MUDINTERVIEW Maggie Mackay interviews Director Tiffany Watt-Smith and a Review of Mud, at the Arcola Theatre, 27 Arcola Street, London, E8 2DJ, England, 10 -27 September 2003.
As of 18th February 2004 Tiffany Watt-Smith is curating an experimental festival of director's shorts at the Young Vic Theatre, London. She is also working with a mime artist towards a production of Dario Fo's Mysterio Buffo supported by the National Theatre Studio, London.
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Tiffany Watt-Smith interviewed by Maggie Mackay 26 September 2003 via email:
MM What was the background to your choice of Mud?
TW-S I became interested in the work of Maria Irene Fornes after hearing about her work through actor Jack Shepherd and director Mehmet Ergen. I went off to read collections of her plays and discovered that her plays from the early 80's - The Danube, Mud, The Conduct of Life - were to me the most stylistically taut and dramatically powerful. Mud was a play that appealed particularly to me as a young woman negotiating my independence and my relationships with men (though fortunately I don't have Betsy the Pig to contend with!). There was also, as always with theatre, a pragmatic side to the choice: a director friend of mine was already interested in The Conduct of Life and I knew that Nancy Meckler had directed The Danube in the 80's. When you direct a little-known play you are making a contribution to the theatre dialogue rather than creating some fabulous sell-out media hyped thing. I always saw Mud as a production for emerging writers and directors, a production that invited my contemporaries to experience something different.
MM Have you seen other productions of Fornes?
TW-S No, I've never seen any other Maria Irene Fornes' work produced. I wish I had!
MM If not, what spoke to you from the text?
TW-S I think Fornes is inventive, original, funny and shocking. I think Mud is a brilliant piece of writing. But also Mud works on many levels - it tells an 'everyman' story - each of us has played Mae, Henry and Lloyd at different times of our lives in different situations.
MM Might you describe something of your approach to this play? I wondered what sort of approach you used - did it include historical, economic, social perspectives, etc or was it more intuitive, perhaps?
TW-S Every time I tried to locate Mud in a real place - eg: South West America, or Southern Ireland, or Cambridgeshire Fens, something of its magic was lost. This is why myself, and Naomi Dawson, the designer, opted for a more abstract set, which created an atmosphere but not a geography. It is also why I didn't ask the actors to use American accents.
MM I wonder if you have any views on why Fornes is under-performed in the UK?
TW-S Because British Theatre has a pathological loathing of 'earnestness' - and Fornes' writing can come across as a bit over-committed, although I don't think that is what she intends. I think that it is actually very difficult to swallow Fornes in our British psycho-realism tradition. The subject of her work - women trying to escape, poverty, entrapment etc etc - are all straight from the pages of social realist tradition - and yet, this is a red herring, because Fornes' text works on an abstract and heightened level. We don't really know how to watch her plays, and so we tend to get a bit irritated by them.
As of 18th February 2004 Tiffany Watt-Smith is curating an experimental festival of director's shorts at the Young Vic Theatre, London. She is also working with a mime artist towards a production of Dario Fo's Mysterio Buffo supported by the National Theatre Studio, London.