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Matt Ball, Artistic Director of the Camden People's Theatre, is currently involved in staging Sprint.
What first attracted you to the theatre?
My first memories of theatre are Pantos at Loughborough Town Hall. The factory where my dad worked would buy out a performance for all the workers' kids, and there were free sweets… Later it became less about free sweets and more about a freedom to speak, a way of communicating with a group of people. I was quite a shy kid and it gave me a voice. It wasn’t about glamour or being in the spotlight, hence perhaps the move towards directing, but about creative expression – god that sounds a bit poncy.
If you could pick any one person or theatre company to work with on your next project, who/which would it be?
Probably Robert Lepage or Forced Entertainment, they’ve both had a big impact on the way I see theatre and its different possibilities.
What is your opinion of Off West End theatre, in general?
It’s such a broad term and covers a very wide range of work. I’m not sure about the terminology, to be honest. There’s a lot of great work happening in London, and equal amounts of terrible work. I think we have a responsibility to try and drive theatre forward into the 21st century and help audiences and artists to make exciting choices.
What was the most inspiring performance you have ever seen? Why?
There’s so many that have inspired me in different ways. I suppose the most life changing was a youth theatre production of Woyzeck directed by Pete Shenton (of New Art Club) in 1992, at Burleigh Community College. It was the first play I’d seen and was unlike anything I’d been to before. It completely opened up a new world of performance introducing me to new ideas, and ways of thinking. This started me on a path of exploring character, storytelling and a physical language which I’m still on.
What piece of work are you the most proud of?
It changes from day to day. Probably at the moment it’s Ariadne as this was the first piece of work I brought to CPT in 2004. It was a piece I’d waited to make for a long time, as it was a collaboration with a corde lise performer (yes in CPT), and it still has moments that flash into my head and make me smile. To be honest though I’m very hard to please when it comes to my own work and am overly critical so I’m now feeling reticent about my pride… hopefully I’ll be more openly proud of my next piece!
What makes a really good character?
That’s tricky. It has to come from somewhere deep inside, and they have to have something they need to communicate. Quite often when we’re devising work we ask “is this a good character” but for me the character is just one part of the jigsaw. My work isn’t so character driven, it’s not that it’s unimportant just that the characters are only one part of an overall score of visuals, sounds, feelings etc.
Are there any actors / actresses you would like to direct?
I generally like to work with people who are a bit feisty and they have to be intelligent. There are no “star names” that really attract me – and when I’m thinking of a project I start from an idea or an image and the piecing together of the production team is built around that, so I think the answer is no, I don’t have a desperate ache to work with a particular actor/actress.
What play do you wish you’d written?
Woyzeck. It’s a play I can keep going back to time and again, and is on my wish list to direct at some point. My other answer is The Mousetrap – with the royalty payments I could have directed Woyzeck or done any of the numerous other projects that are waiting in the wings.
Can you tell our readers what you’re doing next?
At CPT we’re just gearing up for our annual festival of visual, physical and unusual performance – SPRINT – which runs from the 29th May to 29th of June, and showcases some of the best emerging companies and artists from the UK and beyond. On a personal level I’m working on a production called Icarus, which is the third part of a triptych I’ve been making over the past ten years. It’s about medical experimentation, the history of flight, love and ambition. At the moment it exists as a series of images in my head and a few conversations I’ve had with potential collaborators. I’m going to be doing some initial development workshops in the autumn with the production happening in early 2009.
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