GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN are revealing bit of the make-up of their show External. But are they revealing too much?
At predictable intervals, PR agents will invade my inbox with rehearsals room pictures of a celebrity-saturated, soon to be hit, in progress. The idea is to create intrigue, but intrigue is generated with questions and in these images, the most questionable thing is usually an actress’ up-do, which she probably wanted to look that haphazard anyway. It’s a nice contrast to the perfect face, see!
A far more interesting, slightly riskier alternative to glossy rehearsal images are the artefacts that will be posted on the website of GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN theatre company in the run up to their show External opening at Soho Theatre on 7th September. In the thirty days prior, they’re revealing the evolution of the show including their original promotional material, props, notes and possibly some video. When I sat in on their brainstorming session, they hadn’t decided.
Sifting through the memorabilia they’ve kept along the way, their discussion revolves around whether this is a good idea at all. Will opening up the process give people too much initial information? Will it draw unnecessary attention to the props and sequences that remain in the show?
“It needs to be about performance, dialogue and the themes behind them,” they decide, “and we want to stay the right side of ‘how fucking smug is this?’”
External is a response to the Ontroerend Goed’s Internal, a one-on-one show that begins like a date and ends with a frank evaluation of the audience. The current publicity material doesn’t mention Internal so much. It’s not essential to The Van’s show whether the audience are familiar with it. “The show initially pinned itself on this hook,” says director Hester Chillingworth. “We’re responding to Internal, but really that’s just a holding frame for exploring what it is to respond to a show.”
The company were inspired by the moral outrage that followed Internal; after all “it’s a show with performers and a script. With External,” says Hester, “we’re interested in the extremes between what audiences will believe or dismiss because the performers are on stage. Theatre audiences are incredibly self-regulating”. And they note the difference between being inspired by something and responding to it. To be inspired by something is “to take the seeds of things which excite you and do your own thing with them. When you respond to something, you admit you’re in a conversation, and you acknowledge your sources.” Far from a futile search for originality, they know what initiated their work and remind themselves that they can never identify all their influences.
Opening up the process, charting the history of the show, they challenge themselves not to reveal something of themselves without being too “codified”. “Scripts with hand written notes,” says performer Lucy, “they’re always interesting because they’re a real, private thing”. Watching while a group of friends rummage through their own time capsule, it appears there’s an endless sea of in-jokes and cringe-worthy ideas that didn’t make it into the show. But they’re resolved “not to show the shit” after all: it was cut for good reasons.
Instead, they want to reveal External, piece by piece, for what it is, their “flagship show”, and what it contains: a manifesto of the way the company want to work. With their revelations in the run up to the Soho run, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN play, as they do in External, with intimacy, distance and the notion of one-to-one theatre. It’s a willingness to be open and a different way of talking about what is important right now.
Image by Ludovic des Cognets
External runs at Soho Theatre from 7th September. Click here for the Ephemera Project.
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