Elyse Dodgson Speaks about International Playwrights

Elyse Dodgson has been running the International Playwrights programme at the Royal Court Theatre since its inception. Nearly ten years ago, Genesis Foundation founder, John Studzinski, began supporting this project that has become one of the cornerstones of London theatre. With the tenth anniversary of this partnership coming up in 2007, Elyse talked to the Genesis Foundation about her work and about this especially exciting year at the Royal Court.

On Mexico

This year is the 50th anniversary of the founding of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre - and so it is a year of celebrations. And we are very pleased and touched that it was decided to start the celebrations with one of our international projects - readings of contemporary plays from Mexico, where we have been running workshops for the past three years.

Elyse and colleagues with some Mexican playwrights

We brought over five playwrights to do five readings of Mexican plays. That is the culmination of nearly three years of work. It was always in the vision of the Royal Court Theatre to celebrate the 50 years in a way that would show that this is a theatre dedicated to international new writing as well as finding new playwrights in the UK. From its founding by George Devine, the Royal Court has been a writer's theatre.  It's great that in celebrating these five decades we have been having reminders of our past - readings of 50 popular plays that were first performed here in English, Harold Pinter coming soon to perform Krapp's Last Tape by Beckett. We have been revisiting many points from the past that are markers of the progress of this theatre since 1956.

But at the same time the anniversary is about looking forward to the future.  That is why the celebrations began with the Mexican readings; and it is significant to me that that opening of our anniversary celebrations looked forward to a project that is international - our Mexican season in the autumn.

Our connection with Mexico began when, in typical fashion, we first went over there to meet artists and theatre practitioners. We already believed that there would be a fantastic energy for theatre in Mexico. Cinema, as we all know, is flourishing; and the great energy for directors and for the visual arts is well known.

But what about the actual writing of plays?

I found there were many young people writing plays, young people  who cared passionately about what was happening in the world and also specifically in their own country, Mexico, because it borders with the most powerful country in the world, the USA.

But apart from more general politics, a central theme we found was that these writers felt they were being a bit squashed by the directors. In almost every country theatre these days is a director's initiative. They are the most assertive, see themselves as auteurs and control the theatres, so they want to put on the classics, the musicals - that is, the plays and theatrical events that will be safe for their audiences and their box offices. In almost every country in the world when I go there the theatre is led by the directors. The slight difference in Mexico is that the designers are also major artists who can dominate various aspects of production, which shows how strong the visuals are in Mexico.

One thing I discovered when I first went to Mexico on my reconnaissance trip, was that everything is centralised in Mexico City so that even when you are working with theatre outside the main urban centre - with theatre practitioners from all parts of the country - theatre is very centralized and people are brought to Mexico City to study, to practise, to work, to gain their reputations and experience before heading back out. The National Theatre in Mexico City has a complex of six theatres, which shows the whole range of work.

And then I discovered one special theatre that is a supported, subsidised theatre within Mexico City. It was recommended to me by the then head of the National Theatre of Mexico. "You must visit Teatro Helenico, you must meet Luis Mario Moncada," I was told. "Moncada is a person who runs a theatre and he is also a practising playwright."

For me it was a dream come true. Even at the Royal Court we do not have a practising playwright running the theatre.

And the moment Mondada and I met we knew we were on the same wave length, knew that we wanted to work together. We knew about the same Latin American writers, we appreciated the same things. So we decided to embark upon this project.

With the support of the Teatro Helenico, applications were opened for young writers from all over the country. They already had a very strong network for knowing who those writers are because they have national prizes and an incredibly lively theatre scene. About 40 people came forward and from these we chose 14. One was too ill to attend, so we had 13. And we have never lost those 13 writers. They stayed with us over two years.

We went back to Mexico three times, bringing with us each time different practitioners from the RCT. First we went with Simon Stephens and April de Angelis, the playwright. The second time we went with Simon Stephens and the director Roxana Silbert; and the third time, with Roxana again and the director Indhu Rubasingham. Each time we were there to look at what, as young playwrights in Mexico, their work needed to address.  There were very powerful subjects, very local yet very universal. We went through all the different phases of working on these plays; but we also worked with young Mexican directors.  For these writers to survive in Mexico they need to find local directors who are going to support their work and help them develop it. So it was necessary to form relationships between our writers and young directors.

We had a whole series of local directors in the last workshops, each of whom was attached to one of the plays. At the beginning of this workshop the directors and the writers wouldn't even sit next to each other, let alone work together.

So we got them to do that! We started by getting the director to sit next to the playwright of the assigned play and begin a real dialogue with them.  That helped the development process because on some occasions the collaborations became really solid. Teatro Helenico chose five plays from the workshops that they wanted to do in Mexico City. And we chose five to bring to the Royal Court for the readings in January 2006.

It wasn't easy for us because we had to translate and prepare for this presentation in London. We opened the 50th anniversary celebratory season with it in January and called it  Arena Mexico They were just readings but people were queueing round the block to get into them in the small theatre upstairs. There was a huge interest and passion for the readings. It was really overwhelming.

And then we had to struggle with another choice. Because of the success of this project we were then invited by the Cervantino Festival - the most prestigious international arts festival in Latin America - to co-produce one of the Mexican plays in their festival in October 2006.

We chose Insomnia and Midnight by Edgar Chias and are presenting it at the Royal Court as a Genesis Project on 21 September for three weeks; and then we fly out to Guanajuator for the festival - a beautiful hillside town and on to Helenico in Mexico City. What makes me most proud is that it is a true co-production. When you've built up a relationship with a theatre over so many years and you know the differences and the similarities and the strengths that you have together, it is a true collaboration.

We have decided to do the play in an English translation  but the actress has been cast and she is Mexican but also fluent in English.  She appeared in the film Amores Perros and the Tommy Lee Jones film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. She's one of the leading and most famous Mexican actresses in theatre and film called Vanessa Bauche, and it is a great opportunity for her to perform in a high profile play in London. We have just cast the British actor Nicholas Le Prevost and are equally excited about that. The Festival is celebrating the UK this year. They celebrate a country every year as the honoured country; and oddly enough they are encouraging us to do it in English.

Elyse and colleagues with Mexican playwrights in Teotihuacan

The other writers also interest us and we have not let go of them. The huge interest in this project, especially in Mexico itself, is gratifying - we keep being asked when are we going to do the next cycle of workshops. And we will. Doing only one cycle somewhere is not enough to have a real impact. Mexico is definitely still on our agenda.

The whole Mexican project has been thrilling. We won't be doing more readings around the play here; but the five plays that were read in January are being published by Nick Hern and launched as a volume of five new Mexican plays when the play opens here.

And other theatres are interested too.

We know that we cannot produce all the work we develop, and that's why we invite other new writing-centred theatres to see the work and workshops. As we found with the Russians and Germans first shown here in our programme, we hope these writers will have a future in the English language too. That is very important to them. It is important for this work to give them more power to get their work on in their own country. It never fails that if you get the work on in English it gives you the attention of the whole English speaking world and it absolutely boosts your ability to get it on in your own country.

This has happened with the Russians. There is now almost a cult for Vassily Sigarev in the USA and that has come from his work with the Royal Court - and fed back into Russia.

We are very proud of this and especially proud that it seems to be happening in Mexico now, where the work with playwrights initiated through the Royal Court's processes is having such a strong impact.