On Thursday, 31 July, we hosted an exciting conversation between South African theatre director and playwright, Yaël Farber, and dramaturg Drew Lichtenberg.
From the moment that Yaël first fell in love with theatre, to how she brought together the private and public realms in her award-winning 2014 production of The Crucible, you can now watch the full on-demand recording of this event.
In the meantime, here are our top takeaways…
Theatre as an ‘Acupuncture Needle’
Growing up in the thick of apartheid in South Africa, Yaël originally trained as an actor in Johannesburg, before being ‘luckily rescued’ by friend and fellow theatre-maker, Lara Foot.
Yaël describes her early experiences as an audience member of the iconic Woza Albert at the non-segregated Market Theatre in Johannesburg, feeling that ‘finally, someone was telling me something true about how we were living’. Seeing that theatre could do that, she said, is something that has stayed with her throughout her life and career.
She describes theatre as a ‘trigger zone’, a ‘provocation’, and even an ‘acupuncture needle’ searching for the spot that hurts the most – because ‘that’s where it’s needed the most’.
Watch the full conversation between Yaël and Drew here.
‘I’m always looking for what would make the work incendiary enough that it would be threatening’, she explained. ‘Not for its own sake, but to awaken people in some way.’ She uses her 2001 radical African adaptation of Julius Caesar, titled SeZaR, as an example:
‘Directing SeZaR at that time, it didn’t feel like I was directing anything that wasn’t directly tapped into the jugular vein of South Africa.’
Creating Intimacy in The Crucible
The second act of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible opens with Elizabeth Proctor gently singing to her young children. Her husband, John Proctor, arrives home from work, adds salt to the food Elizabeth is preparing on the fire, and begins to wash up.
To Yaël, this moment is ‘one of the most moving scenes ever written in theatre’:
‘I started that scene with a 5-minute sequence of Elizabeth just working a lump of dough against the fire. It gave her an opportunity to unleash the eroticism, the pent-up frustration, the anger, and fear…
‘When John comes in, and pretends the soup is lovely… It’s heartbreaking. These are two lovers who have lost their way, who no longer have access to one another’s bodies.’
Watch The Crucible on Digital Theatre+ with a free trial.
In Yaël’s 2014 production of The Crucible for the Old Vic Theatre, John Proctor is portrayed by Richard Armitage (against Anna Madeley as Elizabeth), and Yaël joked about the choice to have him shirtless in this scene – ‘every director can be guilty of putting in things that they know will please an audience!’.
But the intimacy of this scene is articulated through this physical vulnerability: ‘a man who works on the land, who’s trying to wash away his sins’.
The personal and the private are similarly connected in Yaël’s production of The Tragedy of Macbeth for the Almeida in 2021, where Soutra Gilmour’s minimalistic set design includes a large bed with white, crumpled sheets.
‘It is a canny choice to fill them with love’, said Alexandra Pollard for The Independent. ‘It makes it all the more devastating when Macbeth turns towards violence.’
Soutra Gilmour also worked on our RSC production of Timon of Athens.
Creating Space to Take Risks
Thinking about what is required of an actor to ‘show up’ on stage in the way that Yaël’s work so often demands, Drew asked about the process of collaboration in her practice.
‘I’m very invested in how we can keep spaces for actors where they feel safe enough to be dangerous,’ Yaël began. ‘And not to their own psychological or physical wellbeing, but to create spaces for actors in which there is enough agency for them.’
One way that Yaël approaches this is through ground rules, asking her actors:
- Not to speak about the work outside of the rehearsal room
- To embrace – and never ignore – their personal limit for content or subject matters
With these ground rules in place, Yaël explained, ‘actors can feel safe enough not to second-guess their gut impulses, and to know that where the body is leading them will never be co-opted or abused’.
→ Access the full on-demand replay of our conversation with Yaël Farber and Drew Lichtenberg.
→ Watch Yaël’s production of The Crucible with a free trial to Digital Theatre+ today.