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Since autumn 2004 Shôn Dale-Jones, Artistic Director of the UK theatre company Hoipolloi, has made a variety of work ‘using’ Hugh Hughes. There are three theatre shows, Floating, Story of A Rabbit, 360; there is a radio play of Floating made with the BBC; there is a film called How I Got Here, commissioned by the Barbican; there is an event called Holding Hands and there are many projects in development, including Stories From An Invisible Town - an online digital project and a live show sharing stories inspired by the memories of childhood; a live event called Five Pounds which tells the story of how Hugh’s childhood ended; a digital project called Snowdonia Is Not Like New York and another film called The Hughes Family. Shôn writes of how Hugh came into his life, below, while Story Of A Rabbit comes to the Sydney Opera House this month (details, here), and Shôn takes part in a special event looking at Life, Death and Everything In Between this Friday, alonsgide playwrights Jane Bodie, Rita Kalnejais and Tamarama Rock Surfers’ Phil Spencer (details, here).
In the autumn of 2004 I was on my own quite a bit.
I’d written and directed a show in 2003, My Uncle Arly, inspired by the life and work of Edward Lear, that was touring all over the UK, meaning that the actors I normally made work with were not around.
I sat alone and I started asking questions about stories. Why we tell them. Why we make theatre out of them.
And I started asking how the stories I’d been telling related to life. Life as I knew it. Life as I experienced it.
And I started challenging myself.
I started a line of enquiry about what I was doing with the company Hoipolloi that I’d set up with Stefanie Muller in 1993.
And I started to panic.
I started to wonder if I’d been ‘making theatre’ as an end in itself.
I began asking myself why I was making theatre and what stories I had to tell and share.
So, I decided to write my own story.
At the same time I decided to do this as an actor, through improvisation.
I’d spent a few years writing and directing and had the itch to get back on stage.
I decided that I should surround myself in the workshop with things I’d never put on stage before – laptops, projectors, flip charts – and that I should make very short films to support the storytelling.
I wanted to throw myself off balance. I wanted the feeling that I was starting again.
As part of that desire, to start again, I invented a character, an emerging artist called Hugh Hughes, who was a storyteller, a narrator.
And I tried to let the character make the work.
I kept wondering how Hugh would do things.
I tried to let go of my theatre making mind and let this character hold the reins.
And that was it…the excitement ignited.
A whole new way of approaching the stage emerged.
It was so much fun to be liberated from myself!
New possibilities flooded us. I was working with a good friend, Alex Byrne, through that autumn and we worked on the story that the character held. His story was mine. The story of a man who had left where he was born and raised but still had a yearning for home. This story became our first Hugh Hughes show, Floating.
Floating was a fantastical tale about the Isle of Anglesey drifting away from mainland Wales and into the Atlantic Ocean. The narrative expressed the difficulty of leaving home.
Once this show was made and staged we immediately started to ask, what next?
My father had died in 2001 and it was a very big experience that gave me a whole new feeling about life. I wanted to share this experience.
It felt that his death had connected me to fantasy more than ever. The metaphysical was so alive. He was more present after his death than he had been while he was alive.
It’s as if I’d been shown down some hidden corridor and taken into a room with a balcony that held the most extraordinarily beautiful and fragile view.
I just wanted to tell the story – how death opens our imagination.
And so we started making Story of a Rabbit.
By now there was a whole team involved in making the work. Stefanie became my main collaborator – editing, designing, directing – supported by Alex Byrne, Jill Norman, Richard Couldrey, Guy Myhill.
It was great.
Collaborating with the other actors in the room, looking to work with their improvisation, led to our being inspired by each other.
The room started talking about life. We were talking about our own lives. Everything became more personal.
Equally we became fascinated about how to share the story with audiences.
We consciously tricked ourselves into viewing the stage differently – again, through ‘the mind’ of the character.
In fact, we went as far as to cast everyone into the world of Hugh Hughes and let him and his friends make the work.
I don’t know how that sounds.
What I do know is that it was great fun and felt really creative. We were somehow playing at making a show while we were actually making one.
Bunuel says, “fantasy and reality are equally personal and equally felt and so their confusion is a matter of only relative importance.” and over the last few years I’ve been taking him seriously.
I’ve been fascinated how fantasy and reality interact and how theatre combines both so easily.
I’m still getting excited about the fact that theatre is both an act of the imagination and a very practical business.
I really enjoy separating what is imagined from what is not.
I find myself continually wondering what we go and get from the imagination and what we bring back to reality.
I wonder which parts of our reality we take with us when we go there.
Yann Martel says, “Narrative exists to express emotion”.
When I read that short sentence it seemed like a very satisfying answer to a question I’d been asking for ages.
I love telling stories. I love listening to stories. Whether they are epic or trivial. Whether they are about death or buying apples. I find myself looking at life and the things that happen in them as stories.
I know that life is life but they can so easily be seen as stories.
Our lives are so close to extraordinary narratives and narrative can very quickly overtake our lives. We follow the structure of story.
Hugh Hughes is an attempt to get close to these ideas about fantasy and reality and narrative.
This character that sometimes looks like he’s real, telling his own stories, living a whole life full of his own imagination.
Working with Hugh allows me to shift around between being an actor, a writer and a director.
It allows me to freely improvise ‘in character’ as an actor, letting go of the writer and director. It allows me to shape the work as a writer and a director.
The making room also has a director – Stefanie. She is able to watch and comment on the work as it is produced. She is able to bring our attention to a whole host of interesting areas. She is able to provoke and ask questions in the room.
I give up the role of director while she is about.
I direct at the end of the day when we discuss the work and plan the next move. As a writer I write on my feet in the room and at my desk.
This has meant that I have been able to expand my own definition of theatre and performance; it has allowed me another way to approach the stage.
And this relationship to Hugh has enabled me to create a particular relationship with the audience.
This relationship is hard to articulate.
It seems to enable me to have a very immediate and direct relationship with them which I am able to be part of both through myself as the character and myself as the actor.
It is this relationship that I have forged and am forging with the character that starts to cross lines.
In the creative act we blur lines and do things that confuse logics. As I said, it’s hard to articulate, but, it feels like ‘letting go’, it feels like allowing yourself to follow rather than lead.
Some audience members relate to me as Hugh. Deciding that he is real.
Some audiences see the actor playing the character.
Some don’t.
We are still interested in this blurring. It seems central to the fantasy and reality question.
It tells us something about the experience audiences have in the shows.
It poses interesting questions about the digital work, the film work and the radio work – it creates a broadening narrative around character. The plot thickens…
Some kind of conclusion
At the end of the day, it is exciting and stimulating to be thinking through these questions.
What is reality?
What do we need our imagination for?
Why do we tell stories? Are they our stories?
Is our life a narrative?
Can I play a character for real?
What do audiences see?
How can we share our experiences and which experiences are we prepared to share?
What is possible live on stage?
What is possible in the online space?
Most of all, it has made us ask what story about our lives we want to tell and share and how we do that.
Hugh Hughes performs his Story of a Rabbit at the Sydney Opera House from Tuesday 29 November to Saturday 10th December. Ticket details here.
Read about Hugh in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Fresh Ink and PlayWriting Australia are bringing together Shôn, playwright Jane Bodie, whose This Year’s Ashes is currently playing at the Griffin, actor/playwright Rita Kalnejais, whose Babyteeth opens at the Belvoir in 2012 and Tamarama Rock Surfers’ Phil Spencer (who is taking part in the The Horse’s Mouth Festival of autobiographical performance, opening on 24th Nov) to talk about life, death and the playwright’s approach to both for a special roundtable, taking place at atyp’s Studio 1 on Friday 2nd December from 1.00 pm – 3.00 pm.
Places are very limited – to reserve in advance, email PlayWriting Australia at info@pwa.org.au with HUGH in the subject line by Wednesday 30th November.
You will receive a confirmation email confirming your ticket allocation. Please note, due to the limited numbers, tickets are allocated individually.
Also, Shôn will be leading a masterclass for emerging directors at Carriageworks, while he is Sydney. Check out the details and sign up,here.
