Theatre

If you went to the theatre and the actors didn’t know their lines and the scenery fell down, you’d probably feel short-changed. Yet there are some people who go out of their way to see shows that are stuttering affairs, in which the actors can even break off for a chat in the middle. ‘Scratch Nights’ started in 2000 at BAC when the then artistic director Tom Morris and producer, now artistic director, David Jubb, wanted to show work in progress and held a succession of unfinished performances to a small group of bemused people who weren’t quite sure what they had let themselves in for. Afterwards they were invited back to the bar to give the artists feedback on what they had seen.
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Type ‘Scratch Night’ into Google today and you will see that the idea has spread as far as Sydney. Jubb can now be confident that a hundred or so primed spectators will turn up on Scratch Nights, and will relish the chance to see a show in its infancy and play their own part in its development. Some get so addicted that they turn up their noses at the finished product. ‘I think,’ says Jubb, ‘that BAC Scratch Nights have the same kind of buzz that you always want from a brilliant piece of theatre. They have a liveness and integrity, whereas often when you go to the theatre there’s a dead relationship and you feel as if you might as well not be there.’ If some are reluctant to come back for the finished event, others, however, feel a sense of ownership as they watch the show growing and developing over a couple of years.

The most famous scratch show was ‘Jerry Springer the Opera’, which worked its way up BAC’s ladder of development until it could go no higher. Then it took flight to Edinburgh, to the National Theatre, and finally to the West End. Next week, ‘Food’ will be playing in the main house at BAC, having already won a Fringe First at Edinburgh last year. It initially saw light as a scratchy event two years ago.

It’s BAC’s job to be pioneers and Jubb is now wondering where he should go next. Across the river at the Royal Court, however, they are just getting in on the act. New artistic director, Dominic Cooke, is keen to see the theatre experimenting both with form and subject matter. Hence the Rough Cuts season, which has adopted many of the characteristics of the Scratch Nights at BAC; the difference being that at BAC they tend to start with an idea and at the Royal Court with a script. Cooke is also interested in putting people together from different disciplines, and there are people taking part in ‘Rough Cuts’ who you wouldn’t normally see at the Royal Court, from Nigerian choreographer Anthony Obey to ‘Right Size’ physical theatre actor, Sean Foley.

Asked why the Royal Court has adopted the idea, Cooke replies, ‘Audiences really like to be involved in the processes of playmaking and they like to have an informal relationship with the work that the theatres do. The Court can seem exclusive and cold and I really want to open it up. Involving audiences in the process is a good thing and I think it’s also mutually beneficial.’

Playwright Leo Butler has already had several plays staged at the Court. For him, the season provides the opportunity to collaborate with Obey whom he met when he went to Nigeria as part of the theatre’s pioneering International department. ‘I had a play of mine with me over there and Odey asked me to bring a scene in and I performed it myself. In the space of 20 minutes he added movement in a way that I had never imagined it.’ Butler believes that the process – over just four days rehearsal – will encourage him to take risks. ‘I’ve got a certain idea of how my play might look, but I have to be open to the idea that that may completely change.’

Cooke hopes that the season will help counteract the fact that young writers often have an alarming tendency to freeze up when they are given a Court commission. ‘It can be very deadening and stifling and scary and it can inhibit the possibility of spontaneity. But if one asks a writer to come in for a couple of weeks and work with someone else on a thematic territory they haven’t explored before, then the very worst thing that can happen is that they will do three performances that will not work. But they will still probably learn something that will feed their work. And the best thing that can happen is that a piece of work will evolve into a show.’

‘Food’ is playing at BAC; ‘Rough Cuts’ opens at the Royal Court on Tuesday.