The director's cut

Let’s say you’re a world-famous playwright who’s been writing and having your plays staged for more than 30 years, right? How do you keep the creative fires flaming, make the latest project feel as exciting as the first? One way is to also become a director. Which is exactly what Howard Barker has done over the past five or six years. He’s also started his own theatre company and is in Dublin to direct two of his plays at the Project Theatre. Women Beware Women and The Twelfth Battle Of Isonzo. More about them, later, first let’s hear Barker on his mid-life change of career.

“Directing is a challenge because most writers, poor things, don’t control their end product,” he explains.” Whereas I’m able to, not so much control it, but largely influence how it looks the first time it’s performed anyway. Subsequently, other people do it differently.”

But was the change of focus fired by, say, a production of one of his works that was diametrically opposed to his original production?

“Yes. Especially when people seize on a political issue, because politics warps people so much that they are quite happy to warp a play to get their point across,” he responds.” And I saw that happen to a Belgian production of my play The Europeans. But it wasn’t that, specifically, that made me become a director. When the opportunity came to direct for my own company I was very happy to do that. I also like actors. If you don’t like actors you shouldn’t direct.”

Yes, as his plays might suggest, Howard Barker is pretty dogmatic. Does “liking” actors preclude collisions because they may have a different perspective on a play?

“They can’t have a different perspective on a play.” Why?

“I’m not a democrat. I’m not a collaborator. I expect actors to give themselves over to me when they are working on the work. That’s a condition.”

Meaning what? That even if a line sounds wrong in the mouth – or mind – of an actor they can’t tell Barker, suggests changes.

Would he then change text if an actor suggested?

“No. The very opposite. That’s not negotiable! When you see these plays, for example, you’ll see that the rhythms of the speech and the poetic metaphors can’t really be mucked about with. It’s not naturalistic. And that’s one of the miseries of naturalism. Anyone can do it. But when it comes to plays that are strictly written you have to adhere to the text.

That said, Barker has, in effect, “adapted” the text of a 17th century Jacobean play by Thomas Middleton in Women Beware Women – even, it’s said, changed the ending. So, is there one rule for plays written by Howard Barker and another rule when he’s directing other works!

“No! And I don’t change the ending of Middleton’s play. I encompass his whole play into one half and carry the themes on to the second half of the evening.

“What they wanted me to do at the Royal Court, was modernise it but I said that wouldn’t be enough of a challenge” he explains.”I was more interested in lifting those issues out of his play and pursuing them to the end.’

And Twelfth Battle... which Barker wrote himself? It’s said to be about “eroticism and disclosure.”

“That’s the language of the programme, perhaps!” he says, laughing. “It’s about a very old man marrying a very young woman. So it’s about experience and

deceit, really. Because they are blind. Or

are they?”

Why did Barker us this dramatic technique?

“Because it is an interesting thing for a dramatist to play with. Blindness. Of seeing and not seeing. So truth is something that cannot be visually confirmed. It’s a play for liars. About the possibilities of the endless lies you can tell.”

In search of truth, perhaps. But don’t go to Barker’s plays expecting a feel-good factor. Or concepts like redemption.

“I don’t believe in redemption. As for making people feel good? I leave that to television and the movies.”