Jan-willem van den Bosch synchs up on this 5 star show
If you haven’t yet been to see Showmanism at Hampstead Theatre just don’t hesitate – go now because you might want to see it twice. It’s a simply unmissable piece of art that fuses precision lip-synching with superb storytelling, using anecdotal interviews with celebrity and creative voices – all delivered through the exceptional talent of Dickie Beau with precision direction from Jan-willem van den Bosch. The showreceived a full five stars from us, so how excited were we at ET Towers when we were invited to interview its incredible director and hear what his actual voice had to say about their work?
Jan – thank you so much for chatting with us when you’re in the middle of this exceptional run of theatre, which has now been extended! Can you first tell us how you initially teamed up with Dickie?
We have been working with each other for over 15 years. We met socially and became interested in each other’s ideas and skills and consequently started looking for opportunities to collaborate. In 2008, I was asked to direct something for Grimeborn, The Arcola’s Opera festival, and I wanted to explore lip synching to live singing. So, I asked Dickie whether he would be interested to lip-synch live to opera singers in Mahler/Ruckert’s Kindertotenlieder. Dickie was game and we enjoyed the process, so, we continued to look for further opportunities. In 2010, Dickie landed us a gig at Homotopia, where we developed Blackouts, our first fully lip-synched theatrical show.
Showmanism is a complex, highly theatrical piece of work. What did you each bring to the evolution of it?
Dickie was asked to create a lip-synched show about theatre by Deborah Warner for the Ustinov in Bath. Initially Deborah wanted to direct the show but was unable to commit and suggested to Dickie that he got his own team instead. That’s how I got involved. Dickie was already on a journey with some ideas and material, and I contribute to these ideas with my observations and thoughts. This is often how it goes; Dickie is on a theatrical making journey and I join a little later in the process. From there on in, I guess our journey is quite philosophical and to be honest, most of our process consist of chatting. We both care about the spiritual journey we are on as people and that comes back in the work we make. In our collaborations, we are also more interested in creating theatrical journeys rather than perhaps, telling a story. Although storytelling is part of that journey. Dickie collates the material, but we then basically help each other to get out of the way so that the material can lead us. We discuss visual ideas for the set, costumes, lights and invite our collaborators to join us on that journey.
It all appears to be so fastidiously crafted. Can you tell us about the research and interview processes?
I have little to do with the interviews per se. I guess, I am at standby during the initial research process. And throughout that process, we often talk about the things that were discussed in the interviews or other recorded material. I suppose I am Dickie’s sounding board, and we discuss what excites us from that material and how it sits with our philosophical, spiritual understanding and/or experiences. We do talk about where what should go, how Dickie could embody it and what we can cut. But I mainly follow Dickie on the choice of material.
How did you choose which participants to approach?
Again, this is more Dickie’s bag. Dickie is great at finding the right kind of people and to get them to talk as well as agree to letting their voices to be used.
The show is hugely evocative, really heightening the imaginative senses as the audience suspends disbelief. How is that achieved?
I guess, we do try to orchestrate this as neither Dickie nor I want an audience to be on an intellectual journey but prefer them to be on an instinctive, emotional journey. Justin Nardella, Dan Steele and Marty Langthorne helped us to hint at things through sound, light and set design but never to explain things. The elements that are on the set and hang mid mid-air, the costumes Dickie wears etc. evoke mysticism, sound, space, theatre but are never specifically one thing or another. We hope to think that the audience have their own relationship to these things. I personally like it when things change their meaning on stage as this reflects my view on life. Things have the meaning we give it… We don’t want an audience to go: “Oh, that means that” because it would take them on an intellectual journey where they are looking for meaning, whereas we would like the audience to go on a journey that allows them to feel through the material. That’s what we do as theatre makers too, we feel our way through the material.
Showmanism reveals how we can understand stories differently using unfamiliar or unexpected means, and this seems to reflect brilliantly on your past collaborations, working with people who have learning disabilities to reclaim their voices. Can you tell us something about that?
I love the idea that the theatre is a space where underrepresented voices can be heard. I guess that when I started working queer voices were still underrepresented and I took me a while to before I dared to have a voice as a queer man, but since then I have been an advocate of all the voices that are underrepresented and particularly of people with learning disabilities. I guess that’s why I love the recording of Peter Sellars in our show so much. He talks about the fact that the titles of Greek plays handed down to us mainly represent the underrepresented voices of Greek society. The work, we do with Dickie is very much about this: voice giving. Through Dickie’s channelling, we hear things in a different context and it allows us to listen to what is said.
One of the lovely things about this show is the validity it gives to queerness – embracing an at times camp, funny, draggy performance and elevating it; turning lip-synch into a meticulous high art form that still suggests and celebrates otherness. Was this an intentional outcome?
Yes! Queerness, otherness is something that is innately part of me, part of Dickie and part of the work we make together. The celebration of otherness is in all my work. As a theatre maker I love to give a voice to and commemorate all marginalised and side-lined voices.
Thanks very much to Jan for talking to us about this exceptional production.
Showmanism runs at Hampstead Theatre until Saturday 19 July.
