– When I saw the play on Thursday, what struck me was just how relentless it is, and how utterly cruel it is. It’s a word that came to my mind, and so I went to the dictionary, to the Western New World’s Dictionary and Thesaurus, and looked up the word cruel, and discovered that it comes from the word crud, which is raw, unadulterated, naked, and synonyms are brutality, sadism, mercilessness, wickedness, coarseness, ruthlessness, rancor, venom, unfeelingness, fierceness, fiendishness, bloodthirstiness, relentlessness, harshness, heartlessness. The contrary of cruel is kindness, benevolence, and humanity. Now, I was curious if you don’t think this is indeed a good description of creditors.
Alan Rickman: Well, fortunately for us, and probably everybody’s journey home, the audiences also seem to find it very funny. Maybe that’s true cruelty, you see the other side of it, it’s got two sides to it. But it’s a tricky one to talk about, because I don’t know how many people here have seen it, and how many people haven’t, and are planning to. And so it’s one of those pieces of work where you really shouldn’t know anything when you come in. So I’m nervous of talking about it too much before I give too much away.
– When you say the other side of cruelty might be humor, or might be laughter, is that precisely because the cruelty, as it were, works as an abrasive?
Alan Rickman: I think because it’s recognizable or something, and you know you’re watching something that isn’t just punishing, but it’s something about real life. I think the reason that, thankfully, people are enjoying it so much is because they see their own marriages.
– I must say to this audience.
Alan Rickman: Pinned out like a butterfly.
– No, and I must say to this audience, many of you probably will see, I hope you will see, creditors. If not tonight, I hope you come back, because I’m not in the business of flattery, but it is actually tremendous. And I came here alone on Thursday, and I went home to what I believed was my wife. Rather worried. So the play makes you fearful in some way that you are maybe not living a lie. I mean, there’s something, and in that way, there’s this cruelty, which I want to insist upon, even if we don’t talk too much about the play.
Alan Rickman: Well, I hope you also went home fiercely protective of what you’ve got, and valuing it.
– Yes.
Alan Rickman: Okay. Okay. To be fair, of course, your wife should be here.
– She should be. I tried to convince her, but she was, after what I said about the play, she was rather worried.
Alan Rickman: Oh.
– Now, all right. I don’t think I’ll get much further here with cruelty. You must admit, though, that I did try. Now, I’m interested in your work as a director here, because often people, rightly so, know you as an actor. And here, you have worked as a director with three magnificent actors, and with David Gregg, who is a playwright, and who here adapted the Strindberg play, which isn’t that well-known in the canon of Strindberg plays. And so, we have someone who is known often as an actor working as a director, someone who’s working as a playwright, working as a translator, not quite a translator. As he says, he’s trying desperately to make this play as immediate, I would say, as raw, perhaps as cruel in some sense, as at all possible. So, describe, if you would, the working that a director who has an empathy for the actors might have, might bring to this piece.
Alan Rickman: I suppose, you see, I resisted directing for a long time, because I thought I wouldn’t know what to say. And it’s a cumulative process. You get to the point, I suppose, when you know that the directors you trust most are the ones, when you ask them a question, they’ve got the guts to say, I don’t know. And I think most actors would agree that when you hear a director say that, you relax inside, because you know you’re at least in the room with somebody vaguely honest. And that there’s going to be a discovery, and that there’s going to be a kind of marketplace of ideas in the rehearsal room. I think the way that one works depends very much on the play that you’re doing. And so, I’m sure some of the cast are sitting out here. So, I have to be careful. But this play did demand me to be, I guess, a kind of ringmaster. And I suppose ringmasters do carry whips. So, a lot of the process was about speed and relentlessness and honesty. And that starts with the casting process and who you choose. And it’s like Peter Brook says in, I think, The Empty Space, you know, it’s, theater is a religion. And it is definitely that to me. And if it’s a religion, choose your church carefully. And that includes choice of actors. And that’s, it’s as much an instinctive thing as it is measurable. There are actors I believe and excite me because I don’t know what they’re gonna do next. But that it’s within a censoring device that you set up during rehearsals. So, you know, I get the greatest pleasure watching these three actors now because of wondering what they might do at the same time as cracking a whip. That’s hard for them. You know, they’re being restrained. It’s a horse metaphor. They’re being, well, I have three great racehorses on stage. They’re pedigree racehorses. And I am reining them in and kicking them on at the same time. It’s a sort of impossible aim really. But then so is acting. And so is honesty.
– And you are rather interested because now you’ve mentioned that word at least twice here and a few times before, that you’re interested in the notion of ignorance. Nearly the euphoria of ignorance. You’re interested by the idea that you are approaching this from the point of view of not having answers.
Alan Rickman: Yes, innocence might be a nicer word. but I guess ignorance is fine.
– I didn’t mean it as an insult.
Alan Rickman: I love the fact that, you know, in these days of, you know, all the things you’ve been asked to switch off before this starts, and some of them will go off anyway. And we know that.
– Don’t, turn it off.
Alan Rickman: And you know, you go to the movies and there’s Avatar and I shoot Harry Potter and I’m surrounded by green screens and the arrival of iPads and all the rest of it. Still and all, there’s still this human need to be told a story and the theater can still do that as well, if not better than anything else. Down go the lights and something happens and an audience becomes utterly part of that experience. I promise you that the three actors have a real sense of you being with them or not with them during the 90 minutes of this play.
– And the three actors are particularly, I think, compelling here because they are in a way, the three, I mean, I’m going to try not to give it away. We’re playing this dance of trying to keep you ignorant and innocent to some extent, and maybe experiencing your own vulnerability when it comes to the married life. But the three actors are, in some sense, three sides of one person, of one being, of one psyche.
Alan Rickman: Well, it’s completely fair that you would say that and completely right and proper that that’s what you take away from it. And I know you mentioned that before. And to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure that we ever framed that as a thought. What fascinates me is, I mean, it fascinates me that you say that and now I’ll have to think about it. But what’s also fascinating is that he’s, Strindberg is constantly called a misogynist. And yes, he plays with the notion of misogyny, but at the same time, he creates an extraordinary woman that is in no way to be anything other than celebrated. So three sides of one coin, of course, suggests that somehow the sexuality gets merged. And that may be true, that it plays with notions of masculinity and femininity throughout the three of them. And what are possibly accepted or predicted responses of either sex.
– What do you make of Strindberg? Because in reading the literature about Strindberg, and even in seeing this play and being vulnerable to its extraordinarily corrosive and modern language, as we were reflecting before, this is a play that’s nearly 150 years old. And it’s every bit as intense as anything I know written today, for sure. And there may be even reason to believe that it is more intense than many things that are written today. I’m wondering what you make of this misogyny, because to me, the misogyny is present, but it’s more the, the word is misogamy, which is the hatred of marriage rather than the misogyny. And I’m wondering if you think the misogyny gets in the way, and if it is really what one should focus one’s attention on at all.
Alan Rickman: I don’t think any labels are worth focusing one’s attention on with Strindberg, because that’s to deny what he is. I mean, to try to explain why during the play you’re suddenly talking about epilepsy from nowhere, or various other topics that come up is to kind of destroy part of the experience.
– And he doesn’t explain anything, ever.
Alan Rickman: No, nothing, and he jumps about like a kangaroo.
– Which makes the reigning all the more important.
Alan Rickman: Yes.
– I mean, we went from horses to kangaroos.
Alan Rickman: And a little cruder than racehorses, probably. I don’t know, there was, I was asked recently by an actress in London who’s writing a book about acting, and she said, I’m going around asking actors if they would give me a sentence or two that would help to demystify the acting process. And so I babbled something or other off the spare of the moment. And Lindsay Duncan, with whom I appeared here in Private Lives, who never wastes a word, she turned to her and asked her the same question, and she said, why demystify it? And I think it’s partly the same answer, in a way. It doesn’t help you in this current situation, but.
– But they didn’t bring me here to be helped.
Alan Rickman: No.
– So it’s all right.
Alan Rickman: But yeah, I’m a great one for not explaining too much about what we do, because I think that the more open the audience is, the more chance the actors have of being open, and the more unnameable the experience is. Especially with a play like this. Sorry.
– No, no, no, no. I enjoy these moments when there’s silence in a conversation. And partly, I enjoy it because this play is very much about listening.
Alan Rickman: Yep.
– The virtue of your answer is it’s concision. You lost not one word on me there. But, Jermaine Greer, in the playbill that you will all get for coming to the play tonight, has said, no one writer writes better about marriage than Strindberg. Which, coming from the feminist that she is, writing the male eunuch and such famous books, is quite a statement. Quite a statement.
Alan Rickman: Yeah.
– Leaves me perplexed.
Alan Rickman: Yes, it depends what her experience of marriage has been, doesn’t it? A bit. Or her relationships with men, generally. I don’t know, we’d have to ask her a few questions about that, and then, we could ring her up. She’d be very happy to talk. But, I think Pinter writes pretty well about marriage, in terms of modern writers. But, I think there’s a definite connecting line between Strindberg and Pinter. And, he said so himself. He admired him enormously.
– I’m also quite interested by the title of this play. Creditors. And, once again, because my brain functions this way, I had to look where the word credit came from. And, it comes from, I trust you, credo, which is very interesting in the context of the play, because there is a sentence about, I think it’s Adolf, who says, I have to believe in something. And so, I’m interested in this notion, without speaking too much about the play, once again, of the title, and how important it is, and how important it is, both to give and to get, and in a relationship, we’re always either the one who receives more, or gives more. I’m particularly interested in this notion of gift giving. In this country, I don’t know if in England it’s the same, but there’s stores that are called gift shops, which is very odd, considering that a gift doesn’t really precede its donation, in some way. But, it does in these shops. So, the word.
Alan Rickman: We have gift shops.
– You have gift shops, too.
Alan Rickman: But, they’re usually connected to museums, so I don’t know what that tells you.
– The title, I think it’s.
Alan Rickman: But, one word leads to another, really, doesn’t it? And, in my head, often.
– Yeah.
Alan Rickman: It’s a sort of chain reaction of words. And, creditor, to me, leads to words like debt.
– Right, and being indebted, too.
Alan Rickman: Yeah, and being indebted means about being controlled. And so, in many ways, why do I owe you something? Or, why do you owe me something? That means you, in some sense, possess me, or I possess you, and therefore, I own you. And, I think he’s writing about that a lot. And, that can set up its own chain reaction of cruelty and control. Which is, I think, something that all relationships battle with. You know, you get inside a relationship, and there are very blurry lines about the control of one person by another. And, very subtle control happens. And, the subtler forms of control are often the cruelest ones, words.
– Words, and in this particular play, the power, I mean, the relentless power of insinuation.
Alan Rickman: And, accusation, yeah. You know, he deals in all of it. Some of it’s like a snake, and some of it’s like a sledgehammer.
– The importance in the play, also, another form of control is the desire, both literally, as in the case of one of the protagonists, and, more metaphorically, of sculpting the other. I was quite taken by the importance of sculpture in the play.
Alan Rickman: Yeah, it’s a bit of ownership, again, too. To probably misquote Adolf, you know, he says, she writes me, I sculpt her. Actually, I think I have got that line right. Um, it’s an interesting notion, isn’t it? You have your separate existence, but then, once ownership comes into it, then you also start to change that person in your own image, or to your own ends.
– And idolize the person, make that person into an idol.
Alan Rickman: Or diminish them, which is worse, possibly. Either, either of those things. Put somebody on a pedestal, terrible. Diminish them, make them small, terrible. But, in any way, you know, make them in your own, not your own image, but fashion them to your own fantasies, or your own needs.
– And, to some extent, one could pursue that line of thought and think that the play is also about, is it self-delusion, or is it illusions lost? Or is it the desire we have not to see what is right in front of us? Or is it the power of one of the characters to create a reality which may not even be real?
Alan Rickman: I think that it all goes back to what we were saying, or you were saying earlier, about it’s about listening. And by truly listening, you might actually truly learn something. Whether it’s something you want to learn, and whether or not the thing that you’re learning is actually the truth or not, or a lie. By truly listening, you at least get some information that you may not have had before. And that shakes your head, heart, and body up, and you move on, or possibly expire, without giving anything away.
– No, we didn’t. No, you will say that the choices we have in front of us are rather compelling. See, when I started the conversation with the notion of cruelty, to my mind, it also is a notion of lucidity, which is terribly important in this play. If you go and see a doctor, and you’re sick, and the doctor tells you you’re fine, there’s really no hope. And in some way, this is as he said.
Alan Rickman: I’d like that.
But your body wouldn’t.
Alan Rickman: To be told you’re fine?
– If you’re not.
Alan Rickman: Oh, I see what you mean.
– And in the play, at some moment, it’s a line I very much like. You don’t mind if I read one line?
Alan Rickman: Mm-hmm.
– Um, it’s not giving away the plot, I promise you it. Towards the end of the first act, Gustav says to Adolf before Tekla enters, “‘Remember, you’ve agreed to this. “‘I don’t want you getting squeamish with me afterwards. “‘When I perform an autopsy of a human soul, “‘I’ve been told it can be tough going for a beginner. “‘But once you’ve seen it done, “‘I promise you won’t ever regret it.'”
Alan Rickman: Well, that’s from his perspective, of course, isn’t it? Yeah, that’s, yeah, truth is subjective, probably. It’s his truth. Whether that’s true for Adolf or not is…
– I doubt it, I doubt it. I think regret, remorse, the desire for forgiveness, all of these themes that come up again and again. Strindberg, before this play, well, how did this play come to you, quickly said?
Alan Rickman: It was very simple. There was a phone call from Michael Grandage, who is the artistic director of the Donmark Theatre in London, saying, I have this play called Creditors. Would you like to read it and perhaps direct it? It was that simple. Well, I think what he says in slightly more detail is he always tries to match director to play, so I don’t know what that says about me. But…
– Do you have a clue? I mean, in other words, why are you…
Alan Rickman: He was right in the sense that when I read it, I said, yeah, I really do want to direct this. But it excited me because I didn’t, I read it with no preconceptions. I just wanted to be in a rehearsal room with three actors, finding out how to do it, which is a luxurious position to be in. You know, it’s one set, it’s 90 minutes.
– It’s relentless.
Alan Rickman: It’s relentless, and there are three actors, not 23. So that means that, you know, your energy could be pretty focused.
– Are there, the run of this, of Creditors for the moment at BAM is sort of mid-course of its running now. Differences between London and New York, do you see in both the production and the reception?
Alan Rickman: Physically, it’s very different because the Donmar Theater, for people who’ve never been there, is 250 seats, and the audience sits on three sides. So, and we surrounded the set in London with water. It’s set on an island in Sweden, and it seemed, you know, another metaphor that this world is raised up above something ephemeral and reflective and literal, in the sense that it’s a hotel sitting on water. I got a message, or I seem to have got a message, that when we were coming over here, that they’d be very glad if we didn’t bring the water. So that’s why you have this reflective black surface. But I think this is better. Apart from anything else, in London, the audience started to fall in. And if I know one thing, I knew that if we brought it here, they’d fall in, and then they’d be on the phone to their lawyers immediately. In England, they fall in and then just say, could I have a towel, please? So we avoided the litigation thing. But also, it was also to do with the fact that, I guess the experience for the audience in London was to be inside the play with the actors, because they were surrounding it, and because they were, it was a kind of hotbed. Here, in this beautiful, extraordinary theater, which of course terrified us all, because we were going from 200 to 800 seats, actually turns into the friendliest space and the most supportive space. But it is a bit like what I’m looking at now. It’s a sort of a operating theater. So, and the effect of that is to have you looking down on it. And the first thing that we noticed was the amount of laughter increased. So I think it was really quite alarming to the actors at the first performance, because they really didn’t know how to hold this new animal that was out here, and how can we control them? And this is not just a wild comedy ride. But as time has gone on over the last week, it’s become very much and very properly part of the evening, because as I was saying right at the beginning, it is. There you are, I told you. So I think.
– Each and every time. But Strindberg calls it, not an autopsy of the soul, but a tragic comedy.
Alan Rickman: Yeah, it’s like, Tchaikovs says, the seagull, a comedy. And that tells you what to do. It should be funny. It should be recognizable, a view of the human situation, and that’s funny. Okay, we’re ridiculous in the way we behave. And almost farcical.
– We’re ridiculous and the play will also show to what extent we inflict pain.
Alan Rickman: Yep, and cruelty. So anyway, that’s what happened. And now I think they’re very much my three resources. They can pour the ground with the rest, the best of them. They know what’s going on out there. And it’s rich and shared and real and great.
– Can’t wait to see it again today after Thursday. I’m a deep believer in repetition and this will be a very interesting one.
Alan Rickman: It’s very different every night and you can’t assume that what I’ve just said will happen tonight at all.
– Okay. In closing, something about you that everybody knows about you, which is that supposedly you have a very melliflous voice. And I read that the post office in England asked which would be the best voice in the world. And they came up that the best combination would be Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons combined, the mixture. The mixture. And what struck me quite a part.
Alan Rickman: He’s in town this week. Is he?
– Well, I mean, I think we should try, but I’m, what struck me as particularly funny about this is it’s two scientists, an engineer from the University of Sheffield and the sound engineer. And they worked together on a formula and tone, speed, frequency. Things people work on. But they concluded that the ideal voice should utter no more than 164 words per minute and pause for 0.48 seconds between sentences. Sentences themselves should fall rather than rise in intonation. And I wonder how conscious you are of doing this. Thank you very much. Now, we will take some questions unless you want to answer that question.
Alan Rickman: Everybody’s perception is different. I have no sense of what you’re talking about. The words that linger in my head is when I was at drama school when the thing I had was given the most trouble about from the teachers was my voice. And my voice teacher at the time said, you sound as if your voice is coming out of the back end of a drain pipe.
– And you were, as I was.
Alan Rickman: Why do I remember that?
– Well, as I was mentioning earlier, this essay by German Greer is tremendous. She reviewed one of your early plays.
Alan Rickman: she did, yeah, and why do I remember these words: Alan Rickman`s peculiar diction rended his performance completely incomprehansable from where I was sitting.
It`s interesting to know that one of the themes in Creditors was revenge.
