Interview with Director Blanche McIntyre
Assistant director Holly Race Roughan interviews director Blanche McIntyre on her
production of THE BIRTHDAY PARTY.
What preparation did you do for THE
BIRTHDAY PARTY before rehearsals?
I read as many other Pinter plays as I could get
my hands on. This is my first production of a
Pinter play and so I thought it would be a good
idea to get a sense of him as a writer, his wider
concerns and interests. I read biographies of him
and critical studies of his work. I also read as
many as I could of the ‘rep’ plays that were
around at the same time as Pinter - although I
couldn’t read as many of these as I would have
liked because it is hard to get hold of them. My
preparation was about getting a sense about
Pinter as a writer and of the theatrical background
of the time.
and meatiness of approach that they can bring
to the lines as the character, as opposed to
somebody who specifically looks or acts a
certain way.
Have you found anything challenging so
far in rehearsals?
What has been challenging so far about is that,
like Beckett, it is very tightly written. By that I
mean that the stage directions, the movements,
Had you seen any Pinter plays before?
I have seen a couple, I saw Old Times in London
recently, and last year I saw The Homecoming at
the RSC. I think it is useful to see Pinter staged.
But I think it would be more useful for a director
going the other way round: The Birthday Party is
Pinter’s first play and so you can see the seeds of
his later plays in it, but watching his later plays
does not necessarily help you with this first play!
How easy was it to cast THE BIRTHDAY
PARTY?
It was very interesting casting it. I found that it
was unlike casting any other play. What would
happen in auditions is that we would get actors
coming in and trying to ‘do’ the character but it
wouldn’t necessarily work. After a couple of tries,
what we discovered is that it’s like glass when
you’re auditioning an actor for Pinter: you see
straight through to who the actors are as people.
So, you need to cast somebody whose brain
works in a certain way, whose heart works in a
certain way, who has the same kind of intensity
Ed Gaughan as Stanley (Photo by Jonathan Keenan)
the ways in which some lines are said are very
tightly prescribed and if you go away from what
the text dictates you find that the play is not as
interesting. You quickly realize with Pinter that
the best way you can do it is the way Pinter
imagines it. So, what that means is that it is
much harder to be playful at the beginning of
rehearsals because you can’t explore twenty
different options and then choose the best.
Instead, you have one option which is clearly the
best already given to you in the text and your job
is to find out why that option is there. So, you
work backwards in a way: normally you start by
finding out what it is and then find out how to
block it but with Pinter you block it and then find
out why it is.
Has anything surprised you working on
this?
It surprised me how theatrically effective it is
when you don’t know what is going on in the
play. So, the impact of the play is divorced from
the content of it, but the impact is none the less
incredibly strong. I had read that this was the
case, but it still surprised me. For example, you
don’t know what Stanley has done to make these
two men (Goldberg and McCann) come to get
him and you never find that out, and you don’t
know what is outside in the world, or the front
room of the boarding house, it could be that a
curtain has cut it off and there is nothing out
there. Sometimes characters are talking to each
other, and it is clearly in code but you don’t know
what the significance is, and you don’t know what
the meaning of the line is, the character knows
but the actor is not allowed to know.
How have you found translating a play that
is so consciously written for the proscenium
arch theatre to the Royal Exchange’s round
stage?
The thing about a proscenium arch play is that
the audience sees the same picture and obviously
the whole point about an in-the-round show is
that the audience can’t see the same picture:
everyone gets a different picture. So, what you
have to do is break it open so that everyone gets
an equally vibrant picture and everyone gets a
picture that tells the same story, even though the
picture itself isn’t always the same.
Have there been any moments or scenes in
particular that have been more challenging
than others to stage?
Well, its always challenging when you have lots of
people on stage, that’s a technical thing, but
there are moments when you have a long speech
and a listener, and working out how to balance
that so that people don’t feel they are being short
changed, that is always challenging.
What do you hope the audience experience
will be of this play?
I hope that it will be very funny, which it is, I
hope that they will get caught up in it, because it
is a tremendous thriller and I hope that it will
scare them, it feels like a cross between a
political thriller and a ghost train – which is what
it should feel like.
Why do you think the play is still relevant?
It’s relevant because this kind of thing is
happening all over the world still, and hasn’t
stopped happening since Pinter wrote it, and was
happening for generations before. It is the idea
that you have an individual who is picked on by a
much more powerful machine, a human machine.
Its similar to Kafka in this way, you have one
man, and you have a bureaucracy, and it’s an
unequal fight, and in the end they take him away
which is what they came to do. It is the set up of
a state system, or a more powerful human
system, versus a powerless individual, and the
resources of that larger system being abused in
order to crush the spirit of the individual. You
could draw parallels with any totalitarian or
despotic government now existing. When you
look at this archetypal story, you see how easy it
is to map it on to events in Syria or Burma, and
you suddenly realize that it’s very modern and
timeless and never stops being relevant.
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY runs at the
Royal Exchange Theatre from 5
June to 6 July 2013.
Box Office: 0161 833 9833
royalexchange.co.uk/birthday
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INTRODUCING… THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
Tuesday 18 June, 10am – 12pm
Pre-show workshop for schools, community
groups and individuals who have booked to see
the show.
£6/£4 (concessions & group leaders)
Book at the Box Office or on 0161 833 9833.
IN THE LOUNGE
Thursday 20 June, 6pm
A chance to meet Director of THE BIRTHDAY
PARTY Blanche McIntyre in our Education
Lounge.
Relaxed, informal and FREE.