ONE GIANT LEAP Brockley Jack Theatre 2 â 27 July 2019 âThatâs one small step for manâŠâ Neil Armstrong INTERVIEW WITH WRITER & DIRECTOR OF ARROWS AND TRAPS THEATRE, ROSS MCGREGOR LPT: Hello Ross, Weâre rather pleased to have another chat with you about your company, the award nominated Arrows & Traps but also wanted to grill you a little bit on your new writing, ONE GIANT LEAP. How long did it take you to write it? Hi there, how lovely to be asked. I have a somewhat unusual process in that I pitch the idea to the Jack, book the slot, design the artwork / poster, get the show on sale, start selling tickets and only then start writing the script. This is partly due to the quick turnaround of shows and my lack of time between, and also that we have to book these things quite far in advance as the Jack is a popular and sought-after space, but also because I have an issue with self-discipline, and so if I didnât have a concrete deadline, I think Iâd still be tinkering with Frankenstein, a show I wrote and produced in 2017. One Giant Leap is the first completely original piece that Iâve written without a source material, and it took me about two weeks to get onto paper. ONE GIANT LEAP is celebrating the fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing but it seems you have got your own spin on it. Could you tell us the story in nutshell? Yes absolutely. Itâs a comic take on the greatest conspiracy in history. It centres on Edward Price, a producer of a failing 60âs sci-fi show called Moonsaber â which is basically a poor manâs Star Trek. Edwardâs life has fallen into a rut, his wife has left him, heâs lost his house to the IRS, and Moonsaber has just been cancelled in its first season. All looks grim, until a representative to President Nixon comes to his door with a suitcase of money and a proposition. The Apollo 11 Moon Landing is four days away, but due to the moon being about a hundred degrees too hot for photographic film; they can get there, they just canât film it. And what is a massive propaganda exercise without proof that you actually did it? So they ask Edward to fake the footage by any means possible, if he can do it, he can bring Moonsaber back to life for another season, if he fails â he loses everything. Where does the comedy come from? Mainly from the people that Edward employs in Moonsaber. Theyâre a ragtag bunch of actors, stage managers and technicians, and due to the show being cancelled â theyâre falling apart at the seams â itâs down to Edward to keep it all together, to pull off the greatest lie in history, whilst trying to save his marriage, salvage his career, and keep the lies heâs telling intact. Itâs a study of the creative industry, a satirical and loving homage to theatre. Weâre not trying to say anything serious about whether the moon landing was or wasnât real, but more provide a raucous night out at the theatre, and keep you laughing about it on the Overground home. Why is it important to offer a lighter comedy in theatre right now? I think, at times, theatre can take itself too seriously, and become too myopic about tackling the dark and dreadful issues that are affecting society â Iâve lost count of how many shows there are about Brexit playing right now â and whilst thatâs great, and admirable - speaking for myself, after the last year Iâm sick of the darkness, Iâm bored by the constant stream of depressive updates about the rise of the Right, I canât engage with it, the European elections gave a victory to nationalists, we gave a state visit to a racist, homelessness is at an all-time high, and weâre literally cooking the planet to death. There are sometimes when I just want a great night out and forget how scary the world seems right now â laughter is the best medicine â not as a retreat, but a reminder of the good in us, of the joy, of the light. As the company is repertory, youâll be working with some actors you know very well. Did you have any of them in mind when you were writing the script? I certainly wrote two of the eight roles with long time company members Will Pinchin and Lucy Loannou in mind. And whilst yes, the roles are tailored to suit both of them - I did write the roles of Howard and Alchamy to stretch and challenge Will and Lucy, because Iâd never seen them play characters like that. Will is nothing like Howard, and Lucy isnât at all like Alchamy, but in way, theyâre made for those roles, and for me, theyâre perfect choices. I do like working with the same actors repeatedly, it is true, because you build up a short hand of technique and approach, but also you build up a trust. The actors in the company come in on day one, sort of knowing what to bring me, and what kind of vision Iâll probably have, since my style is something of a constant, but also Iâm able to, as their director, cast them in roles that perhaps play against type, or test their flexibility and skillsets. Iâm not an actor, but if I were, Iâd hate to play the same roles every time, to only get the âintense oneâ or the âdopey oneâ or the âawkward oneâ â Iâd want to think I could play anything that was thrown at me, and I think our rep system allows for experimentation and exploration. What has been the hardest part of the whole process to date? Weâre only in the first week of rehearsal, so nothing too taxing thus far. Hands down, the hardest part of a comedy is when youâve rehearsed it so much you no longer find it funny, at which point we need an audience. One Giant Leap hasnât hit that point yet, obviously, but I think most comic work benefits from the response and energy an audience gives. Theatre can be electric when you have that to play off, but in terms of where we are â One Giant Leapâs greatest challenge is the analysing of why something is funny, and making sure itâs that way every time. Itâs all about timing. For many years I laboured under the misapprehension that stand up comedy was just a funny person being funny with a microphone, that was until I saw Dylan Moran do the same set twice in the space of three weeks. He has a very casual, off the cuff, almost improvised way of performing, and I assumed that it was just his natural charisma and quick wit, until I saw the set the second time, only to find it was identical to the first. All the pauses, the stresses, the tangents, the quips, all of which was honed, polished and a work of precision. It was funny because heâd worked out the best way to get the laugh, every time, and thatâs beyond art, itâs science, itâs music. Traditionally Arrows and Traps have produced a selection of brilliantly adapted classics, including Dracula, Frankenstein, Crime & Punishment and Anna Karenina. Have you got a soft spot for one of them? I loved the breathlessness and breadth of Anna Karenina, the precision and murk of Crime & Punishment, the thrill and gothicism of Dracula, and the humanity and pang of loss in Frankenstein. I think my favourite adaptation, if I had to pick one, is probably Frankenstein â but thatâs purely subjective, and there was something about the biography of Mary Shelley, which we incorporated into the show, that really spoke to me â in the sense of a creator and a creation, a parent and child, a sinner and the terrible revenge. Youâve also got THE STRANGE CASE OF JEKYLL & HYDE coming up at Jack Studio in September. Your adaptations of the classics have been Arrows and Traps main focus, so does ONE GIANT LEAP herald a shift away from this? No, in fact because I know the next season of shows, One Giant Leap is perhaps the anomaly. Our work normally has a dark bent, we favour drama with funny lines as opposed to an out-and-out comedy. Weâve only ever done one full comedy before, The Gospel According To Philip back in 2016, so this is something of a return to that. I knew that the company was changing, and wanted to make a swansong to the current phase of work, I had originally planned for it to be TARO but that story ended so sadly, I wanted the last one to be lighter, more celebratory â thereâs something inherently amusing about the various tropes you usually get in the theatre world, and so I thought a comedy would be a fitting homage to where weâve come from, and a clean break to where we want to go next. The company has been going from strength to strength, what are the things of which you are most proud? Mainly, that weâre still going. Most theatre companies on the fringe donât make it to their third show, weâre on our seventeenth. Part of that is sheer stubbornness, there have been points where any rational person would have thrown in the towel, but there was always something in me that would never bend, never break, never give up. Itâs part ambition, part not wanting to fail, part wanting to make my father proud of me, part bloody-mindedness, part theatre-addiction. I think production-wise Iâm most proud of The White Rose, to what that achieved, all the five star reviews and the Best Production Offie-nom, but of course Iâm also very proud of the other twelve times weâve been nominated for Off West End Awards, the relationship weâve built with the Jack, the bond I have with my creative team and my casts, and just the fact that people seem to like the work. Itâs still always funny to me when a reviewer calls us âcritically-acclaimedâ or ârenowned rep companyâ â to me itâs just me, telling the stories I want to tell, with people I want to work with, you donât always think about how it looks from the outside. Iâm just producing the theatre Iâd like to go and see. It was rumoured that you would be leaving fringe theatre for other careers, partly because of problems with funding. Was there are truth in that? Absolutely! And in a sense, this is still completely true. I am indeed done with fringe. I think I got to The White Rose in 2018 â where we got the Offie-Nom for Production, we had eight 5-star reviews, four 4 star reviews, weâd completely sold out, and done it the cheapest way possible, and we still didnât break even. Which was very hard to take, and forced me to face the truth â you cannot hope to attain best practice ITC rates for your casts / creatives / yourself if you only do 15 shows in a 50 seater and you donât have subsidising support from an arts grant scheme. It just isnât possible. So I made the decision to stop producing work. Now obviously, with the shows being booked so far in advance, there were still three productions upcoming in the diary that I had to honour. But knowing I was quitting, and that this was the end for me, was too hard to bear - ultimately I had to face the fact that theatre is my life, and I could never leave it â so I had to find a way to make it work financially, not just for myself but for everyone else in the company, particularly the actors who are so often completely screwed over in fringe, and often end up working for nothing. Which is where the idea to change the model came from. Shrink the casts and sets to a more tourable model â 14 people down to 4 â and engage a tour booker to take the productions out of London to larger spaces that could widen the potential revenue. The Jack is our home, and we will always premiere all our shows there, but then we will take them into the provinces. The vision is still the same, adaptations of literary work, and biopics of iconic figures of history, but the remit and scale of the endeavour has changed. I donât see it as an ending, just a moving from one phase into another. But yes, absolutely, the 8-10 handers, movement-heavy, ensemble, big music, huge shows â this stage in our trajectory is ending with One Giant Leap, and whilst I see why it has to end, a part of me is sad to see it go, because there was something so wonderful about doing a massive 15-hander like Three Sisters. Are you one of those people who is meticulously planning the future? Yes indeed, because really we have to plan ahead in order to book the shows with the venues. Weâre doing One Giant Leap next month, and then move to Jeykll & Hyde in September, both at the Jack â and then Hyde goes on tour for about six months, with an opening of our next biopic Chaplin coming about halfway through the run in February. Because Iâm overseeing contracts, and touring plans, and writing the scripts as well as casting each show and most likely directing each one, I need to know where weâll be and when weâre doing it â Iâm trying to build a book of shows, a repertoire that is constantly touring, moving forward, and ever-evolving â reaching more audiences, and engaging with new communities. In the meantime, we canât wait to see ONE GIANT LEAP. Could you give us a little flavour of whatâs to come? In terms of shows after One Giant Leap, we have Jekyll & Hyde - a dark, political thriller set in a post-Trump America â a gritty examination of the corruption of power, then Chaplin â which tells the story of the 20th Centuryâs most famous clown, documenting his path to becoming the iconic Little Tramp â and his meteoric rise from Victorian poverty to Hollywood fame. After that, weâre bringing back one of our most successful productions of 2017, Frankenstein, revisited and rewritten for a more tourable model, and then a biopic of Marilyn Monroe, called Making Marilyn, which covers the Norma Jean origin portion of the starâs life. After that â who knows? Iâve always wanted to tackle Madame Bovary â and Iâd like to bring back TARO as it was one that I was particularly proud of in terms of its style and poetry. Finally, your shows at Brockley Jack are becoming legendary, itâs a great partnership. What are the things youâve learnt about theatre whilst working at Brockley Jack? So much. The Jack has been a great place to develop my approach to stagecraft, and how to tell stories as clearly and engagingly as possible. Since we joined the Jack, weâve built a vision of the style we want to have, and how we approach each difficulty, or tricky moment to stage, how our work with movement and text interconnect, and what we look for in our ensemble for each show. And, I guess, ultimately, Iâve being able to return to my training as a writer, and Iâve been so lucky to have so many opportunities to experiment with my writing, and get to think about how to tell a story and how to build each character. Playwriting is not something Iâve tried before, and Iâve loved delving into each of the worlds that the Jack has opened the door to. But I think most of all, Iâve been honoured by the patronage and support of Kate and Karl â and theyâve shown me the power of hard work, diligence, and care â if I ended up with anything like the talent and acumen they have, Iâd be very happy. @June 2019 London Pub Theatres Magazine Ltd All Rights Reserved THIS SHOW HAS ENDED ONE GIANT LEAP Brockley Jack Theatre 2 â 27 July 2019 directed by Ross McGregor produced by Arrows & Traps Theatre Productions Box Office > Below: Rehearsals at Brockley Jack Studio "Weâre not trying to say anything serious about whether the moon landing was or wasnât real, but more provide a raucous night out at the theatre, and keep you laughing about it on the Overground home." "... speaking for myself, after the last year Iâm sick of the darkness, Iâm bored by the constant stream of depressive updates about the rise of the Right, I canât engage with it, the European elections gave a victory to nationalists, we gave a state visit to a racist, homelessness is at an all-time high, and weâre literally cooking the planet to death." "Most theatre companies on the fringe donât make it to their third show, weâre on our seventeenth. Part of that is sheer stubbornness, there have been points where any rational person would have thrown in the towel, but there was always something in me that would never bend, never break, never give up. Itâs part ambition, part not wanting to fail, part wanting to make my father proud of me, part bloody-mindedness, part theatre-addiction." "... knowing I was quitting, and that this was the end for me, was too hard to bear - ultimately I had to face the fact that theatre is my life, and I could never leave it â so I had to find a way to make it work financially, not just for myself but for everyone else in the company, particularly the actors who are so often completely screwed over in fringe, and often end up working for nothing. Which is where the idea to change the model came from." " ... most of all, Iâve been honoured by the patronage and support of Kate and Karl (Jack Studio Theatre) â and theyâve shown me the power of hard work, diligence, and care â if I ended up with anything like the talent and acumen they have, Iâd be very happy." In celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, Arrows & Traps Theatre bring their critically-acclaimed approach to a brand-new comedy set in the back streets of a Hollywood lot. One Giant Leap is about the power of having an impossible dream, realising itâs impossible, and then trying your hardest to fake it and hope no one notices.