news-tips/wedding-in-croatia-habits-and-customs/




We all gather together in rehearsal room 3 at the National Theatre on the first day of rehearsals to do our ‘meet and greet’ – this is where all the cast, crew and staff from the NT stand in a big circle and say who they are and what they’re doing on the production. It’s a theatrical tradition to do this on the first day of rehearsals and at the NT it is a very large circle, with a cast of 23 (including understudies), people from marketing, press, stage management, creatives and various others. Howard Davies – our director – says a bit about the production, then those directly involved in rehearsals stay behind for a read through of the script. The actors give a phenomenal first read through, showing me just how funny the play is. It’s also very dense, with a complicated political thread that we will need to unpick. In the afternoon, Howard talks through the research he’s already done on Croatia’s history leading up to World War Two, the Balkan war in the ’90s and the current day. Tena Štivicic, the playwrite, says that when Yugoslavia was created in 1918, the details of the unification were rushed, and the tension this created between individual countries later exploded into what we now know as the Balkan War of the 1990s. She also gives us some useful modern-day anecdotes about contemporary society in Zagreb, and how corruption is rife in Croatia. Howard tells us some funny tales from his trip to Zagreb with designer Tim Hatley and we look at the design and model box – a miniature version of what the set will look like on stage. It is all set in the large living room of the Kos family house, with changes made between the three time periods in which it’s set: 1945, 1990 and 2011. These changes will happen by way of rotating panels in the walls, and projection and music will be used in each scene transition, giving a historical lead into that time period.

After looking at the model box and sharing research, the day is almost over. The cast have to be measured for costumes and, after a health and safety talk, we call it a day.

The rest of week one is spent rehearsing at the Jerwood Space. Howard doesn’t spend long ‘round the table’ discussing characters and ideas. He likes to get the scenes up in the space and stage them. I ask Howard if this has always been his process and he tells me that he used to

do more traditional table work and discussion. However, doing it that way he feels that the rehearsal room then becomes more like university and an intellectual discussion rather than finding things out through doing. Having worked with Howard once before, I agree this is a much better use of time, and it means that the actors are so much more confident by the end of the rehearsal period. Howard doesn’t plan his staging but makes sure he knows the play inside out so that he can clearly see where and when actors need to move to keep the play dynamic. By the end of the week he has already plotted out the whole play. On the Friday, Howard, Tena and I look at moments in the play where the script needs adjustment and over the weekend Tena makes these changes.

Rehearsal diaries: week one

Staff Director Mel Hillyard documented the six-week rehearsal period; here she describes how the production emerged.

Model box of the set, designed by Tim Hatley. Photographs courtesy of Tim Hatley.


We continue to make cuts to the script as there are a few moments which feel overwritten – a common occurance in new plays.

Each rehearsal session is dedicated to unwrapping the scenes layer by layer, adding detail and talking more about the back stories of the characters, as well as filling in the political background. By the end of week two we have a very firm basis for the play, though some actors are more confident in their parts than others. We also begin to rehearse the scenes with everyone so we can see the progression of each character across the different time periods, as well as the deliberate gaps in their story.

Each era starts to have a very definite feel to it. 1945 is sparse, harsh and nothing is wasted on emotion. 1990 is filled with an underlying tension in the lead-up to war. 2011 starts lighter in tone, with dynamic family scenes and a real disconnection between each character’s ideologies. The family relationships are so complex, wonderfully painful, funny and true to life. I recognise my parents in both Masha and Vlado, and coming from a family of sisters with a dominant father, I can relate to so much of it. I hope the audience will too.

Rehearsal diary: week two

Team Rankin Alison Rankin – Stage Manager – 07736 772 097

Three Winters Rehearsal Call

Tuesday 21st October Jerwood Space 7 171 Union Street, London SE1 0LN T:020 7654 0171 10.30 am sc 11 pg 62 – 65 Miss McNee Mr Kyd 11.30 am Sc 13 pg 71 – 78 Miss Black Miss Finneran Miss McNee Miss Rundle Mr Rawlins 1.30 pm Lunch 2.30 pm sc 5 + 6 pg 33 - 41 Miss Gulliford Miss Herbert Miss Walker Mr Price 4.00 pm tea break 4.15 pm sc 1 pg 3 + 4 Miss Herbert Mr Kyd 5.30 pm Call to end Costume + Wham fittings Jerwood Space 6 10.00 am Miss Black 10.40 am Miss Beaumont 11.20 am Miss Sanders 12.15 pm Mr Jordan 2.15 pm Miss Rundle 2.55 pm Mr Rawlins 3.35 pm Mr Kyd (no wig call) 4.30 pm Miss Walker (+ wig)

Howard Davies goes through the script with the Company during rehearsals. Rehearsal photograph taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz.

Rehearsal call sent out by stage manager Alison Rankin.


The stage where an actor comes ‘off book’ is always tricky as it’s hard to play clear intentions when trying to remember the next line. This week many of them begin to break through this tricky stage; the words and movements are becoming instinctive as all the dots join together. 3 Winters is a complex text and it needs razor-sharp clarity to make sure the audience appreciate all the layers. Two of Howard’s many strengths are giving clarity and bringing out wit in the text, whilst being generous and specific with his notes to the actors. If an actor has done something he likes in a previous run of a scene, he reminds them of it and asks them to bring it back. He’s not afraid to give positive feedback, which is important for an actor to know what is working and coming across to the audience. It’s the director’s job to be the audience in rehearsals and to predict what will work, and because Howard has worked at the NT so much he is well-practised in this, as well as in directing for the particular nuances of the Lyttelton Theatre.

One special event makes an impression on us – a visit from a cast member’s friend, Mario, a Croatian living in London, who fought during the Yugoslavian war in the ’90s and had an experience that caused him to leave the army and travel to England. 3 Winters centres around family relationships, with an undercurrent of each era’s social and political context. Many of us have read lots about Croatia and we’re watching The Death of Yugoslavia together as a company – a six-part BBC documentary that charts the lead-up to the Balkan War, the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1990 and the atrocities that occurred in the aftermath. Talking to Mario is really useful for everyone. Things that resonate include: how Croatian people can be full of love for their neighbour but they’ll never fully trust them; how the women (especially in Dalmatia) run the household and dominate the family; how, for the last 100 years, war has been a common thread in Croatia and it’s only the younger generation that have a lighter attitude to things. Mario talks about people in Croatia wanting to move on but not knowing how to, the corruption that still exists there, alongside the legacy from the communist regime – some people can have jobs for life and despite having a very bad work ethic cannot be sacked. His talk is very moving as he personally went through a lot of trauma, but also of interest to actors playing characters who have been through traumatic experiences in war. Marko (played by Gerald

Kyd), for example, has Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and finds it difficult to live in the modern world.

Over the rest of the week we work through each scene in the play and unwrap more layers, occasionally changing staging to add clarity. I also start work with the understudies. A demanding task is ahead of them – six actors are covering the 17 people in the main cast. Luckily we have two rooms at the Jerwood but my rehearsal space is very small and tackling staging is difficult in the larger scenes. By the end of the week, though, we make it through all the scenes in 1945. Because Howard has made such great progress with the main cast I am able to use Friday afternoon in the bigger space to go through staging, and the understudies are already off book for those scenes – very impressive. I concentrate on the positives of understudying – the staging has been set and it’s my job to get the best performances out of the actors in a very strict structure. I’m looking forward to continuing this work.

Rehearsal diary: week three

Gerald Kyd plays Marinko in 1945 and Marko in 2011.Rehearsal photograph taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz.


We start to put parts of the play together to see how the story is unfolding, and how storylines and characters carry through the play. On Tuesday we put together act one, on Wednesday act two, and on Friday we run the whole play. It is crucial for us to assess whether the narrative is clear, particularly because the play jumps around in time and we meet characters at different stages of their lives – sometimes played by the same actor. When two actors are playing the same character at different ages it’s important that the audience make the connection. Costume and wigs can help, but the actors also need to watch each other’s performances and make their own connections.

When putting together act one it becomes clear that we need to do some more focused work on one of the big family scenes set in 1990. In other family scenes we have already worked with the actors to liberate them to respond vocally and physically to unfolding arguments. There are several reasons for doing this. Firstly: families talk over each other all the time and this family in particular have no qualms in challenging each other’s beliefs. Secondly: a Croatian family argument is much more fiery and dynamic than that of a typically reserved English family – we push the actors to reach beyond their nature in order to interrupt dialogue and heighten the responses throughout. Thirdly: the political arguments in the play become clearer and are more exciting when the debates are heightened and passionate. When we elevate scene 7 to the same dynamics as the other family scenes, it really takes off. There may be more things happening at

the same time in this scene, but it is easier to hear everything as an audience. A couple of cuts here and there also tighten up the scene.

Before we run through the whole play on Friday we stage the last scene – a sequence of visual snapshots of the various couples in the play dancing, while Alisa packs her bags and leaves. We stage the scene and then add some music for the actors to dance to – soon we will have the real music from composer Dominic Muldowney. The next phase will be to introduce a choreographer or movement director to make the dancing even more specific, but we use a basic waltz for now.

Understudy work continues. We go through almost all the scenes in one form or another. The understudies do some great work, running the scene as one character and then swapping to another. Kristin Atherton even steps in to play young Lucia when Charlotte Beaumont isn’t well – and does a brilliant job.

Next week we intend to focus on scene changes, finding more detail in the scenes and running the play another couple of times so we all get used to the play’s journey. It’s important for us to make the scene changes as seamless and fluid as possible – with help from our projection designer, designer, sound designer and composer – to lead the audience into each time period with definition and style.

Rehearsal diary: week four

Hermione Gulliford plays Karolina in 1945; Susan Engel plays Karolina in 1990; Bebe Sanders plays Alisa in 1990; Jodie McNee plays Alisa in 2011.Rehearsal photographs taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz.


Rehearsal diary: week five

The stage management team, led by Alison Rankin, have spent many sessions working out who moves the furniture in each of the 12 scene changes, as well as the logistics of when, where and how to do this. In an afternoon Alison discusses it with the crew and we run each scene change with the actors top and tailing the scenes. This will give us a head start going into the technical rehearsals as everyone should know who will be where and when. It is difficult to test this in the rehearsal room as the sliding panels have to be manually moved and various items that will eventually be on wheels aren’t yet. Even so, it goes fairly smoothly thanks to stage management’s impeccable organisation.

Movement director Jack Murphy comes in to help the actors with the waltz. He is used to working with actors who aren’t trained dancers and is very good at using vocabulary rooted in character behaviour rather than technical terms. We have a rough version of the final music from composer Dominic Muldowney so once the actors are happy with waltzing, we set the timing of entrances for this final dance. It should be a beautiful but sad visual ending to what is a dialogue-driven play. We do two run throughs to look at the overall arc and progression of each character and their narrative, as well as pacing and where we need to make scenes more dynamic. The family scene in 1990 which takes us into the interval needs some work. Most of the actors are on the stage and this is when the political debate leading up to the Balkan war heats up. Seeing the scene in the context of the run it is clear that we need to add some fire to it. The actors are encouraged to be more vocal in their responses and reactions throughout, which really helps, and we slow down the beginning of the scene so each moment holds our attention.

I focus on getting the understudies to be direct and clear with their character’s intentions, to ensure that once we are in the Lyttelton nothing gets lost and the scenes remain dynamic. It’s a very different feel playing in a rehearsal room where detail can be small. In the theatre the actors will have to get used to playing this detail for the larger audience – not an easy task for the understudies who won’t have much time on the stage.

Jonny Magnanti (Igor), Charlotte Beaumont (Lucia in 1990), Adrian Rawlins (Vlado), Lucy Black (Dunya), Susan Engel (Karolina in 1990), James Laurenson (Alexander in 1990) and Daniel Flynn (Karl).Rehearsal photograph taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz.


The last week of rehearsals includes two full run throughs – totalling six throughout the whole rehearsal period, a solid amount to give the actors confidence before moving on to the stage. This is vital in keeping the integrity of the acting, even during tech when other things go wrong. Because the actors are ready and we are pleased with what they’re doing, we use the last bits of rehearsal time to run through anything which might hold us up when we go to technical rehearsals. This includes a quick change, burning some photos in a bucket, and running through all the transitions with the music composed by Dominic Muldowney. It is useful for us to know how long the transition needs to be, but also for Dominic and Howard to listen to the musical narrative and how it fits with the play’s arc. Howard, Jon Driscoll (projection designer) and I look at the projections again and refine them. We are as ready as we can be going into the tech on Saturday. The only thing that could hold us up is the set. And it does...

Due to many factors (out of their control), the crew have not been able to make the sliders – a main part of the set – work as smoothly as they could, and we spend a large part of our two tech sessions on Saturday watching the sliders jam on the floor, get stuck, move too slowly or judder along. It is very frustrating. Howard makes the decision to give the latter part of Saturday evening to the production crew to make the sliders work by Monday. Even though they stay very late on Saturday, by Monday there are still problems. It feels a bit like groundhog day for many of us when we come into the

Rehearsal diary: week six

auditorium ready to start teching, to be asked to wait because the sliders still aren’t ready. At 4.30pm we are told to go home for the evening as the problem still isn’t fixed.

Howard makes another brave and experienced decision to cancel the first preview because we have already missed out on three-and-a-half tech sessions out of eight. Even if the show feels almost ready, it is unlikely we will be properly prepared for the Wednesday night and we would spend the preview period fixing problems created in tech, rather than refining them. For me, this is one of the most important lessons – always make the decision that’s best for the show, even if it’s unpopular with some. A less experienced director may not have chosen to cancel a show and may have suffered more problems as a consequence. Although things have not gone to plan, I think everyone feels safe in Howard’s decision-making – thank goodness we are working with a director who has directed 35 shows at the National!

The rest of the tech goes pretty smoothly: the sliders behave and the scene transitions, when they work, look magical and impressive. I spend a lot of time liaising between Howard and the actors, checking sightlines and fixing any problems I can. As we are about to finish the last scene change a cable is severed and one of the sliders breaks again. Luckily, we have already run through act 1 and can all go home for the evening, leaving the crew to once more work until the early hours. Thursday, the day we open

the show, is a long day. We finish tech, run through act 2, do a full dress rehearsal and perform our first preview in the evening. It is a relief all round to be up and running and the audience seem to listen and be engaged throughout. We can now start to refine the detail in the play throughout previews, responding to the audience each night.

An overhead view of the model box, giving an idea of the panels used for scene changes. Photograph courtesy of Tim Hatley.


Mel: Charlotte, you play Lucia at 12 years old, Sophie, you play her at 33 – how do you start the process of playing the same character but at different times in that character’s life?

Sophie: It starts with reading the play. I’d read all the scenes that I knew I wouldn’t be playing, but I took them on board to see if there were any interesting character notes or quirks that would be useful.

Charlotte: We didn’t see each other a lot in rehearsals and we didn’t watch each other first, we got on with it ourselves.

M: Was that better for you?

C: Yes.

S: Neither of us knew how the other person wanted to do it so we just got on with it.

C: It was quite a natural, organic process particularly with the way Howard works. If Lucia needed to be a certain character or person, or if there was anything unusual about her, I think we would have needed to work together when we started. But because she is just a normal girl and because of the way Howard works it was nice to just try it for ourselves and go with our instincts.

S: Tena’s writing helps as well. There is a lot of character within what we are saying. You change a lot from 12 to late twenties anyway. It wasn’t like we were both playing her as an adult, in which case we would have probably had to watch each other more closely. We see Lucia as a child and an adult – there are some similarities but really you grow up.

C: And that’s the point of it, she is quite different in her thirties to who she was as a child. It’s helpful that she does change and her sister doesn’t recognise her as much. There are a few things that a person will carry with them all their life, but it was easy for us because she needs to become quite a different person. The first time we saw each other do it was when we had that first run-through of act one, but we found that naturally both of us sit on furniture in funny ways and have similar mannerisms – we thought, yep, do more of that. S: The furniture thing was really funny actually. It’s not written in, there’s no stage directions, but there is a sofa in the middle of the stage and we both naturally just sat on the edge of that sofa. When it’s your family home you do have places that you always sit, or a way you always sit – and it was good we’d both done that, because it meant we were on the same page about her.

C: And it helps the audience to connect us.

S: Also, I dyed my hair.

M: I was going to bring that up. How was that for you, Sophie?

S: Terrifying. I had quite dark hair and Charlotte has this waist-length, beautiful blonde hair – I call it her princess hair. There was talk of making Charlotte dye her hair brown and I thought, That’s so horrible and mine’s a bit rubbish anyway, so we decided, well Howard decided he wanted me to be blonde – and it’s a free haircut, so I thought, Why not.

Interview: Sophie Rundle and Charlotte Beaumont, both playing Lucia Many characters in 3 Winters are played by two actors. Staff Director Mel Hillyard met with Sophie Rundle and Charlotte Beaumont to find out how they approached playing Lucia at different ages.

Charlotte Beaumont, who plays Lucia in 1990. Photograph taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz

12National Theatre: Background Pack

C: It does look natural though. I think you look like a movie star. But it was good because the same thing goes on with the character Alisa – there’s a younger version and an older version and they’ve both got very short dark hair – and it was a very useful technique for the audience. You meet so many characters in this play, it’s a useful visual just to say: they’re the two sisters, that’s the sister with dark hair, that’s the sister with blonde hair. For most of the previews I was bright blonde and you were dark brown, which may have been confusing.

M: You talked about some happy accidents between the two of you in terms of the physicality of the character, and the fact that she does change – how do you think Lucia changes as she gets older?

S: When you meet her she’s fun and genuine and honest – but she’s sharp and takes in everything around her.

C: She’s quite savvy and aware.

S: There’s a lovely moment between Charlotte playing Lucia and the older Karolina [played by Susan Engel], where the older woman tells her

‘all this should be yours one day’, which is a really strong theme throughout the play: Lucia having this sense of ownership of the house. There’s this moment where young Lucia, who’s very sweet and has been playing with her camera etc, hears this and takes it in. It’s little key moments like that which are signposts to where she’s going to go when she’s older. She doesn’t say much, but she notices things and takes them on board.

C: She just adapts to all that happens. After you see the young Lucia and the war happens, after the 1990 scenes, she probably does a lot of her growing up then. But there are similarities: I think she’s always quite tech-savvy, with her polaroid-camera, and then that’s mirrored in 2011 when she’s on her phone all the time.

S: She’s also got this thing about being the younger sister. She’s Alisa’s younger sister and she’s annoying and in the way – and people are always saying don’t break that, don’t do this, don’t do that. There’s this real sense when she’s older that she’s made herself bloom. She’s wearing all the sexy clothes and had the boob job; she’s got the hair and the rich fiancé and she’s got all the stuff. You do see that in a lot of younger siblings, this need to prove themselves, which means it’s interesting to watch you [Charlotte] be the younger one and then see Lucia when she’s older. It’s a journey Alisa didn’t have to make. She was always the bright one and the favourite.

C: That’s quite apparent.

S: Lucia’s had to make her own identity and place in the family.

C: You see little moments of that in the young Lucia, getting jealous. In the 1990 scenes Alisa has a boyfriend. I hope it’s clear, that Lucia has that real jealousy of wanting the same. It’s quite a change when older Lucia has the boyfriend and older Alisa doesn’t.

S: When you watch the play, you take so much in. When we started running it, in the family scenes I would watch Charlotte, predominantly – you get so much information just by watching one character the whole time. When the action changed to different characters on the other side of the stage, I would stay watching you [Charlotte] and see things which act as signposts to what that character is thinking.

Interview: Sophie Rundle and Charlotte Beaumont, both playing Lucia

Sophie Rundle, who plays Lucia in 2011. Photograph taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz


M: She’s a bit of an observer in some scenes and on the periphery.

S: Her being an observer is such a good word for it. For someone who’s not paying attention to her, it could seem like she’s just in the background, then at the end she has this extraordinary outburst.

C: I think when she’s younger she doesn’t know what to do with the information. She’s slowly but

surely collecting things, and listening to things. That results in the older Lucia being very aware – and the difference is she knows what to do with that information.

M: How did Howard work with you throughout rehearsals to create the character? And Sophie, how did you find your way through that mighty speech at the end, which is so powerful but so dense?

S: Howard is amazing. It’s almost like you don’t notice you are at the next step of the process. I can’t remember how we got from the read-through, to putting it into a run to putting it on stage. He never really referenced you [Charlotte] or me, or the other characters, which is good. It might make you feel like you are in competition or that you are doing things wrong – but he’s so clever at pulling at threads without you realising.

C: He gets exactly what he wants out of you without having to tell you directly. I was thinking that the other day – when rehearsals started, I found it quite unusual when he said, Oh we’re just going to get it on its feet straight away. There was

no sitting round a table for two weeks talking about it – that was really refreshing. I remember thinking how is it going to change, but it does without you realising it. You find things in each rehearsal that just build.

S: He did the same with that speech right at the end. That’s a big wall as an actor. When you have your script in front of you, and you’re sat down, it’s not intimidating, but when you get it on its feet you think, How am I going to get through this? How is it not going to be all one tone or just be me shouting? There was no big fanfare leading up to it, you just start doing it and Howard might throw in an idea. We were saying this the other day in our dressing room. He does exactly what a director is meant to do. He never says ‘do this, do that’, he suggests ideas and guides you to think in a different way. It’s all so organic that suddenly it makes sense you would say that next line. It’s such an extraordinary thing for a director to be able to do well. That speech became natural and made sense, it didn’t feel like ‘now’s my big speech’.

Interview: Sophie Rundle and Charlotte Beaumont, both playing Lucia

Left: Vlado (Adrian Rawlins) and Lucia (Charlotte Beaumont) in 1990;right: Lucia (Sophie Rundle) in 2011.Production photographs by Ellie Kurttz, taken during the dress rehearsal.


Mel: How did you start writing? What inspired you?

Tena: I’ve always liked words and writing. I’m an only child so I had to find ways to keep myself entertained. My father is also a writer – he was a screenwriter. He had a very bohemian approach to life and writing and he used to write in these long stretches at night. We would go to sleep and he would stay up and write – I would hear him through the wall, pacing up and down and talking in the voices of his characters and that seemed to me so enigmatic. I remember being intrigued by the process in that room, and then in the day my mum always used to tell me that we had to be quiet because dad was sleeping. A few months or a year later you would see the result of it on television. I was mesmerised by that process. He used to write in long-hand, and he had a typist who would type the script when he was done. He’d come home with this freshly typed script and leave it on the table and go out for a walk. I think I was about 4 or 5 years old when one day he came home with this freshly typed up script – the only version of it, or one of two copies – and went off for a walk. I sat at the table, went through each page and scribbled all over it. He came back and looked at me, and said, ‘What have you done?’ I don’t remember this, but he says I said ‘I’ve made it all better’. He thinks this was my first moment of writing inspiration – other people, including my husband, think they are alarmingly early signs of my always being right. I think that magic of writing has been around ever since I can remember.

M: You write for film and TV as well as theatre. Some people choose to write stories or poems, when did you start writing plays?

T: I started writing poetry when I was a child and I think it is a very good choice that I didn’t pursue that – it wasn’t very good poetry. I think some time in high school I started writing. I wanted to be in theatre before I knew I wanted to be a playwright. I did dramaturgy, playwriting and theatre studies in Zagreb in Croatia – technically you are meant to do playwriting and screenwriting, but it’s more geared towards theatre studies and theory and is a less practical course. Then I did some workshops

around Europe where I met some people from the Anglo Saxon world and I realised that people can learn how to do playwriting, there are some skills and tools which can be learned. I decided to do a Masters degree, which I did in London at Goldsmiths. In my third year of college in Croatia I wrote a play, kind of like in one breath, it took three weeks to write, and that was produced and is still being produced – it’s probably my most produced play. When that kind of experience happens – finding your voice I think it’s called – you really know that’s what you are, a playwright.

M: When you write, are you aware of the form – TV, film, theatre? Does it influence the decisions you make?

T: People will always tell you in every workshop that structure is super important. The first couple of times I wrote I didn’t understand that and I was just following instinct. Usually with first plays, it’s very easy to get that first play out and it’s often quite a personal experience, a personal story. I think everybody has one play, or one book, because it’s usually their own life. But if that’s going to be your vocation you should master the craft as well. The more I do that – and it’s a very intricate, long-term process which I am still doing and still perfecting – I realise that structure is very important. Unless you plan quite precisely ahead, it can take you in very unpredictable directions and you’ll end up down the rabbit hole, losing a lot of time chasing the wrong idea or an unclear motif. That happens in any writing process anyway, but it is important to create some kind of a blueprint or structure.

M: Especially in theatre where structure and form really provide the pillars.

T: Both for theatre and film. Unless you are doing niche, experimental art films you are even more forced to structure things. In a film, you can’t get away with even a single second that’s unfocused, every line is where you can lose your audience.

M: Can you give directors more freedom in theatre?

Q&A with Tena Štivicic playwright

Tena Štivicic took part in a Q&A session, led by 3 Winters Staff Director Mel Hillyard, at the National’s Clore Learning Centre. At this event, the playwright shared her experiences of writing for theatre, film and TV and how she developed the script for 3 Winters.

This Play Group session was held at the Clore Learning Centre on 10 December 2014. For more about events at the Clore Learning Centre, visit: nationaltheatre.org.uk/discover-more/learning/the-clore-learning-centre


http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/discover-more/learning/the-clore-learning-centre

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/discover-more/learning/the-clore-learning-centre

T: I think you don’t really want to give much freedom to anyone, but you don’t have much choice. With film you have less power as a writer, it’s a more collaborative medium – not only do directors get involved but also a number of producers, because there’s a lot more money involved. The stakes are higher and more people will try to make their mark on the script. Very early on you have to resign yourself to the fact that you have to give a lot of power to other people. But if you have a good director, or you get on with the director, and if you’ve got a great creative producer who you get on with, it can be a very liberating process to collaborate with other people and not have to make all the decisions on your own. In theatre, certainly in this culture, the playwright has much more power. It’s the same thing as film, if you get on with the director and see eye-to-eye on things and work with someone who can understand the heart of the play, then it’s quite useful to have someone to help you along the way. You can lose your compass a bit sometimes when you are close to what you are writing, and if the writing process takes a lot out of you – which it does in my case – then you can get quite lost and are no longer objective.

M: It’s hard when you are starting out to know which opinions to trust and when to go with your own instincts.

T: It think that’s always difficult and you are very lucky if you have one or two people you trust to help. I had a really good mentor called John Ginman. He really helped me and taught me a lot – he had the right touch and knew how to draw out things that were buried or unclear, and how to encourage me. It’s difficult to hold your own and recognise which advice is good and which isn’t.

M: And which is taste.

T: And which is taste, absolutely. That’s a bit of a lottery. A lot of the time you have to follow your gut with the advice you are getting, but you will sometimes get it wrong.

M: How long ago did you write the first draft of 3 Winters?

T: About three years ago, maybe longer. I can’t really say I have been writing it for three full years because freelance writers and artists are always juggling a number of things. I’ve written another play – a collaborative play – and a couple of screenplays in the meantime. It’s been bits of time over the course of three or four years – and I started with research, which took a while. I started writing maybe two and half years ago.

M: Did an idea provoke that research into the history of Croatia?

T: Not exactly. In my family on my mother’s side we are all women, across four generations, which I’ve used for the play. Like any family we have all these anecdotes floating around the dinner table about my grandmother and great grandmother, but at one point it occurred to me that if I go back to my great grandmother, she was born at the beginning of the 20th century, so those four generations span over a hundred years. In those hundred years, Croatia went through a lot. It was first part of the Austro-Hungary monarchy, then World War One, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, World War Two, socialist Yugoslavia, the Yugoslavian War, independent Croatia and now the European Union. Few countries have gone through that much and had that many political shifts in a relatively short time. It was also the most momentous century in female history ever. No time has ever brought about that many changes in the life of women as the 20th century did. I thought I would look at that in particular. It was never my intention to write


Tena Štivicic during rehearsals for 3 Winters. Photograph taken at the Jerwood Space by Ellie Kurttz


a play about the history of Croatia and I think in general I don’t ever start from a theme. I would never advise starting from a theme, I always wait for a character or a story to present itself. I just wanted to use this incredibly intriguing and rich history, as a backdrop to explore what happened to a family, particularly focusing on women and how their voices developed and various other things – the position of the father, patriarch, changes in each generation; what we’ve won, what we’ve lost.

M: If you came to the play and didn’t know anything about the history of Croatia, you’d get just as much out of it. It’s the characters that lead the drama and the narrative. The women are very powerful and a lot of the play looks at how the men deal with that, and they deal with it in very different ways. At the moment it feels like feminism is a buzz-word – were you aware of a current trend towards feminism?

T: I don’t see it that way. I’m more aware of the fact that women are rejecting the word at the moment and that there is a backlash against feminism and a lot of young women aren’t comfortable with that word. The word has been compromised, and that’s wrong and sad. There’s this thing of focusing on what is off-putting about feminism rather than talking about what feminism actually achieved, which is extraordinary. The fact is, all of us who are female would not be here today were it not for feminism. I recently read somewhere that a newspaper had asked which word you would ban, and feminism was part of it.

Q&A participant: It was which word would you ban out of a list. One was ROFL, one was feminism, another was LOL – and it was feminism which came top.

T: Feminism was the only word which didn’t come out of social media, I think. It was the only actual word. It’s funny, because it’s almost like we’re a minority – but we are the majority. I suppose another thing that worries me is that if plays are labelled as feminist then they are usually considered plays for women, not something everyone can come and see. With this play, it was partly conscious and partly organic. As a playwright I was interested in women – a lot of plays are told through a male protagonist; a lot of literature and a lot of art is told through a male protagonist. The human experience is experienced through a male character, and women tend to be companions along the way. When women see or read it they identify with the male. I wanted to redress that balance and have women as the protagonists of the play, but at the same time, I just wanted to tell the story and it needed as many female and as many male characters as we have. There are some big male roles, and some which aren’t. The fact that the men are a little bit lost in the play doesn’t mean that they are not vocal or strong-minded – and we’ve got some really amazing actors in this production, playing them. In the end it feels like a family play.

M: It’s been called a modern-day Chekhov by a few people. How aware were you of that?


Tena Štivicic on some of the women in 3 Winters‘Rose is a reluctant feminist. It wasn’t something she arrived at as a conscious choice after being presented with a lot of literature, it’s just that sense that unless you take matters into your own hands you are going to spend your whole life being badgered by these moments of ‘tell me the truth’ and bullying from Alexander. She had the strength to put a stop to that. I wanted to see her journey from someone who – even though she was the one to sort out the housing – at the beginning of the scene, tries to pacify Alexander and make him feel better, but he pushes her to a point where she understands that, unless she levels with him, that argument will keep coming up forever.

‘I don’t mean to be patronising to women in the past, because there were women a hundred years ago who had progressive ways of thinking, but I think a vocabulary is available to us today, if we

want it, and certainly to women who are educated and exposed to the right information. A vocabulary to express all your thoughts and understand your rights is available in a way which wasn’t necessarily available to that sort of woman [Rose] at that time. It is an instinct she employs, and the experience of being in a war and having seen some brutal things, and lived through them. All those things crystallise in this voice which bursts out.

‘Someone like Monika doesn’t deserve to be judged. We talked about her backstory with the actress who plays her, she felt very much that she was a very strong character. You can see at the end of the play there is a sense that in all these women who came after, her strength at having and keeping a child and putting her through school – all these things that were difficult to manage – were the crucial things that set the whole family on the path which unravels in the play.’


T: Not at all. I think it is more true of some of my other plays than this one. I often write characters who are stuck at some point in their lives and are waiting for something better to happen, which is true of a lot of life – and that is quite Chekhovian. These grand family situations, where there is a lot going on outside and you can feel that context bubbling away in the background, and there are things happening on the stage which aren’t always strictly narrative-led – action doesn’t always follow from one line to the next – I think that is also Chekhovian. I’m sure it was an influence, not a conscious one, but I do love Chekhov so I’m sure it was.

M: Howard Davies directed this production – am I right in saying this play came to him about two years ago?

T: Last summer, I think – about a year and a half ago.

M: What has been the process since then?

T: I really liked Howard’s work for a long time. I’ve seen quite a few of his productions and I knew he often did new plays, and often Russian plays. I’m not about to put Croatia in the same box as Russia but I knew he has an interest and a sensibility that is not just British and I thought it might appeal to him. At that stage the play was quite a bit longer than it is now, and a little bit meandering, less focused. But he took it to the National and we started doing work on it together with his and Sebastian Born’s [Literary Associate at the NT] suggestions. We went through another couple of drafts, I tried to cut it – the original version would have been something like four or five hours long, which I still think would have been a very rewarding experience…

M: It’s not something we are as used to in London.

T: Well, one day. Tom Stoppard got away with it with The Coast of Utopia – I’m hoping to be Tom Stoppard one day, when I grow up. We had to cut it and we did a little bit of restructuring, which Howard suggested, and in the end we came up with something we both felt was quite strong and could get a production date. It did. Once it was programmed, we did a reading at the National’s Studio so we could hear how it sounded. If you have a play that’s at a fairly advanced stage it’s really good to have a reading because hearing it is a different experience to seeing it on the page. Things immediately present themselves, problems and things that don’t sound right. I did another draft and then we ended up with what we have at the moment.

M: Were you involved in the casting process?

T: Not so much. I had some suggestions which were all tacitly turned down. There’s a great casting department here, they know all the actors in the world; they’ve worked with some fantastic directors and actors. And Howard’s worked with so many – he mostly went for people that he had some experience of working with before, but there really was no need for me to get too involved.

M: A lot of new writers start off writing plays for smaller spaces, and the ones at the National – the Olivier, the Lyttelton – are so vast and very different in terms of the plays which work in those spaces. What do you see as the challenge in writing for those spaces? Did you have a big space in mind when you wrote this play?

T: I did, absolutely. But you are right, we end up trained for small spaces because when you start out as a playwright, it is difficult to get a big production. It’s easier to get two-handers produced so we end up writing a lot of small plays. There is something very beautiful about writing for small spaces, it’s more intimate, and more akin to screenwriting as you can see faces and reactions. When you write for somewhere like the Lyttelton you can’t rely on silences or leave an unfinished thought, you have to really write the sentences and they have to be projected. A big stage likes to be filled with actors, but what you find with new writing is that once a playwright gets the chance to write for a big stage they write a play which is really a series of two-handers. Each scene is with two different characters – but it’s still a two-hander. Although some of this play needed intimate conversation between two people, I was aware of the fact that I had to have some big family scenes as well a lot of two-handers. Two people having a conversation is the easiest thing to write, the more characters you have the more difficult it is to get them equally engaged so they are not just hanging about. It is important to think of that when you are writing for a big stage.

M: With these characters in particular there are often different moments going on simultaneously, which is so real, but you have to really trust the director to pull out the focus. As part of our process in working out the big family scenes, we allowed the actors to come off script so they could get an idea of creating the heat and energy you would have at a family dinner table. I imagine those big scenes aren’t easy to write...



T: It is quite difficult, you have to put in a lot more attention. Two-handers, if you have the right situation and the right characters, almost write themselves. But you have to be aware of several plains of action if you have more characters. It is more difficult but also quite fun.

M: [addressing the group] Does anyone else have any questions?

Q&A: You said at the start that in your third year at Goldsmiths you wrote your first play in three weeks and then it’s your most produced play since. In your third year at uni, how did you get it produced?

T: I did my BA in Croatia and my MA here – it was Croatia where it was produced. Someone who was in the same year doing directing wanted to direct this play and we found a co-production between our academy and a theatre who were going to produce it, but in the end they just allowed us to do it there. I ended up producing the play, which was a bizarre experience and not one I want to repeat but there was nobody else to do it. I ended up chasing people for money. My aunt is a dentist and has a dental surgery – I used to sit in the surgery and lurk, waiting for rich patients to turn up and try to pitch to them. There was a woman who used to own a curtain factory who gave me bales of fabric so we ended up with the ‘visual identity of the production’ based on blue because we only had blue fabric from this woman who I’d ambushed. I was pro-active, I suppose.

M: Many writers and directors produce their first plays.

T: I’ve been very lucky I haven’t had to do that since but we did end up with a pretty good production and it won some awards, so it’s spiralled from there. It was a joy to do – I don’t think it would have just happened.

Q&A: In regards to the history of Croatia: your dad was a writer, was he writing at the time when there were controls on what could be published? I understand it’s similar to other countries in the same situation.

T: No, it’s not really. For most of my father’s career he was writing in Yugoslavia, which was a socialist country, but it was, as it were, in front of the Iron Curtain and not behind. There’s a little bit in the play that relates to that: in the mid 40s the president of Yugoslavia, Tito, broke off from

Stalin and the Soviet bloc, and became quite chummy with the Americans and the West. Yugoslavia had a much more relaxed version of communism than the other countries which belonged to the Soviet bloc. It was still a dictatorship, though.

M: A benevolent dictatorship I’ve heard it called.

T: Certainly by the time I was born in the late 70s it was more open and westernised. He [my father] was always quite critical of the regime and there were a couple of instances where things got censored, like in a screening before it got broadcast, a couple of scenes would be cut. There were things like that going on, but not to the point where he would end up in

prison for speaking his mind. Censorship goes on everywhere, just in different ways.

Q&A: There was a symposium recently that highlighted problems women face in theatre – that they aren’t occupying the higher positions – how have you found the experience of making work for a theatre in that climate?

T: Once you get to a stage where people will produce your work, somewhere like the National, then the experience is quite pleasant. Everyone who has been involved in this production is very much aware of those problems and there hasn’t been any friction on that front. I think it’s getting the productions that’s the problem – once you are there it is smooth sailing. For women to get the opportunity to be programmed, that’s still an issue. It is changing, here certainly, but it’s not changing spontaneously, it’s had to be addressed – it’s the case everywhere. In every aspect of society we are far from gender equality.

Q&A: How much are you open to leaving interpretation to the director and actors? It seemed that the script for 3 Winters had more direction for character than the script for another of your plays, Invisible.


Alexander (James Laurenson) and Masha (Siobhan Finneran) in 1990.Production photograph by Ellie Kurttz.


T: Invisible was written with a view that it might be devised further. I wanted to write almost a blueprint that actors could use and improvise around – that didn’t quite work for various reasons. I think the right way to devise is to have the playwright in a room with a bunch of people and do it on the spot. For a playwright to go away and write material to be devised is quite tricky – you follow an instinct which is to structure and tell a story with a beginning, middle and end. I ended up with a fairly finished play anyway, but I tried to keep it quite open-ended in certain scenes and keep the structure quite fluid, so that you could do things with it. You also need actors who have some experience in devised theatre and you need time. Invisible had about three to four weeks rehearsing. I think we had five [for 3 Winters]…?

M: We had six.

T: And even with that, you could still use more. You don’t have time to play around and explore, you just have time to get in in the mornings, frantically working on the text try to get there. That’s why Invisible was less specific. You try not to leave much room for interpretation – but as early as possible you have to divorce yourself from the play because it will always be down to interpretation. There’s no way it will be what you had in your mind and I’m not sure that it should be. You are writing a play, not a novel. You rely on a lot of other people, their characters, personalities and energy. There are so many factors that come in and it’s impossible to shoehorn them into being what you hear in your head. But because you spend so much time with just you and the words, for months on end – years sometimes – it is quite a difficult process to let that go. It’s like music. You hear every pause, every exclamation mark –

you hear everything and suddenly someone does it differently and you go, ‘no, no that’s not right’. It’s an inevitable, quite painful, but inevitable process. Ultimately if you get a good production you learn to love that production and it squeezes out the voices in your head. It’s quite a lottery: if you are lucky then the production will be better than what’s on the page, and if you are unlucky it won’t – and everything in between.

M: What advice would you give to aspiring theatre-makers?

T: It’s thrilling to see so many people here [at the Q&A] who are not solely playwrights. I think it’s good for playwrights to try acting as you don’t know how things sound until you try reading them out. I think it’s great for actors to experience the other areas – directing and playwriting. It’s a tough job, it’s relentless and a long wait. You have to be prepared to receive a lot of rejections and somehow try not to let that trample you in the ground. Tough skin is needed. And there’s that infuriating thing where you’ll send your stuff to people who will say ‘we love it, show us your next thing’. If you can get your hands on a good dramaturg or editor then do. I’ve had plays where I was devastated that they weren’t being put on, but I let them [dramaturg or editor] have a look at the plays for six months until we could see what needed doing and create a better play. Patience is important, and it can be difficult to wait – sometimes years. If you write a film, apparently on average independent films take seven years to make.

National Theatre: Background Pack


The company of 3 WintersProduction photograph by Ellie Kurttz.

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