Can only give you a rough steer
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NEXT week I will be driving across America. Not literally. I don’t actually have a licence, and haven’t driven since 1996. I got lessons for my 17th birthday, but never did get round to sitting my test. Regrets, I have a few.
The last time I got behind the wheel was for the film, Fast Romance (out next year), but I wasn’t actually driving – the tow truck in front took care of that. When I contemplate driving, and the fact that I still am not able to do it, aged 30, I cling to the guiding principle of acting, which states: actors need not learn to actually do things, so long as we can skilfully pretend.
Now, for the second time in as many months, I am being called on to pretend, as skillfully as possible, that I can indeed drive – this time on the other side of the road.
The only thing that makes this less daunting than being towed through the streets of Glasgow in a silver Astra is the fact that it will take place in a theatre, not inside an actual car with actual peddles, gears and steering wheel, surrounded by actual motorists, pumping their actual horns at me.
Next week, newly-formed company Theatre Jezebel will make its debut at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow with the UK premiere of Neil LaBute’s Autobahn – a cycle of six short plays set in the front seat of a car. Confined, but on the move, each pair of characters talk themselves into new, unchartered areas of their relationships, all the time revealing, in microscopic detail, the secrets of human experience.
In Road Trip, I play a woman driving across America with a teenage boy, heading for a holiday destination. To say any more would spoil the surprise of encountering the piece first-hand (at the Tron from Tuesday – book now!). The same is true of the other five plays, in which teenagers, parents, secret lovers and friends veer between hilarity and despair in their own individual car journeys.
Every word of LaBute’s dialogue reveals new things about his characters and steers us towards the unexpected, so I really can’t give anything away. What I can tell you is that the cast of 12, which includes some of Scotland’s leading stage actors (Sally Reid, Alison Peebles, Keith Fleming, Mary Gapinski, Candida Benson, Angela Darcy, to name a few) will be showcasing their pretend driving skills and American accents for the piece.
ONE of the great things about Neil LaBute’s dialogue is that the rhythm, pattern and intonation of mid-American speech is embedded in the lines. The more you get into the flow of the dialogue, the more natural the accent sounds – which is just as well, because if we are going to be pinned to the spot for 20 minutes, our voices really can’t let us down.
Being physically restricted to a car seat on stage brings the dialogue sharply into focus. Unable to stand or move around, we have to allow the words to do the work. The characters in Autobahn are sealed into a moving vehicle together, and therefore have no option to move away from each other, or escape.
Each has a captive audience of one, and individual dilemmas, so are often compelled to talk through things where, in other circumstances, they might choose to physically act, or leave, or just ignore the other person.
Once I had figured out the pretend geography of my stage car and plotted looks to the rearview and wing mirrors, dashboard clock and roadside features, the main challenge was to drive the scene through dialogue alone.
The prospect of trying to hold an audience’s attention from a seated position was a daunting one. At first, it was tempting to overcompensate with too much acting – playing the subtext and adding too much weight and intensity to the lines.
HOWEVER, the more we rehearsed our scene, the more apparent it became that, in fact, LaBute’s writing needs to flow as easily as possible in order to weave its spell over the audience. In Autobahn, the drive and momentum of each scene is cleverly written into the text, and requires only that we go with the flow. In this last week of rehearsals, I have begun to feel like the scene is playing me, not the other way around, and am much less daunted at the prospect of acting on the spot for 20 minutes. When you have such a dynamic piece of writing, all the action is in the words. I just have to hope that my accent and pretend driving skills hold up.
Theatre Jezebel was formed this year by Mary McCluskey, also artistic director of Scottish Youth Theatre, and leading director/designer Kenny Miller. Their debut production may be launched on a shoestring but carries a theatrical gold standard, thanks to the talents involved. I’m really excited about Autobahn, not least because I have still to see the set – no doubt beautifully designed by Kenny Miller – and because I have yet to see the other five plays. With LaBute, I know to expect the unexpected. He is one of the few playwrights who can still transport me beyond my critical firewall. I buy into his illusion without feeling the need to analyse and deconstruct it – at least not while I’m watching or performing his work.
So that’s next week. The following week I’ll be pretending to have a baby, which is actually a grown man in a babygrow, walking, talking and commenting on the world. That will involve some degree of skill, especially as I have never had a baby, and certainly never given birth to a grown man. This new play, written by Katherine Grosvener, is called Gabriel and will open at Glasgow’s Oran Mor a week on Monday.
In Autobahn, my character says “. . . it’s good to be part of something new. That makes it special”. Although I certainly wouldn’t agree with everything she says, in terms of new writing, and exciting new theatre companies, that, I think, is absolutely true.
For more information on Autobahn, see http://www. tron.co.uk/event/autobahn/
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