Reckless Sleepers

Interview with Tim Ingram of Reckless Sleepers exploring the company aesthetic, (de)construction of text, attention to detail and tracing the arc in contemporary performance.

MP Michael Pinchbeck
TI Tim Ingram

MP How was The Last Supper conceived?

TI All artists attending the Ghent Festival in 1999 were invited to present a new piece of work inspired by The Last Supper. Mole, Pascal and I decided to create a piece with the idea of eating people’s last words. We collated the last words and these were written onto rice paper. There was a fine line between fact and fiction, perhaps faction. We experimented with fictionalising the last words of the living e.g. Elizabeth Taylor. About eating or not eating. We explored the mythologies around the death of Che Guevara. There are many different accounts of the last ten minutes of his life. This created a mini-argument onstage with contradictory evidence presented – discrepancies in describing the same incident but described within the same time-construct. We focussed on the minutiae of the details in descriptions of the assassination of the Romanov family. Military accounts of the time were forensic but suffused with the political – there were discrepancies in how many bullet holes were in the ceiling and who was shot first etc.

MP What was the thinking behind the aesthetic? There is something Perecquian in Reckless Sleepers attention to architectural or spatial detail, The description of a room and its contents in In The Shadow for example.

TI We were describing locations with the text so needed an ambiguous space. Mole comes from a Theatre Design background so the set design always comes first, He is fascinated with the architecture of the space and it was important to reflect Da Vinci’s Last Supper. We looked into the numbers of disciples, theories, sciences. 13 disciples mulitiplied by 3 gave us an audience maximum of 39 etc. We looked into the ritual and symbolism of the head table at a wedding and biblical references such as water / wine / apples – the blood of Christ. The people in the text are all in some way connected to Christ or numbers or in some way connected to each other within the narrative. For example Marie-Antoinette and Marilyn Monroe were both wearing Chanel no. 5. Elvis Presley was apparently reading a book on the toilet about the Turin Shroud. John Lennon famously said The Beatles were bigger than Jesus. We were threading these connections.

MP What were you as performers focussing on within this narrative and how did you shift modes from direct address to audience interaction?

TI We as performers interact and how much we interact with the audience is up to us. The text is a bombardment of facts so the presentation of the meal – their last supper taken from the final food requests of prisoners on Death Row – was a device of pace. Giving audience time to breathe. Any move we make is very significant in the stillness. There is a fine line between casual and formal, humour and pathos and in many cases we kept the delivery the same tone to let the words speak for themselves. For example, the last words of Bobby Sands create a very emotional and politically charged piece of text. It would seem wrong to characterise or to ‘act’ it.

MP Why do you think it is a trait of experimental theatre to almost resist acting?

TI Contemporary theatre avoids emotion to get away from the distinction with mainstream theatre. There was a love letter in Schrodinger’s box that I had to read. This text is based on real experiences and putting emotion into it does it no good at all.

MP In mainstream theatre where there is this temptation to inject emotion into everything actors often speak of ‘tracing an arc’ through the character and action.

TI In The Last Supper there is an arc, from meeting and greeting the guests, toasts, speeches, drinking and the piece shifts from very formal to more casual and laidback. We wanted it to reflect the pace of wedding reception. Where the mood becomes more laconic after a few drinks. The last few pages of text are more humorous and yet there is a neutrality of a newsreader to the delivery. After all, the piece is a choreography of facts – all facts apart from the lies – and we as performers are restricted in our expressions.

MP Are you conscious of your stage persona and how this might caricature yourself?

TI Of course you are always aware you are onstage – always conscious of your stage persona and always reining the persona in. Sometimes you think ‘Oh my God, I’m acting! Stop it. You know it’s right when you’re not acting but if you stop and think then you probably are. It is easy to ‘ham’ especially when working in another language. But more than anything we ate trying to be just ourselves. The hand gestures are our own. Something new to put in or to develop when’s good to eat an apple of drink the wine.

MP There is an aural texture to the performance that adds to the musicality of the voices.

TI The Last Supper could be a voice piece. Could be a radio show. The soundtrack is a series of lasts. The end of the music to Marilyn Monroe’s last film. The last track John Lennon recorded. The last few bars of a composition of a classical composer. The music stops when he stopped. This adds to the solemnity of the text.

MP What decisions were made in terms of mood and the atmospheric journey?

TI We mix up and make up last words – from the mundane to the profound. From Einstein gazing at planets and stars saying ‘My work is done’ to a victim of Hiroshima saying ‘I’m going to the shops do you want anything?’ Often the ordinary is more poignant – to commemorate and pay homage to the everyman – like on death row.

MP How does your work evolve and are you conscious of your practice over projects?

TI We take the experience from one show and it becomes something else. Houes on the Hill – a one-man show I was involved in – was the bi-product of another project. We are always using and reusing material. Moving on, developing, referencing, taking forward etc. At the end of the devising process so much is thrown away. We are constantly trying to reanimate ideas and devices otherwise it is a waste of material.

MP Are you a different performer in different projects – e.g. non-Reckless Sleepers?

TI I suppose there is a Reckless Tim and a non-Reckless Tim but I have to strike the balance between frustrating and liberating, concentration and compromise. All the work I do tends to have a fragmented form of text or language but with one overall voice.

MP So who does this voice belong to? The company / the collective / the director?

TI In Schrodinger – it is a series of monologues united by the presence in the same space. In the Shadow was more interaction-based, using questions and answers, facts and descriptions. I suppose the voice is always that of Reckless Sleepers but the voice is different. The audience know someone is going to say something but don’t know what. Is it pre-conceived? Does it matter? In Spanish Train Mole referred to the door banging because the door of the venue was banging but it still becomes part of the piece’s voice. In In the Shadow there was more of a storyline and when I was nervous it was my persona not a character. I am still Tim being nervous, Tim being angry through a shift of delivery or physicality. There must always be a way of surprising an audience. People come to see us as a company and may know us as performers but do they know what we are going to say or how we going to say it? That is the voice of Reckless Sleepers.