Venue Magazine interviews Miles Gregory, BTS artistic director, 11 June 2004.
Show us your Willy!
Steve Wright meets the man behind al fesco thesps British Touring Shakespeare.
His company take to the pastures of Bristol's Queen Square next week for nine performances of 'Much Ado About Nothing', but Miles Gregory, artistic director of Bristol-based al fresco thesps British Touring Shakespeare, once admitted to being "bum-numbingly bored" with the standard renditions of the Bard. Has he mellowed at all? "I think the general standard of Shakespeare performances is improving. The problem is often that directors feel they need to enhance the darker side at the expense of the comedy, so they'll take 'Twelfth Night' and make it almost Chekhovian."
Gregory's own approach is a healthy mixture of artistic licence and respect for the Bard. He cut his theatrical teeth with a Masters in Staging Shakespeare, and he's something of a scholar of Elizabethan staging techniques. Equally, though, he's aware of the need to adapt for modern audiences. "For Shakespeare to work properly, it has to work for audiences today - it's not enough to just act out history. With the heavy stuff, you do have to be respectful, to a degree, whereas in a comic scene, if the text really isn't helping you - and humour gets stale more easily than tragedy - it's your duty to be inventive."
Founded in 1999, BTS shot to fame during their second season, performing full-scale productions of 'Much Ado...' and 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' to packed houses - or gardens - nationwide. Since then they've been touring the Bard's oeuvre to outdoor venues in the UK and beyond, and have even seen the inside of a theatre from time to time - their last Bristol appearance was March's 'Marowitz Hamlet' at the Wickham.
Miles aims to recreate the original open-air Shakespeare experience, so don't expect an evening of quiet, sober contemplation. "Its much more effective when everyone - actors and audience - can see each other, and there's nothing better than a booxy audience for Shakespeare. The Elizabethqan audiences were pretty much all pissed, after all. Open-air performances need to be visually stimulating, and they should be a joyous occasion - we love it if the audience have a bit to drink and spend the second half cheering and booing. The problem today is that a lot of directors really want to be film directors. They try to create a moving picture on stage, wherease the essential difference about theatre is that it's live, and you can make eye contact with the audience. If you don' t use that, you might as well be making films." Open-air theatre presents its own challenge: "There's the shared ownership of the space, for one thing. Then there are the distractions - people are pouring champagne and spilling mayonnaise down their dresses, all of which makes it a more rewarding experience but also makes you work harder."
'Much Ado...' is clearly a favourite - not least because it has stood the test of time well. "It is as funny now as it was when it was finished in 1599 - and the central characters Benedick and Beatrice are magnificent creations. The old saying that 'we hurt the ones we love the most' is as true today as it was then. Most of all, though, you can tell that Shakespeare has taken real delight in the characters - they are very lovingly portrayed , flawed but well-rendered: a set of complex, fascinating people."
Thus far, BTS have played reasonably fast and loose with the Bard: past settings have included a New Romantic 'Romeo and Juliet', Mercutio and Tybalt all shoulder pads and syntehsizers. Their 'Much Ado...' is set somewhere in Europe circa 1830 (the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars) - a carefully chosen setting, as Gregory explains. "The armies had gone slack again - they were much more interested in the nice costumes and groupies than actually fighting any battles. Shakespeare's characters have just returned from some minor war, with few casualties, and the atmosphere throughout is fairly light-hearted. That's why those productions that have set the play at, say, the end of World War One have perhaps missed the point."
He's happy with the company's peripatetic lifestyle - their latter-day 'Hamlet' was rapturously received by the King of Dubai and his wives - "We are pretty down-to-earth, not a bunch of luvvies."
The outdoor settings also mean that sets are kept to a minimum, which suits Gregory's own style. "Theatre is all about imagination - Shakespeare hardly used sets at all. I want to take audiences back to the experience of watching these plays 400 years ago."
Which, oddly enough, will be happening down yer local boozer if Miles has his way. "I'd love to run a pub with a stage in the middle for performances - jazz, comedy, Shakespeare, going on in the background. That's just how accessible these plays should be."
