National Theatre of Scotland

INTERVIEW WITH DAVEY ANDERSON AND STEVEN HOGGETT (PART 1)

21/07/06

Davey Anderson (Associate Director - Music) and Steven Hoggett (Associate Director – Movement) talk to NTS Web Editor Colin Clark during rehearsals about what’s involved in putting a show like Black Watch together.

Colin Clark: The show’s being billed as “an unofficial biography of the Black Watch” – what kinds of things are we likely to learn in this show about life in the Black Watch or about the Black Watch itself?

Steven Hoggett: There’s a strong element of the sociology of the Black Watch in the show. The catchment area of the Black Watch was very specific, and even though it’s become somewhat diluted recently with the amalgamation of the regiments, the Black Watch recruits a very particular kind of person from a particular area. There was always a strong chance that the men knew each other from before they signed up, or they were related in some way, so a strong sense of camaraderie formed between them instinctively as people before it was created amongst them as soldiers. There’s a real purity to these relationships that makes the regiment quite exceptional. I think the history of the Black Watch makes it quite special; I think it has a real iconic status.

CC: And is that something that’s still felt amongst the troops fighting for the Black Watch?

SH: I think the amalgamation of the regiments has made that very difficult. It was a massive accolade to be a part of the Black Watch, but they’ve had the rug pulled from underneath them. That identity has been lost.

CC: What areas does the play explore in terms of the psychology of young men in battle?

Davey Anderson: What gets forgotten is that these troops come home eventually and they have a life beyond the Army. They carry with them their experiences of warfare and take them into whatever it is they do next – being a janitor in a school, for example, or working at the deli counter in Tesco.

We train these soldiers to become war machines, to become fighting machines, to kill other people and there’s something frustrating in that the act of fighting is so technologically advanced now, that it’s all done remotely, like playing a computer game.

So all this frustration and training these soldiers have bottled up often comes out when they come home – which is not part of the story when we talk about the Iraq war, or any other war. This personal aspect is something that’s forgotten about. It was really interesting to get that from [writer Gregory] Burke’s text. It was a reminder of what happens when the soldiers get back to Dunfermline or Dundee.

CC: Steven, how have your trained you actors to move like Army personnel?

SH: The biggest challenge in creating a show like this is to work so that these guys – who are clearly not soldiers, they’re actors – never look like actors trying to be soldiers.

We have to make sure that they are as precise and as physically committed to everything they do. Arguably that’s what every actor should always be doing, but I know that if I came to see a piece like Black Watch I’d been looking out for the actors being a little bit wet, a little bit off the count, or not quite giving it all the energy that this world should contain.

The control of the guys physically is something we really had to nail. We had a drill sergeant who came in and did a couple of sessions with us. That taught us a lot about just what it means to hear a voice and to do exactly what that voice says, not even to question it. He talked about how you hold yourself – tiny details like when you stand to attention and you clench your fist, your thumb is pressed against your index finger and that has to be in line with the middle of your thigh muscle. You have all these different things to think about.

The point of it all is that if you can get the actors to where they’ll do anything you want, aggressively and precisely, then we can also play with this physicality when we want to show the characters as people with hearts who go to bed at the end of the day and who think about things, and who miss people and who love people.

It’s exciting to work on a piece where you’re legitimately able to create such a big physical spectrum – to go right into the military material, but also to be able to explore what’s inside that makes these young men tick over.

Read the second part of the interview here.