Home is on James Brining's mind a lot just now. As Dundee Rep's
artistic director for the last nine years prepares to up sticks back to
his Leeds birthplace to take up the equivalent post at West Yorkshire
Playhouse, he's also in the thick of rehearsals for his swansong
production at Dundee of a play that itself sounds closer to home than
even he perhaps realised.
“What an amazing play,” Brining says of Further Than The Furthest
Thing, Zinnie Harris' breakthrough work about an island community
forced out by the eruption of a volcano. “It's extraordinary, but it
isn't that well known. It's got such richness and scope in its themes.
It's about religion, capitalism, displacement, refugees, deceit, truth,
lies. It's about epic themes and domestic themes. The more you mine it,
the more you find in it.
“My wife's from Orkney, and being Leeds born and bred, I'm not really a
country person. But when I got to know Orkney, I started to, not
understand the island mentality, but to have a sense of what it's like
to be on an island, and to be physically surrounded by that much water,
and with a sky so huge and with the horizon so present. It does do
something to the dynamics of life. I became interested in that just as
a geographical environment, and the isolation that can bring, but also
the sense of community it engenders, both good and bad. So there's all
these personal reasons for doing this play, which I think can be
emotionally devastating.”
Another influence on Brining's choice was an exhibition by artist
Elizabeth Ogilvie at Dundee Contemporary Arts, just across the road
from the Rep, which showed work that utilised water and light. With
Ogilvie drafted in to advise, Neil Warmington's set for Further Than
The Furthest Thing will see the Rep stage flooded with 29,000 litres of
water.
Such scale and ambition have been a feature of Brining's tenure in
Dundee ever since he became Chief Executive and joint Artistic Director
of the theatre with Dominic Hill in 2003. Dundee Rep had already been
transformed by the creation of a permanent acting ensemble by previous
artistic director Hamish Glen, and when Brining and Hill came in as a
package, it broke the mould again. Over the next few years, while Hill
concentrated on reinventing the Rep space with productions of Howard
Barker's Scenes from An Execution and a rollicking new version of
Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Brining seemed to look to more popular fare.
Musicals in particular have become a Dundee staple, with Brining
directing the little known Flora The Red Menace as well as Gypsy and
Sweeney Todd. It was his production of Stephen Greenhorn's Sunshine on
Leith, however, that has been one of the Rep's biggest hits to date.
Ostensibly a Proclaimers juke-box musical that was clearly a winner
from the start, Greenhorn's play had a credibility to it that went
beyond the one-dimensional plotlines of similar vehicles. In a bold
move, Sunshine on Leith took on two commercial tours
“We learnt a massive amount doing that,” Brining says. “People think
that commercial theatre is all about spending massive amounts of money,
when in actual fact you're fighting over every penny.”
When Hill left Dundee to run the Traverse in Edinburgh and now the
Citizens Theatre in Glasgow, Brining stayed in Dundee, combining
productions of Christmas shows such as Cinderella and A Christmas Carol
with meatier fare including Sam Shepard's A Lie of the Mind and Edward
Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
If the incorporation of Ogilvie's ideas into Further than The Furthest
Thing show off some of the synergies that now exist between the Rep,
DCA and other organisations as part of Dundee's ongoing cultural
renaissance, it also hints at Brining's skills as a diplomat,
politician and producer which have come into play just as much as in
the rehearsal room.
“I don't think every director either can do it or necessarily wants to
do it,” Brining says. “You have to end up balancing different parts of
your brain and different responsibilities. I wouldn't be interested,
and have been, in just being a freelance director who directs plays.
That's not enough for me. I want to have some kind of control over the
environment and the circumstances in which the work is being made, and
also the bigger point of why we're doing the work that we do. What is
the point of having a theatre in Dundee? What sort of work do we want
to do, and what sort of relationships do we want to have, not just with
the people who come and see plays here, but with everyone in the city.
“But things go in cycles. I'm really proud of some of the work we've
created, especially latterly. We've done big shows, ambutious things,
but the ebb and flow of that is that as an artistic director you have
to have a level of patience, and think for the next nine months I'm
going to be concentrating on a particular thing for the organisation,
or you do a particular show in order for something else to happen. It's
the bigger picture that interests me, but there's also a necessity to
go into that rehearsal room, close the door behind me and to lose
myself in play, I guess, just to remind myself what it's about. The two
things for me provide a healthy and necessary equilibrium.
“There's a broader point here as well about who should be running
theatres, and if it should be a practicing artist or not. For me, if
the person leading the organisation is going into a rehearsal room and
engaging with the technical staff and everyone else, that kind of keeps
you honest. I am on the line when we're doing a show along with
everyone else, and if I mess up then I'll carry the can for that. If I
was just talking about policy and everything else, you can talk about
that forever, but if people see you sweating because you care about a
production so much, that's important, because it's a reminder that,
actually, what matters is what happens onstage.”
Brining hadn't planned Further Than The Furthest Thing to be his final
production in Dundee. When he was offered the job, he was some way in
to planning projects for next season, including She Town, a new play
based around female mill workers in Dundee. Brining was also set to
direct J.B Priestley's Time and the Conways in a co-production with
Edinburgh's Royal Lyceum Theatre. Both of these will now be picked up
by the Rep's associate director Jemima Levick, who must be considered a
strong candidate to take over from Brining in Dundee.
“Nine years in one place is quite a long time,” he admits. “I have to
say as well that there are a thimbleful of jobs I would've been
interested in, and there are very few places I want to live in apart
from here. I hadn't planned to leave Scotland, but the job in Leeds
just came up.
“I have a sense of the importance of West Yorkshire Playhouse to the
city. When I was growing up there was Leeds Playhouse, which was part
of the old poly. I remember going there as a kid, but when I left Leeds
to go to university, that's when West Yorkshire Playhouse was being
built. Then it opened when I'd mentally left Leeds, but I'd always
watched its impact on the city, even though I'd never worked there.
“There's a certain point in your head when you're not interested in
other jobs, because you've not been there long enough, or you feel like
you've not completed enough but after eight years I was definitely
getting a sense that it was probably time to start thinking about a new
challenge for myself. I think also it's good for the theatre to have a
new set of co-ordinates around itself. If I'd still been here after
ten, twelve, fifteen years, you'd be able to see it in people's faces
wondering why I was still here and thinking I'd be here forever.”
Brining arrived in Scotland in 1997 to run TAG, a post previously held,
incidentally, by outgoing West Yorkshire Playhouse director, Ian Brown.
Brining's career as a theatre director began at Cambridge University
before he decamped to Newcastle to run a company on the Enterprise
Allowance Scheme. Brining worked at the Orange Tree in Richmond, where
he first met Hill, and later ran Proteus theatre company in Basingstoke.
“There was something about Scottish theatre that suited me,” Brining
says of the move north. “Theatre of all the artforms explores identity
the best, and Scottish identity is always up for grabs.”
Such an attitude sees Brining leave Dundee Rep in pretty good shape.
Not only is there an ongoing confidence in the work onstage, but as an
organisation the Rep appears to be a tightly run ship. As evidence of
this, at time of writing Dundee Rep is the only arts organisation in
the country previously funded by the Scottish Arts Council as a
three-year Foundation funded body to be given a guarantee of a similar
status by Creative Scotland over the next three years.
“The way my time in Dundee has flown by is scary,” Brining reflects.
“Nine years have felt like three years, which is ridiculous. The same
ideas are still in place as were here when I arrived in Dundee, but the
goalposts are always shifting, and that's not just about my own work.
It's everyone involved in Dundee Rep who make it a success, and I
really believe that a theatre has to contribute something to the local
community. The challenge for whoever takes over here is to make sure it
keeps evolving”
Further Than The Furthest Thing, Dundee Rep, April 24th-May 5th
www.dundeerep.co.uk
Six of The Best – James Brining Chooses His Most Memorable Dundee
Moments
Flora the Red Menace – John Kander and Fred Ebb - 2004
Kander and Ebb's little-known musical about starving artists, communism
and love in low places.
“This was the first show I did in Dundee, but no-one had heard of it.”
A Lie of the Mind - Sam Shepard – 2004
Scottish premiere of Shepard's study of two American families in crisis.
“An amazing piece of writing, but not many rep theatres would do a play
like that.”
Dr Korczak's Example – David Greig – 2006
Originally directed by Brining when he ran TAG, Greig's play looked at
a real life paediatrician working in war-torn Warsaw in the 1940s.
“That's the show I'm maybe most proud of. It's this beautiful, delicate
little show, but it's about these huge things.”
Sunshine on Leith – Stephen Greenhorn – 2007
Greenhorn's Proclaimers soundtracked show based around two squaddies
readjusting to civvie street was much grittier than most jukebox
musicals. It's most recent revival in 2010 featured Lord of the Rings
star Billy Boyd in a leading role.
“This was hugely entertaining, but it also said something very serious
about some things going on in the world today.”
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - Edward Albee - 2009
Albee's lacerating study of a middle-aged couple at war over one long
booze-soaked night.
“What a brilliant play that is. We had a set of brilliant performances,
and you could see the audience at the end feeling like they'd just been
in the room with these people.”
Sweeney Todd – Stephen Sondheim – 2010
The demon barber of Fleet Street with show-tunes scooped several awards
for an epic production.
“I'd wanted to do this for ages. I saw Declan Donnellan's production,
and was absolutely gobsmacked. Ten years later I tried to do it, but we
never got the money for it. Then another ten years go by, and I finally
get to do it. It's a fascinating play. It makes your heartbeat change.
I could sing you every note of that show if you wanted.”
The Herald, April 24th 2012
ends
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