October 1, 2001

Contact:

Sarah Ray

802-443-5794

sray@middlebury.edu

Posted: October 1, 2001

MIDDLEBURY,

VT - The London Theatre Exchange (LTE) kicks off a

five-week residency at Middlebury College this fall with two

works: “Elizabethan Rivals: Art or Money,” featuring the

legendary rivalry between William Shakespeare and Philip

Henslowe over art versus enterprise, and “A Century on

Stage: from Shaw and Wilde to the Present,” exploring how

dramatic literature in the 20th century reflected a changing

society. “Elizabethan Rivals” is scheduled for Friday, Oct.

12, and “A Century on Stage” for Saturday, Oct. 13. Both

performances will take place at 8 p.m. in the Concert Hall

in the Center for the Arts on South Main Street (Route 30).

Public

question-and-answer periods will follow both performances.

Now

10 years old, LTE was formed by a group of senior actors,

directors and teachers from the Royal Shakespeare Company,

the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Academy of Dramatic

Art, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

LTE’s

award-winning director and producer Chris Hayes and other

founding members sought a way to broaden their creativity by

collaborating with actors, companies and playwrights from

around the world. Known for an innovative production style,

the organization draws on leading theatre companies and

training schools in the United States and Britain for its

artists-actors, teachers, directors, writers, designers and

technicians. Their primary focus is the development of

small-scale ensemble shows with American and British casts,

as well as the organization of workshops for actors and

directors in U.S. and foreign locations from Atlanta,

Nashville and Los Angeles to Milan, Munich and Buenos Aires.

While

in Middlebury, the LTE will present these two performances,

conduct a two-week workshop with Middlebury College

students, and put on a teacher workshop for a diverse group

of Vermont educators and Middlebury College teacher

education students. Director Hayes will also lead a

Middlebury College theater program production of “Henry V”

in early November.

The

performances are sponsored by the Middlebury College

Performing Arts Series and the theatre program. Tickets for

the Oct. 12-13 shows are $10 for general admission and $8

forsenior citizens. A pre-performance dinner Friday, Oct.

12, will begin at 6:30 p.m. at Rehearsal’s Cafe in the

Center for the Arts. Reservations are required. For tickets

or dinner reservations, call the College box office at

802-443-6433.

To

follow is an interview with director and producer Chris

Hayes conducted by Middlebury College Professor of Theatre

Cheryl Faraone via telephone and e-mail in

September:

An

Interview with Chris Hayes of the London Theatre

Exchange

Chris Hayes has worked in British theatre, film and

television for over 30 years, directing in that time more

than 500 productions. He founded the London Theatre Exchange

in 1991. This year during October and November, the London

Theatre Exchange will be in residence at Middlebury College

and will conduct a variety of events: an intensive two-week

workshop by Hayes and colleagues Katya Benjamin and William

Richards for theatre students in acting, voice and movement;

two platform performances for the Performing Arts Series,

one featuring Elizabethan theatre and the second exploring

20th-century British drama; subsequent discussions of the

work and the company’s process; and a three-day teacher

education workshop at the College’s Bread Loaf campus, led

by Benjamin and Richards. The residency culminates with

Hayes’ production of Shakespeare’s Henry V, by a company of

21 Middlebury students. Henry V will be presented in the

Seeler Studio Theatre on Nov. 8-10.

Q:

Chris, how did you first become involved with

theatre?

As a callow and shy 14-year-old, the drama club at my school

was a magnet. It was certainly run by an inspirational

teacher who influenced me greatly. The real pull, though,

was that you got to spend time-sometimes even in chaste

legitimate physical contact-with girls. And naturally, the

girls who were interested in drama were always the most

desirable. Within two years, I knew that I wanted to direct.

Even before I understood what it really meant, it seemed to

me the plum position.

After

drama school (New College in London), I started working in

as many areas of the theatre process as possible. Over the

next few years, I did everything from FOH [front of

house], publicity, stage/production management, lighting

design and…yes, of course, acting. I wanted to direct,

but I thought it important to experience all areas. I

devised and directed several terrible, typical ’60s

confrontational pieces on the nascent London fringe

scene.

My

first professional directing job (i.e. where I was paid to

work with other people who were also paid-albeit £30

per week) was in a small theatre in a bleak summer coastal

resort in East Anglia in Norfolk. It was weekly rep-a new

production each week-70 seats and a proscenium stage, 12

feet by 12 feet. I went to windy Norfolk with, to me, the

huge carrot of directing Blithe Spirit. In a week! Those

were the days when the “company” was acting one show at

night, and during the day rehearsing the next and learning

the lines for the one after that. I have no memory of what

it was like-but I’m sure it was an appalling,

cliché-ridden, derivative mess!

And

no doubt I might have gone on like that if I hadn’t had the

good fortune a few months later to be tried out by Hugh

Cruttwell (then principal of the Royal Academy of Dramatic

Art, RADA) to direct a production of Orton’s Loot in a small

upstairs room with some students. That led to three years

working at RADA virtually continuously, and that’s where I

learnt what directing was

about. I had the good fortune to work on the widest

conceivable range of plays that commercially would have been

impossible. Also I was cutting my teeth on, by and large,

talented actors. It was the best training a young director

could get-and I was being paid for it! I never forgot that

and all through my career I have gone back at different

times to direct and work with students as a teacher at RADA

and other drama training institutions or schools.

Q:

What, then, does directing now mean to you?

Forty years later, I really don’t like the term. It is a

misleading description. The old-fashioned term of

producer-as it was used previously in the United Kingdom, to

mean someone who worked with the actors, etc., as opposed to

the money person or manager-is more descriptive, although

now not reclaimable. Peter Brook suggested the word

“distiller” in 1999. This is much more accurate to describe

the process and function but, unfortunately, far too

pretentious sounding to my ears to actually use. So I guess

we’re stuck with director. Doesn’t really matter as long as

the people who are working with you don’t expect you to

“direct” them anywhere.

Q:

Can you talk about the founding of the London Theatre

Exchange?

LTE was established in 1991 as an independent company to

work in partnership with like-minded organizations overseas

to develop these international cross-cultural productions

and training workshops. Underlying our work are four

principal objectives: to revitalize the presentation of

classical texts by integrating the strengths of different

theatrical traditions, to facilitate the interchange of

practitioners between countries, to create possibilities for

original writing in a global context, and to research and

develop new training methods for today’s modern

actor.

Underneath

what’s written, there is a realization that I came to in the

late ’80s/early ’90s. The personal journey that I found

myself merrily, and unthinkingly, rolling along on-always

directing and producing “bigger and more showy” productions

in the West End, etc.-was not satisfying any more. The

catalyst for this re-think was, I admit, pragmatic. There

was a recession looming and that, quite simply, was making

it harder and harder to do the kind of plays I wanted to in

such a public arena. Looking back on it from this

perspective, I see that I was seduced by the chimera of its

glitz, which, at the time, I took for “success.” Thus the

idea of what became London Theatre Exchange-a platform of a

much lower key was born.

Q:

What can you say about the production of Henry V which you

are directing here?

Except in the most general terms, I am finding it impossible

to describe how Henry V will turn out. The idea is to use

the text as a vehicle to explore war, conflict, heroism,

etc., at the personal level of the ordinary citizen. It has

been cut, I hope, in such a way that gives scope for

this.

However,

the shattering events of September will inevitably sharpen

our collective focus in, as yet, unknown directions. How

this will manifest itself on stage in a play written 400

years ago, I do not yet know. But at this moment, it feels

so present and all consuming that it cannot but affect what

we come up with. Is it a harbinger of the next chilling

phase in the history of “man’s inhumanity to

man”?

In

practical terms, the hope is that the experience of the

immediately preceding British Classic Theatre Workshop will

allow us as a group to develop a common language of

communication, trust, lightness-of-touch, and freedom which

we can take directly into the performance via the rehearsal

room.