Tim Crouch reveals why his play requires a different actor every night
An Oak Tree is a play for two actors. I am one of them. Each night the second actor will change: for each performance I will be joined by an actor who has neither seen nor read the play. The story we will tell will be as new to him or her as it is to the audience. This is the story of the play.
About two years ago
I think of a title. An Oak Tree. I make it known to anyone who might be interested that this is what my next play will be called. I don't know what will happen in the play. What's important is that, once I've made it known, then a play called An Oak Tree has started to exist. Without me having to lift a finger. Just like that!
The day after
I've decided to call this approach to play-writing Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion. This, coincidentally, is also the name of a book by the French physician Émile Coué. Coué invented the mantra, "Every day in every way I'm getting better and better." He also said: "Every one of our thoughts, good or bad, becomes concrete, materialises, and becomes in short a reality." Say you're healthy and you will be. Say you're going to write a play and you will.
17 months ago
An Oak Tree is also the title of a piece of art by Michael Craig-Martin. In this work, the artist asks us to think that he has changed a glass of water into a tree. I decide my play will be about a man who thinks he's turned a tree into something else: his daughter, who has been killed by a car. I think about Coué: if you think it, it will become reality. This is what happens to the father in my story.
About 15 and a half months ago
There are now two characters: the father of the girl, and a hypnotist. (I think about how Coué was really a hypnotist, and about how theatre is a form of hypnotism.) In the play, the hypnotist will be the person who was driving the car that killed the girl. I know he'll have lost his ability to hypnotise and he'll be played by me. Now I need to know who will play the father. It's important I know for whom I'll be writing. I think of my friend Andy Smith, a poet and performance artist known as "a smith". I offer him the opportunity to act in my unwritten play, but he suggests something else. "Why don't you get a different actor to play the father each time?" Bloody hell, a smith!
Six months ago
I have finally finished the play. a smith agrees to be the father in rehearsal, but never in front of an audience.
Two weeks into rehearsals
We're ready to bring in the actors. It's time to test it out: if we say someone is the father, then to the audience that's what that person should become - without him or her knowing or, more importantly, acting. Self Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion.
45 minutes before each show
I meet the actor who is playing the father in that particular performance. In many instances it is the first time we have set eyes on each other. We talk for 15 minutes and I explain a few things. I tell them how they will not be required to improvise, how I will give them everything they need, how we would like them just to be open to what happens. We practise reading some text (not from the play).
One minute after each show
We go to the bar. I buy the actor a drink.
Five months ago and all the way up to now
We start looking for actors - male or female. We say we want people who are happy to sight-read, who can wear earphones. We say we can work only with actors who have never read or seen the play. For the rehearsals and previews, we choose a mix of friends and strangers.
During this time
Our first "proper" father is Ian Golding. The play starts. I tell Ian who he is and he becomes it. The idea becomes material. Ian is courageous, trusting and physical. He struggles to know how much he should "act it out". His qualities become those of the father. After the performance we talk to Ian, searching for ways to improve the second actor's experience. He says he felt confused at times, but didn't feel abandoned. We say it was impossible for him to do anything wrong. We ask him to give one piece of advice for the next father. He says: "Have fun."
The following day
The second actor is Cath Dyson. Have fun, Cath! The father in An Oak Tree is 46, six foot two and unshaven. The disparity between what I say Cath is and how she looks is great. Cath's father is an emotional sponge. Cath says she felt vulnerable, that it was weird, that she loved it. Her advice: "Listen."
The day after that
Next is Hannah Ringham from Shunt. Listen, Hannah! Hannah brings a sense of clown into her father. The play moves into a different dimension; it's funnier, and all the more moving for it. But Hannah's not sure. She's an improviser and there's no improvisation. Hannah's advice: "Go for it."
A week later, Germany
It's our first preview. We are in Germany; Alex Miller will play the father. Go for it, Alex! But Alex's father doesn't look at me. Open up, Alex. But Alex doesn't open up. His father is locked and quiet and tense. And, unexpectedly, brilliant. Alex's qualities become the father's, just as happened with Ian, Cath and the others. They become the character. We meet Alex the next day. He talks about the joy he had on stage "doing nothing". But that's not what Alex had done: he hadn't done nothing, he'd acted nothing. He'd created a performance, rather than allow a performance to be made. The father's story was told. Thank you Alex. Alex's advice: "Relax, Tim!"
Just before opening
We have just finished the previews with Natalie Childs as the father. Natalie and I had never met before and we have performed in front of an audience of 40 in a studio theatre in Berkshire. The venue manager spends the show convinced that Natalie is a plant.
On the way home, every night
Every single father has been as different as every person is different, as different as every interpretation of "acting" is different. I could say some second actors have spoken too quickly, too slowly. At times, they've each done exactly what I thought I didn't want them to do. But, in so doing they are each and every one a revelation. They have done the play in their own way. It will never be exactly how I want it - and thank God for that. It would be terrible if it were.
An Oak Tree won a Herlad Angel award at Edinburgh Fringe last August. It is at the Mermaid in Bray, Co Wicklow, from Wednesday to Saturday