theatre talk with ryan

    Blinker has already been performed in Wellington to impressive success and positive reviews, but the two shows have yet to be performed together. With not much time before opening night on July 23 at The Basement, they snuck me in for a coffee and chat on a cold Thursday morning on K road.
    As we sit down for our coffee, Dan looks over at the newspaper and makes a comment about the Tony Veitch controversy.

Ryan: I guess you have to deal with that sort of scrutiny when in the spotlight. Why would you want to become an actor? And a writer as well I guess?
Dan: I think I was always interested in that. I started to do a law degree and then I realised that half-way through it I was more the performance side of the law degree that I was interested in. My main interest is really creating my own stuff, so really combining the writing and the acting. The way we make the play is that we improvise on the floor and write it that way, writing it from improvisation so hopefully it is really a dynamic way of making it work.
Natalie: Gets a fresh and unusual perspective.
Ryan: So it doesn’t sound so written?
Dan: Yeah, exactly.
Natalie: It doesn’t look like it’s written or contrived.
Dan: I guess that when you’re sitting at a desk writing it the tendency is it’s hard to break out of the clichés of what you know works in your head. But when you’re on the floor you kind of bypass all that and if in the moment

 it feels to be working then you know it is.
Natalie: And that means two people can write, you’re getting a play that is written and is character driven, you’re getting something that comes from two perspectives.
R: So when you first go into the rehearsal stage, do you have the characters already?
D: We start with the characters, and we have a world that we want to play in. So for Blinkers we knew that we wanted it in apartments and we wanted it to be a love story so already that sets a whole lot of things up genre-wise.
N: Structurally as well.
D: And then we go about putting the characters in. Spurs was set in the Wild West in America, so we already knew we needed a Cowboy and an Indian. We do a lot of talking before we go up to the rehearsal room about the affect we want it to have on people and things like that. When we start working we make the characters first and set up improvisations like giving each other, we call them provocations, so we give each other provocations of what to work with, and then you come out and you may show the Cowboy getting up in the morning five different ways. Or you might show the Cowboy on the run from some outlaws five different ways.
N: You build a whole bunch of material up alongside the character. It’s a very organic way of working, and you have to trust that what you made is right and you can’t contrive what the end is going to be all the time. Well, never.
R: Why set Spurs in the Wild West?
D: We set Blinkers in a really domestic environment, and it’s comedy but it’s also got some bigger stuff going on, and we always wanted to make a bigger piece, like something you could go to a theatre and you could sit for a whole evening and watch.
N: As a main bill.
D: But we liked the way Blinkers just rounded off, ‘cause we thought we could just bring those characters back for a second innings.
N: A lot of people were saying ‘Oh are you going to make a part two as we want to see Monty and Amy again’. But we never intended to make a piece that was so tidy and tied up and wouldn’t leave the ball in the audience’s court.
R: You want to leave them with questions.
D: Yeah because the second part would only narrow the questions, I think.
N: When people said ‘I want to know what happens’, I thought to myself I know you want to know but if I actually showed you people would be going away going ‘No that’s not what happened’ and be so unsatisfied.
D: So we decided that the second part, or companion piece, was going to be something that worked on a more epic level. There are thematic links between them, kind of like two concept albums between them that you can compare.
N: We wanted it to be a response.
D: Yeah, it’s a response piece basically. There’s lots of ways to look at it, but one way is it’s kind of a fantasy world of the characters from the first piece. The Cowboy and the Indian are like the antithesis of these characters; the alter-egos I guess. There’s a climax at the end of Blinkers and that really linked to Spurs.
N: And because the scenario and circumstance is different, but it is again about two people meeting. All the themes and ideas and truths that you read in the first one, it acts as a foil in the second one and you read it in a different light and begin to uncover new meanings.
R: All the reviews I’ve read for Blinkers have been really positive.
D: Yeah we’ve been really stoked with the response and the temptation is to make something new and separate, but we just really wanted to do consolidate and keep everything for as long as we can.
N: And I think two two-handers is a unique idea and I think it will be really rewarding to have that, as opposed to just making another show four weeks later. I think bringing them together in one night is really interesting.
D: People will get a kick out of seeing two actors jump into these two worlds.
N: It’s than boom-boom; it’s so fast in the turnaround.
R: It must be exhausting.
D: (Laughing) We haven’t actually done them both together yet.
N: So we have to wait and see if we have the stamina.
R: When you’re writing and rehearsing, do you ever have differences of opinion?
D: We’re quite fortunate that because we’re together at the moment as well, we spend 24 hours a day together so we’re constantly talking about the show, but we talk each other round.
N: It’s not often that we complete difference in opinion, and if we do it often results in the conversation that resolves it.
D: And often we want the same thing, but we just think of different ways…
N: The languaging surrounding it.
D: Which I think is what’s really exciting about making it together is you get two people who are coming at it.
R: How’s the theatre in New Zealand going at the moment? It must be better in Wellington than it is up here?
D: We just moved up and depending on who you ask, they’ll go ‘Oh theatre’s better in Auckland’, or ‘Theatre’s better in Wellington’, but to be absolutely honest I don’t think it’s that clear cut.
N: I mean now the Basement is up and running, I think that’s going to make a huge difference to the Auckland theatre scene and it’s a real blessing, particularly to the student demographic because the prices around the $20 mark and not up to the $40-$50 or whatever it is. Worth paying, I’m sure, but for students, to get turnaround where you get a season of 10 days and then you get another play and people no matter of their experience, or background, or who knows who in the industry, you can put something on at the Basement. You get your slot, they go ‘Yip, that looks good, you can have 3 nights’, that’s really super. So hopefully the scene really picks up in terms of students and new work, and devised work as well. With concession at $16, it’s the same as a movie price.
D: There’s no excuse now.
N: And it’s a good night out. I just think it’s more social and there’s a bar.
D: And I often go ‘I’d rather go to a movie tonight than the theatre’, and I’d probably say the movies are safer, but if you go see a good show…
N: Oh the rewards…
D: …is just so much more lasting on you. It’s like the combination of seeing a rock show with a movie.
N: Well, that’s what is should be like. That’s what we’re aiming for.
R: How big a role does the music play? The Patti Smith?
D: Yeah, we’ve used Patti in both shows actually. Music is quite a big component of the show.
N: My character (in Blinkers) is sort of inspired by her.
D: And the second piece uses kind of B-tracks and obscure Patti Smith.
N: Which is great because it sounds like it was inspired by the Wild West.
D: We’ve had lots of really wacky things happen. Like, we made this show and we listened back to a Patti song we were listening to way back to when we were making Blinkers and the lyrics were like almost a description of the show we had made.
N: Yeah, the same as when we had to do publicity, we had to put some stakes in the ground before we even began making it; we had no idea what the show was. We were like, Patti Smith, apartments, my character likes rock and roll, Monty and horses, the energy of the horse inside the apartment is a good collision, a good image. And then we were like Patti Smith… horses.
D: She has an album called ‘Horses’.
N: It was all very fateful, wonderful, perfect.
R: It’s nice when everything falls into place.
N: Oh it is, and you think we must be on the right track.
D: And then you start thinking, ‘Oh people are going to think we chose the music because of that reason’, but we didn’t.
N: It’s not even obvious; it took us four weeks to work it out (laughs).
R: What do you think people will get out of watching the show?
N: One, they will have a really good laugh. I would like them to come away really energised, saying ‘Yeah, that was great; I haven’t seen theatre like that, that was that fast and that punchy and entertaining and layered’, and then wanting to go back and see more stuff at the Basement.
D: And also the satisfaction of seeing a really relevant New Zealand perspective on stage.
N: A relevant perspective on something that’s universal and human in a very simple and wonderful way. I think most importantly a bloody good time.
D: That’s our priority.

After the run in Auckland, the duo are taking Blinkers to the Melbourne Fringe Festival, and then the world, so go to the Basement and see it before it’s lost overseas.