David Lan - Interviews at the Young Vic

David Lan is the Artistic Director of the Young Vic and an inspirational man not only for the company and its productions but for a major behind-the-scenes initiative of which he is the begetter and godfather. Supported by the Genesis Foundation, the Genesis Directors Project at the Young Vic has entry levels for young aspiring directors at every possible level. And if you work your way through the process, at the end of it there is the promise of a main stage or solid and established play for you to direct at the prestigious Young Vic. The multi-award winning theatre is certainly the place to be. Mel Cooper met with David Lan in the crowded restaurant (which serves some of the best cakes in town) as Direct Action was about to take the boards again at the Young Vic.

Sitting over cakes and coffee, surrounded by the babble of a hundred excited voices waiting to go to a show, David Lan - a man of almost Zen-like relaxation and nervelessness - was not at all worried about the production that was about to premiere that night. Luc Bondy was doing his first ever English language play, directing a new version of the great, Classical anti-war play by Sophocles, Women of Trachis or The Trachiniae written and updated by Martin Crimp. This disturbing, powerful and often harrowing production did not win universal praise - but certainly was recognizable as fitting into the artistic ethos and the vision of the artistic director, David Lan, who is making the Young Vic not only one of the most exciting places to practise theatre-making in the whole world. As David said, "There's a long tradition in the English theatre going back 50 - 60 years which imagines that the most important person in the creation of a piece of work for the stage is the writer. One of the reasons that enormous amounts of energy were put into creating and supporting that idea was resistance in the 1950s to the convention in the theatre which made the actor the most important part of the process.

"For many, many years the West End was the most important producer of theatre in the UK. There were a few other bits of theatre around London and in other parts of the country that did experimental work, did new plays, worked with the kind of people we are now familiar with. But most of the work in the theatre in this country was centred - as the most important feature - on the actors, on the stars."

"A lot of the work was trivial. A lot of the work even took great, wonderful plays and reduced them to vehicles for particular actors. Resisting that was a revolution in the 1950s that declared: No, no! what really matters in a play is the whole piece!"

"And finding a way of presenting what is on the page on the stage was deemed to be principally through the writer, through analysis of and respect for the text - and this thinking, which was so necessary and revolutionary at the time, led to the pre-eminence of the writer in thinking about plays."

David gave all this to me as a kind of historic pre-amble to where he developed his vision for what he wants to do at the Young Vic. He continued: "When I came here to the Young Vic four years ago, it seemed to me that we had moved beyond that. Because, It had become a kind of orthodoxy for British theatre that what really matters is the writer.

"Whereas, in fact, what really matters in the creation and presentation of a work for the stage. Of course the play or the piece of work matters, whether written or not, whether it is a musical or an opera or any kind of stage work. It is the focus of everybody's energy, is the point of what you are doing. But unless there is a strong sense on the part of the director that the work needs to have a point of view, speak to it audience - unless you have directors who are confident of their style, of their ability to rethink a piece of work for that particular audience at that particular time, the work you are trying to serve will not communicate. Plays or theatre pieces can very quickly become stale. Then theatres become libraries."

"That is my starting point, my original premise if you want - and I fear that nobody has been thinking about this working inside a producing theatre. They teach it in some academic places, in some universities or schools. But they are not committed to it in theatres where the orthodoxy is still about the text."

"So it seemed to me that this was the most valuable thing that I could do here, particularly as the Young Vic has always been a theatre that sees one of its purposes as being to promote the work of younger theatre artists. It became clear to me that the most important thing I could do would be to swing some of that energy behind directors. Also to find a way, a forum and an arena where I could think about it, experiment with it, and then act on those thoughts about what is the best relationship between actors, words, music and an audience and how directors intervene in the process."

"So we devised a programme after much thought and debate and argument were incredibly fortunate to get the generous commitment of the Genesis Foundation to the whole process. The Genesis Directors Programme is the most important means that we have to do that work about directors now in the UK, I believe."

Pausing to get a second coffee, David returned to the table with our drinks, weaving his way through the crowd and the heavy cigarette smoke, and took up almost exactly where he had left off.

"I think the job of the director is to make the work absolutely in and of the moment within which the production takes place. People often talk about theatre or art or plays as reflecting society, or reflecting the way people live and think in a given time. And that is to some extent true. But it is also an action. It is also a part of the life; it is not separate from life."

"Let me give you a current example. The reason I was keen to have someone like Luc Bondy working with us is because Luc's genius - and I do not use that word lightly when I talk about a director - his genius is to make the work absolutely electrically plugged into the moment in which it is happening. So watching Luc produce a play based on something Sophocles wrote 3000 years ago, I am thrilled to see how he has managed in some miraculous way to create the same circumstance so that it feels to me as it might have done watching The Women of Trachis when it was a new play dealing with the most contemporary concerns of the people watching it."

"The play has been reconceived so that the politics of the play are the politics in our newspaper today; and it is extraordinary watching the play because one of the themes of the play, one of the narrative elements, is about a general - originally it was Hercules - who has invaded a foreign country, who has been arrested for torturing prisoners. This matches the news headlines we are reading today. You feel that that is what is must have been like watching the play with Sophocles sitting in the audience having just written a play intended to have an effect on the social life and politics of the community he was writing for."

I wondered if he felt that a play was like a blueprint; and the director was the architect who had to oversee the building of the structure according to the original plans. David disagreed with me.

"It's not that the play is just a blueprint and the actors and director are like the labourers and contractor making sure to follow the plan. It is also an art - an art of the first degree - finding a way to make the play live; and you require for that the ability to express your own personality. Because there is no point in seeing a show that could have been directed much the same by any one of a dozen different directors."

"The stamp of the director is what matters. What's exciting is watching the individuality of an individual production. But you need the skill to be able to do that, to give it that individuality, in a way that illuminates the play and doesn't disguise it, or pervert it or change it away from the author's intentions - and that's very hard to do."

And that, of course, is why Genesis is supporting David Lan in creating a programme to train directors in the most practical way possible - through workshops and placements in an actual producing theatre. The programme is conspicuous for having several levels of entry. It can start with people who simply want to be in the field; take them through various stages until the ones who are ready to express their personalities emerge; and then their work culminates in being given a major production.

As David explained, "The way in which the programme is conceived is as a series of possibilities and opportunities for people. We think of it as being for younger directors. But actually, I think of it as a programme that gives people a break and there is no reason you cannot get an older person who started late or is switching careers who does not need that break. Direct Action is there in the Genesis Directors Project because it is about giving somebody a break and it doesn't not terribly matter at what level or age they started."

"When we started the Direct Action Series, the idea behind it was simply to give people a chance to work in larger theatres and spaces and have access to working on a main stage. We were thinking of people who had experience but had previously only been able to work in smaller theatres or fringe venues. We looked quite carefully for people who were absolutely ready to make that leap but would not be given the opportunity to make that leap just yet or without us. I also felt these people would need our support to make that leap successfully."

"But we have also done shows in the studio which we called Direct Action because the particular purpose of that was to move someone up from rung to rung at a different level. It doesn't really matter. The minute you start to make rules and insist on sticking to them then the whole thing becomes moribund. You have to remain flexible and just keep asking what do people need. We try to respond to need, what individual people need. That's how we try to run the programme."

"An analogy that I would be happy with is that it is like singing. There is the song and there is the singer. If you hear Barbara Hendrix singing, then listening to a song by Schubert is going to be completely different from hearing Jessye Norman singing the same song. There's a double pleasure - you hear the great song by Schubert; but you are also in the presence of Barbara Hendricks or Jessye Norman. The power of the personality of the singer is as important as the composer's."

"It is entirely about the fact that people are unique and irreplaceable."

David applied his analogy to what can happen to an audience when in the presence of a play that has been put on by a sympathetic, unique and powerful director.

"The kind of extraordinary miracle that occasionally occurs is that sometimes with the great plays one feels that time is completely dissolved, the play and playwright are addressing us today and a time span like 3000 years is nothing."

"That is why, in the Direct Action Season - and the current one will be our last in the old building before it is closed and remodelled - we're not mixing this with new writing. I feel that new writing is a different category of work and is well taken care of elsewhere."

"The work of getting a new piece of writing into a state where it can best be seen by an audience is very tricky. I don't want the emerging directors to spend all their time working with the writer in order to fix the play, trying to understand a really new voice of a playwright, and so on."

"That's why on the whole Direct Action chooses established plays that need re-interpreting, or that have fallen into neglect.

"It's rare for a new play to be ready to go on the first day of rehearsal. If you pick an established play, it gives the directors a chance to think about this other work - of interpretation and re-creation. The plays we do are selected in conjunction with the directors we want to work with. We choose the directors because we know that they are people we want to support, we know their work, we've been working with them in various contexts already and we have an established sense of what they can do and of a relationship with the Young Vic."

"The work that came up for them this time came from unexpected angles. They are all very strong personalities as directors. We thought it would be exciting for them to be directing work that people don't know. All of the plays in the new season are rarely performed but are finished, tested and tried - and they are all by writers whom we think people will want to come and see."

"One of the tricky things about running this programme and presenting work is that I often think that announcing a play is going to be directed by a young director is a bit like saying your teeth will be drilled by a young dentist or your hair will be cut by a young hair dresser. People get nervous. To counterbalance the young directors we say: yes, but these are absolutely fascinating plays by playwrights you like, and if you do not come and see these here, you may never get to see them anywhere ever. We are trying to attract a big audience, of course."

Of course, when David rudkin's play Afore NightCome was directed by Rufus Norris for the first ever Direct Action at the Young Vic, it won prizes as well as acclaim. The most recent Direct Action selection, some voices by Joe Penhall was a huge success with critics and audiences and had its run extended. I suggested that that in itself would help build a kind of "brand" called Direct Action which people would come to trust and to look out for on a regular basis every year.

David responded, "I certainly hope so. But it takes a while to build a brand and confidence in an audience."

"The other side to all this, more generally, is that the work we do because of Genesis sits alongside productions by the great masters - Luc Bondy, Peter Brook, Trevor Nunn, Richard Jones. I draw on these directors unashamedly. I also draw unashamedly on an old idea from the Royal Court. The idea is to do new plays alongside classics - and we have new directors along side the classic, established great directors of our time. I think the great thing is that it gives status to the new work. On this stage you will see great works. In this season, as it happens, the young directors' work is nestled within the arms of the great Luc Bondy because his play starts, goes away on tour, then returns after the Young Directors season."

"I'm very unhappy with the current idea of tiers of artists. Even the idea of calling our people young directors bothers me. Luc struggles. It is not as if once you have done 37 productions, you will walk in next time and know how to do it. Everyone is equal and everyone is struggling all the time. On the first day of rehearsal it can happen that you arrive and you have no idea how to start or what you are going to do. You make it up. We are all equal and everyone is starting afresh each time. Kids, young people, sometimes produce work that the most experienced directors couldn't even imagine."

What the project has also started to do, which David Lan is very keen on, is to attach young directors when it is possible to more than one show and more than one mentor. So one director will assist Richard Jones and then Trevor Nunn and see opposite ends of the spectrum of directing. Also, people who are part of this programme are given work to do with young children and directing shows for the schools.

For David Lan, the message he wants to get across about this project is that anyone can and should try if they have any desire to discover their talent in that area.

"Contact the Young Vic by email or phone. It is all you have to do", David points out.

"I want this place to feel like a home for directors; and that is beginning to happen. It is completely open. We welcome everyone who wants to be with us. We can't, of course, give productions to everyone because part of our job is to choose and be selective and make decisions about people we feel the audience will enjoy. But the workshops and sessions we do are all open, all free and anyone who wants to have a go can do so."

For more information, or to join the Genesis Directors Project run by the Young Vic, visit the Young Vic web site.