EOIN BUTLERtalks to LOUIS LOVETT Theatre maker in residence at the Ark Theatre, Temple Bar
You’ve just been appointed theatre maker in residence. What will your job involve – a lot of sawing and hammering?
No, there are four strands to the job. The first is my one-man show, The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly, which opened last week. There’s also a community outreach strand, a teacher training strand and an actor training strand. The outreach will involve helping children make theatre in their own environment. We haven’t decided on a particular community yet, but it will most likely be in Dublin.
What are the particular challenges and rewards of entertaining children?
The hardest part is learning to expect the unexpected, and absorb it into your performance as seamlessly as possible. The challenge is knowing when to open the door to interaction, and how much interaction to allow. Now I’ll never ignore my audience. But we’ve got 50 minutes, we’ve got a storyline and we’ve got to get from A-Z. A lot of actors have been burned at the hands of young audiences. But very often that’s because they’re . . . Well, I won’t say. But I will say that while children may not subscribe to the same social conventions as adults, they can be very polite. Most of the time, the worst audience reaction you’ll get is that unique sound of little bodies shifting around in chairs.
I’ve noticed that you enunciate very carefully onstage. Is that for the children’s benefit?
That actually comes from my having a lisp when I was a teenager. To be honest, I had no idea there was anything wrong with the way I spoke, so the therapist recorded my voice and played it back to me. What boggled me wasn’t so much the lisp as my thick Cork accent. From that day on, I slowed down the way I spoke. Certainly, I would put a lot of energy into my clarity of speech when I’m onstage. It’s about creating a focus around what I’m saying. When 150 kids come into a theatre, they bring 150 little energies. It’s my job to funnel that energy in the direction I want it to go.
Aside from performing, another aspect of the job is assisting primary teachers with the drama curriculum. I suppose my first question is, wait a second, there’s a drama curriculum now?
Well, it has only been introduced in recent years. Long after our time. So yes, I help teachers look at their own creativity and how they can bring it into the classroom to address elements of the drama curriculum.
Is this something teachers generally embrace or shy away from?
Well, like anyone, if you’re not an actor, you can be shy about standing up and dramatising something. But teachers already stand up in front of an audience, so it’s just a matter of making that shift into the world of fiction. There are techniques that can be passed on to create a world of role playing, so that a child can step into the boots of another character, and explore possible outcomes of certain situation, while knowing that they can take those boots off afterwards and go back to who they are.
It occurs to me that, leaving drama aside for a moment, mastering the art of gaining and holding children’s attention is one of the biggest challenges any teacher faces in the classroom. Could you help them in that regard?
Well, I don’t. But I certainly could. In the actor training strand, I try to impart tips on how to create a presence, and how to be a receptacle for all of the energy in the room. To say, ‘okay guys, crash your energy against me. Get it out of your system. And when you’re ready, I’ll begin the show.’ If teachers want to ask me about that they’d be very welcome to. And indeed, I could learn from them as well. They know their gig.
‘The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badly’ is written by Finnegan Kruckemeyer – who sounds like a character from a Roald Dahl book – and performed by yourself, Louis Lovett. As names, they both sound almost too perfect for children’s theatre?
They’re real, we have the passports to prove it! Finnegan is a fabulous writer originally from west Cork, but now living in Tazmania.
The show has been very well received so far. What would you say to parents or children who are thinking of heading along?
It’s a cracking good show, a real rollercoaster and extremely funny. It’s aimed at children aged seven and up, but parents and teenagers will get so much out of it, too. It’s an old-fashioned adventure, in other words. And I’m over the moon at the reception we’ve got so far.
Finally, can I just commiserate with you that your marriage to Julia Roberts didn’t work out... That’s a different Lovett!
The Girl Who Forgot to Sing Badlyruns until March 7th at the Ark Cultural Centre for Children
