INTERVIEW: Alexandra Spencer-Jones, Artistic Director

Ewan Stuart talks to the artistic director of Action to the Word Theatre Company.

Alexandra Spencer-Jones has previously worked on Constance & Sinestra and the Cabinet of Screams, for which she won the MTM:UK award for Best Emerging Artist, and A Clockwork Orange which has now embarked on a world tour. Her current show The Oresteia: Part 3 Eumenides opens at Camden People’s Theatre. The Oresteia: Part 3 Eumenides is the final part of a trilogy of plays you’ve been working on. What is it all about? Essentially the three parts are a struggle from darkness into light, so you have to go through all the grist to get to salvation, it’s the Ancient Greek’s version of the Christ story, and the creation of democracy in the purest sense of the word. So this third part is all about tying up a lot of the wrongs and pulling not just the crimes of the last three parts into question, but the crimes of the generations before. It all falls on the shoulders of this one man, who has killed his mother, but in that act he takes responsibility for generation after generation of his family’s wrongs, which are horrific, totally horrific. Like Hamlet, but so much more because he’s accountable for everyone’s wrongs before him. That’s sounds like a pretty hefty undertaking, has it all come together smoothly for you? It was a nightmare when we came to the third part the first time! I lost the guy who played Orestes from the second one, because he got a place on an international tour, which was his dream come true, and obviously ours was such a short contract. And it was hard for him to turn down a world tour, so I postponed it. I didn’t want to do it without him. He’s as much part of it as I am. He’s the leading actor of the trilogy, Tom Christian. He’s worked in rep with me for a few years, he’s an amazing actor, he gave me Titus, he was in A Clockwork Orange when it started, I have a good working relationship with him. It sounds like there are a lot of people with a stake in the production, what was it that prompted you to do it? I studied it in Ancient Greek to start with and fell in love with the story years and years ago. The idea of having a 1945 context for the first part seemed crystal clear to me. It’s something I experimented with in University, and I did a workshop production of Agamemnon there with an RAF girl chorus. I was just able to explore that theme much further and have a land girl chorus when we did it in 2010. The chorus of all three shows are connected in their own way. But they’ve all got their own character, their own background, and their own contribution to the story. My big ambition was to bring something in close history to the plot so that we would recognise the effort of the war, so the Trojan War becomes our Second World War. Coming to the end of a trilogy for all of you must feel pretty big, but for you, with all the extra work you need to put in, is it end of something bigger? It’s a huge thing for me, because we started with Agamemnon in 2010 so it’s a big deal for me. And in contrast to this trilogy ending, your life with Action to the Word is starting to get much busier isn’t it? You’ve got A Clockwork Orange out on a world tour; and your work is starting to get noticed. How has that changed the company? It’s just come back from Hong Kong last week, and I was with it . Essentially Clockwork’s kind of our… I mean we’re a Shakespeare company really. Everything came from Shakespeare and still everything’s coming from Shakespeare. Clockwork… we took a season up to the Fringe in 2011, that year we had three shows: Titus Andronicus, which was our Shakespeare, Constance & Sinestra and the Cabinet of Screams, and A Clockwork Orange. I took probably 26 cast up to the fringe, and everyone did two out of three shows. On a punt. We paid their rent, I think. And we all would work our day job and go around to my place, and we’d rehearse in our free time. We would literally work 40 – 50 hours a week on top of our 30 – 40 hours a week day jobs, and we were so passionate about it and so young. We went up there in the hope that they’d get noticed, the shows. And they did, which is amazing because it means we’ve become a professional company, we’ve been able to pay our actors, we’re in a position now whereby the people who were in that investment, have toured the world. And I am so proud of where Clockwork is, because it was a long time coming, you know? We had this workshop performance in the Proud Galleries in Camden, the horse stables, which was three nights, very rock star, very pop-up, no costumes, no set, no nothing… just acting. A Clockwork Orange is often seen as a pretty violent piece of work. From looking at the press photos for Agamemnon and Titus Andronicus, they too look pretty sanguine. Do you have a taste for bloodthirsty work? I like dramatic work really, it’s only this year that I’ve started doing more natural stuff, in my own life. I’ve got two hats as it were, I associate direct and I assistant direct, alongside my work with Action to the Word. I’m working on a Carol Churchill piece in the new year in Birmingham. Cloud Nine. I have a taste for drama and high drama. A real challenge for me would be to do an Ibsen, or something a bit more down to earth. Something with no blood in it? It’s all got blood in it really. You must manage to put together pretty resilient teams of people. The commitment given by your Edinburgh cast is extraordinary, and the current cast you’re working with has been with you for 4 years working on this trilogy. The people that you’re working with on a show tend to become your family, in the sense that you live and breathe with them. On tour it was me and 10 lads, for three months. And then my associate who is female (thank god) both of us went out to Hong Kong with 10 lads, and so you’re living in each other’s pockets, and in Edinburgh you’re all sharing however many people you can cram in a room! So we become each other’s confidants, friends, brothers, sisters. It separates the men from the boys; you work out who you love to live with. But we, everyone loving the work is the first thing, they love the work and… I tend not to cast ‘dicks’ really. I tend to have people around me that just really want to be there. It’s become more and more important for me to work with people from different countries as well which is new, and I’m excited about that. It’s international work that’s done that to us, me going to different countries and people saying ”Oh, I’m inspired by your work. Can I come and work for you?” We take them slowly, one or two a year, they become incorporate and… people move on of course, but oftentimes they come back, go away to come back and appreciate how loving our room is. They come back into the room and feel really welcome and, I hope, integral. And what is the rehearsal room like as you approach opening night? It’s been it’s nice because now in the final push I get to spend more time with the principals doing stuff and a little bit heart-breaking to be honest. It’s a very sad story. Actually this is a particularly interesting piece for that, because it’s about love. That’s why the 60’s is the perfect setting, because all the shit that’s gone before has to be cleaned. The only way to do that is not forget about it or ignore that it ever happened, it’s facing it head on and conquering it with the power of love. That’s what the 60’s was about really – eradicating the hardships of war and the austerity of the 50’s – the 60’s just went, “This is music, get over it!”, “here’s a few hallucinogenics! Deal with it!” www.actiontotheword.com