Michael Cox speaks with Morna Pearson and Tessa Walker about the first of five co-productions between A Play, a Pie and a Pint and the National Theatre of Scotland.
This week marks the beginning of a five-week partnership between Oran Mor’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint and the National Theatre of Scotland. For the next few weeks, adaptations of plays from Latin America will premiere in the Glaswegian theatre and will then transfer to the Traverse in Edinburgh.
“In putting the season together, we were very conscious that all of the plays needed to have a relevance in a culture outside of the one in which they were originally created.” So says Tessa Walker, Literary Associate for the NTS. “But good stories will always be relevant, will always have a place in the world and will always matter.”
The first play of the season is The Company Will Overlook a Moment of Madness. Originally written by Venezuelan playwright Rodolfo Santana in the 1970s, the play focuses on the character of Orlando, a long-time employee in a factory who is sent to the company’s psychologist after a violent incident.
To pen a shortened adaptation, the producers turned to award-winning playwright Morna Pearson. “I hadn’t adapted anything before this,” Pearson says, “so thankfully the NTS gave a two-day workshop.”
In tackling the play, Pearson says that she simply followed her instincts. “I looked for the story and elements of character that appealed to me and my abilities. By cutting down on the, sometimes very long, passages of text it revealed a story that would work for not only a modern Scottish audience but also specifically the Play, a Pie and a Pint audience.” Her instincts also told her to keep the play in its Latin America setting but to expand on the key role of the psychologist. “Although she represents a faceless corporation, I felt that she needed her own story, to a certain extent, to make the relationship and what happens in the room between these two people more engaging.”
Tessa Walker, who also serves as the play’s director, agrees. “I was attracted to the political scope of the piece, the way in which the entire struggle of worker and boss, of corporation and individual, is played out between two people in one room. I am interested in the negotiations and navigations that take place between the characters and I think what Morna’s adaptation has done is to explore and present them with a fascinating depth. They are both genuinely intriguing; neither wholly sympathetic, both complex and both desperate, for different reasons, to maintain the status quo which is where, within the political story, the human one lies.”
In speaking about any challenges she has faced in directing the play, Walker says the most challenging thing was, “that you have to always make what happens between the characters matter to them personally so that what you see has real drama at its heart, there is a real risk to the characters, and it is not simply discursive. Because while these characters of course represent their class and their politics and their place in the world none of this will have any resonance if you don’t care about what they are feeling.”
In speaking about how relevant a Venezuelan play written in the 1970s is to a modern Scottish audience, Walker says that, “The political regime in Venezuela was very specific to that time so the parallels to a modern Scottish society, and for a modern Scottish audience, are perhaps not so obvious at first but I think [Morna Pearson’s] adaptation has succeeded brilliantly in bringing to our attention just how relevant the struggle of one worker against a faceless corporation still is. That said, I also think that – although I hope this one is - worlds don’t necessarily need to be recognisable as our own for us to engage with them or feel for the people within them.”
However, when asked if she’d call the production a ‘political play’, Walker answers, “I suppose then in some sense that that defines it as a political play. I think though that a political play is also defined by the politics of the people within it, we all represent the political, social and cultural systems in which we exist and this play is no different. The characters in this – because people never are - are not solely political beings but they do operate within a very specific culture and the way they behave is a direct reflection of that. I don’t feel that I can categorise the adaptation in any one way; there is a power play within it and, like any piece of good dramatic writing, there exists thematic exploration through the actions of the characters. I think the adaptation is just a play in its own right.”
With such rich themes and high stakes for the characters, what do Walker and Pearson hope the audience will take with them after watching the play? “I hope people feel something for the characters and are engaged by their stories. I hope they go with them on the journey,” replies Walker. Pearson agrees, adding that, “The real test is if the audience cares for the characters and their situation at the same time as being entertained.”