Interview with Director Richard Beecham

Abstract

Richard Beecham's theater includes eclectic credits from Dancing at Lughnasa, In Praise of Love, Humble Boy (Royal & Derngate, Northampton), Red Light Winter, In a Garden, Henry IVPart I (Theatre Royal, Bath), as well as various productions at Salisbury Playhouse, Northcott Theatre Exeter, and the Octagon Theatre, Bolton. Beecham also curates large cultural events such as the National Commemorative Event for Holocaust Memorial Day at Newcastle Theatre Royal. I sat down to interview him just prior to the March 2015 opening of The Crucible Theatre's revival of Arthur Miller's stage version of Playing for Time, with Siân Phillips.David Smith: Am I right in assuming this is your first Miller production?Richard Beecham: That's correct; however I did actually meet him once. I was an undergraduate at Oxford between 1992 and 1995, and in 1995 Arthur Miller was announced as the visiting drama professor. At the time I was a member of the OWLS-the Oxford University Dramatic Society-who were very excited with the news, and invited him to a drinks party. This party was to be held the night before my finals exam. I was behind with my revision, so all I remember is shaking his hand. This enormous man, with big bear hands; he gave off this aura, a charisma, but I just had to run, so that was my one experience with the great man.DS: I was wondering how you and the cast were reacting to the text of the play?RB: It is obviously a very challenging subject matter and everyone in the room comes to it with their own personal story I am Jewish, so I have my own personal connections. We have a number of Jewish actors in the cast; a couple of them have very direct stories, and others just have general awareness. So we have immersed ourselves in research. I drove all the cast crackers, insisting they read this, visit this exhibition there, please watch this, etc. Then of course you get into rehearsal. So now you have to think, we have done that, and now we have to study Miller's play. So I made sure all the actors had read Fania's memoir, as it was Miller's one and only source. We then considered what choices Miller had made-what he had taken or left out of the memoir-and asked the question why he may have made those decisions. That was a very interesting exercise, and further complicated by the fact that Miller had originally written it a screenplay. Having studied and watched the screenplay, there are not huge changes, but obviously there are some due to moving from film to theater.DS: Due to the development from screen to the theater, I was wondering how you were actually going to stage the play? Miller was quite adamant that the play should be seen as a "demonstration," there were to be no unnecessary "adornments."RB: In my opinion every word the playwright writes, whether in the text, stage direction, or a foreword, it is worth probably its weight in gold. But every director has to try to meet the requirements within the theater in which he is producing it. In this case we have a good match, Crucible has a big epic space, and we have a very big cast. It is not a proscenium arch theater-Miller wouldn't want that-so in terms of staging we have created a very epic, open, stripped-back, dark theater space, which we hope is not literally, but metaphorically evocative of the landscape of the play. We are not trying to recreate Auschwitz on the stage. That would not be possible, and if it were, it would not be desirable. We have also been very careful to avoid cliche, so there is no barbed wire or tiered bunks. Those we have really tried to pare back on, so when we are making any visual statements they are very considered. There are some things we felt we had to include, like the yellow stars, the striped uniforms, the kapos, and so on.DS: Of course sound effects are critical to building the atmosphere; machine gun fire in the middle of an orchestral piece, for example.RB: Exactly, I think that the soundscape of the production does carry a lot of the building of the world, creating another attack on the senses of the audience. …