The Journey Interviews - 1

Within the next week or two, the audio-play A Journey Around My Room will be publicly available. My first play as an audio-cast has been a fascinating experience. Journey is a story of self-discovery, solidarity and survival in an age of turmoil. During the recording sessions I had the privilege of working with a stellar cast and the atmosphere was always convivial. The spirit of these enjoyable sessions was captured in a series of interviews between cast members David Sillars, Jill Korn, Lorenzo Novani and myself resulting in conversations sharing our experiences of bringing the play to life. These interviews take the form of a chain reaction: an actor interviews a fellow actor and they subsequently become the interviewee for another actor.

The first of these conversations features actor, David Sillars, being interviewed by director Kenny Burnham. David is an artist and actor with fifty years of experience in theatre, TV, film and radio. Nominated for the 2016 Michael Powell Award for the Best Performance in a British Feature, he is joint screen writer of the award winning LGBT feature Seat in Shadow. David plays the part of Xavier De Maistre.

Kenny: David, welcome!

David: Thanking you!

Kenny: Xavier De Maistre is a character who is in almost every single scene so it’s quite a demanding part to play. He’s also an arrogant man who considers himself superior to everyone he meets. My question is: what preparation did you have to make to portray the character (laughs)

David: Thanks! I think that’s cheek isn’t it? You’re hoping I’ll say I’m naturally arrogant anyway! (laughs). I think what you do is you imagine the physicality of the character. I mean, he’s a little kind of strutting peacock kind of guy, I think. So, before I can find a voice, I imagine a physical, little puffed-up, chest out, chin up kind of character. I quite liked him! I thought he was quite a sympathetic character in many ways and I quite liked the slightly silly querulousness with Lorenzo’s character. I thought it was quite amusing. I thought it was quite funny. I thought I could see in this context, a comic character. His puffed-upness was really quite comic.

Kenny: He’s one of these characters who’s interesting to have in wider company but you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a lift with him exactly.

David: (laughs) No! Exactly. Stuck in one room with him! A bit overwhelming. I don’t think I know anybody like that. I think if you did, you would drop them pretty quickly, “I can’t be bothered with this!” I’m trying to think if I do know anyone with those characteristics. No one I can think of and obviously no one I could mention! Apart from Lorenzo (plays Joanetti), of course, he’s a bit like that! (laughs). At the same time, I think if you were a servant… he’s quite used to bossing servants about. But his people skills are probably not brilliant in company. Although I imagine I’ve definitely met him. He would be a kind of socialite. He would be used to going to grand balls at Versailles. That kind of thing and have those kind of manners.

Kenny: Yeah

David: Quite an interesting character. I could imagine having wonderful clothes as well. Lots of brocade.

Kenny: (laughs) The thing is, that is how he is captured in the original Diaries. So, yeah, I might’ve augmented the character slightly but by and large…that’s the one aspect of the Diaries that is retained in the audio play. And it is interesting because when you first meet him, your hackles rise, because you’re opposed to him a little bit. He’s that authority character who always knows best and we’ve possibly met somebody like that at some dinner party whereby you beat a retreat at the first opportunity. But he does have this ongoing infatuation with Madame De Hautcastel.

David: Yes.

Kenny: And of course she doesn’t return his affections at all. And this doesn’t seem to deter him really. I would say it’s one of the few times I think that you start to feel some pity for him…because it’s completely unrequited and it’s just going nowhere.

David: I think for us, we tend to think of that voice as being the sort of English aristocracy: removed and kind of snooty. And there’s always one at the party who doesn’t quite hit it off with anybody or chasing somebody as he is with Madame De Hautcastel. He’s chasing her about, and she’s not really interested. I think she enjoys the flattery. She definitely likes the flattery. That’s part of the whole politeness thing…to flatter the ladies and it’s all very formalised really “You look wonderful. I brought you flowers.” This sort of thing. That formal flirtatious thing…but obviously Christophe, whom we hear about later, has been her main romantic interest. I think it’s all about court intrigue more than anything else, isn’t it? More than real feelings. It’s difficult to know what these people really feel about anything because life is this big performance of manners and clothes and masked balls and, y’know, flirtation.

Kenny: I think you’re right there. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film ‘Ridicule’ which is from about twenty years ago. It’s set in the French court and it’s all about appearances and people appearing in amazing costumes and attending court. But underneath they’re all kind of dying because they can’t breathe.

David: Probably riddled as well with disease! (laughs). And I believe they stank. They just sprayed themselves with a bit more perfume and weren’t that bothered about washing. I notice he (Xavier) doesn’t take a bath throughout the whole thing…and that’s, what is it, forty days?

Kenny: And he has the cheek to pull up, or look like he’s pulling up Joanetti for that!

David: Joanetti wouldn’t have had access to the expensive perfumes!

Kenny: (laughs) Ha! Yes, we can forgive him! I think one of the times where you do start to feel some sympathy for him (Xavier)…is where you learn a little about his background. Particularly his friend, Christophe, and what happened to him in Paris. When we first meet Xavier, he’s in Turin. We know he’s one of the emigres but we don’t really know the story of what happened. OK, we know about the revolution but his story - which we get in the second half of the play - does feel to me a little bit like a check for the listener on the automatic siding with the revolutionaries, for example.

David: Yeah, I mean, personally I was telling someone the other day…when I was kid I had an Action Man. This is going way back. I was really quite taken with the costume of the Louis the 14 th period. So, I had my poor mother make me a pink Action Man costume of that time (laughs). So, my sympathies were always with the people who got their heads chopped off rather than with the revolutionaries. It was a very brutal revolution and that comes out in the play. I have to say, what grabbed me initially was the writing. You know there’s lots of beautiful speeches, evocative speeches in there. I don’t know if that came from you or from his Diaries but there was sensitivity there. It must have been pretty horrifying if you’d been these privileged people, in a very brutal violent revolution, to have your friends getting their heads chopped off. Entire parts of society basically being wiped out. A bit like the Maoist thing but not as vast in scale yet big enough. It was a huge upheaval!

Kenny: You were talking about the text. I have to give a big thanks to Jill Korn who plays Madame De Hautcastel, as French is her second language. I did a whole lot of research which is fine. You get the order, you filter it and you decide OK I’m going to dramatise it. Then you’ve got to, not just get the tone right, but make sure you get the references right. You might have the name of something, it might not be quite the right name for the time. There’d’ve been a certain way of referring to something. I remember I did the first draft but something in me said “I need to get Jill to cast her eye over this” because she knows all about French history, she’s fluent in French and she can decide if this reads true for the time. Jill came back with some corrections and that’s what’s in that passage when he (Xavier) is talking to Christophe.

David: Yeah. It felt very authentic. I was trying to imagine his bedroom. I’m imagining these paintings with the big guilt rococo frames. And the pink bed… that pink bedding… and the curtains would be ruched velvet and there would’ve been beautiful rugs…that kind of thing. It would all be very beautiful! So, I’m trying to imagine that period in my head and inhabit it. It’s easier when you have these clues. That’s what you’re looking for as an actor: clues within the script. Because in an audio drama you don’t have the set and you don’t have the costume and they make a huge difference to you when you’re performing on stage. As soon as you put your costume on everything clicks into place. With audio drama you’ve really got to do it all in your imagination and hope somehow that putting yourself in a kind of astral environment…which is how I see it…that that comes across to the listener. You can give them a sense of everything that that person is seeing and smelling and feeling in the performance.

Kenny: It’s quite important isn’t it? Because that is the backdrop to the whole play. On one level it’s like reading a novel, you’ve got to make people see the space because there is no other space, really. OK, we’ve done the bit where we feel some pity for Xavier, but let’s go back to what we like: laughing at him! Obviously you have this relationship between Xavier and Joanetti which kind of undulates throughout the play and, of course, underpins it. But, there’s this bit where Xavier becomes almost revolutionary himself. He imagines himself as a sovereign power (laughs)…and this is actually in his Diaries! He starts to dictate what people would do. He starts to sound quite Stalinesque really… until Joanetti cleverly pricks his hubris.

David: I mean from that point of view, it is an interesting study in class, isn’t it? In that Joanetti just keeps wearing him down bit by bit. Joanetti is immensely patient with him and lets him run off with all this stuff. That interaction is hugely entertaining because Joanetti’s mildness shows up Xavier’s pomposity and stupidity which I loved. I did think that was very funny.

Kenny: Finally, David, perhaps my favourite bit when I was listening to it – I have to be careful what I say because I don’t want to give anything away – but we get a sample of what his diary is like. He’s threatened…I mean promised… to keep diary entries and make it available to the public. We finally get to hear one of these towards the end of the play…and just when you’ve been starting to feel a bit of sympathy for Xavier… you get this thing (laughs) “Once again, I am to put on my garb and there is my garden” and it’s just…

David: “I’ve invented Room Travel!” (laughs)

Kenny: (laughs) That!

David: It’s very pertinent. I mean, it’s very personal to the time we’ve been in for the previous year. The day we recorded that was the first time I’d been recording with people outside of my voiceover studio in my cupboard. It was the first time I’d been out. So, it was very pertinent to what we’d all been through…where you’re forced back onto your own thoughts and your own imagination. For me, that’s fine. But I think a lot of people found it difficult. I quite admire the way that Xavier coped, in a sense. He invented this world. It’s quite Kierkegaardian. Apparently he (Kierkegaard) would go on a carriage ride and he would go “alright stop here so I can just get out and memorise all these flowers so that when I go back to my room I can re-experience them”. As a little boy, his father – who I think was a Calvinist minister of some kind – rather than take him out for walks, would walk him round the sitting room and describe all the things that they were seeing. So, I thought there was that resonance. There was that psychological ability to cope with the situation: to invent something, to make something, to create something. I mean he (Xavier) had gone up in balloons and such things, hadn’t he? He was planning to go on an adventure to America presumably surrounded by people who would have carried him over the rough bits! He wasn’t putting on his hiking boots and doing anything terribly effortful, I don’t think.

Kenny: (laughs) No.

David: I rather liked that aspect of it and the absurdity of his “Yes! I have invented Room Travel!” I thought that was quite sweet. And, at the end, he’s back to his pompous, I’m-better-than-you-mate kind of carry-on.

Kenny: Yes, absolutely! Having found his place in the New World.

David: Even in the worst, most despicable character, as an actor you have to find something sympathetic. You’ve got to find a bit of yourself. You’ve got to find some bit of compassion for him. You can for that moment be them in some ways.

Kenny: Thanks so much, David, for that! Thank you!

David: My pleasure.

In the next conversation, David Sillars interviews Lorenzo Novani.