The Lighthouse, an original play by local playwright Rachael Claye, is being workshopped by the Space. The project has three phases, with the first being a few readings of the show for feedback, the second a tech brainstorming period, and the third a production of a twenty-minute section of the play. We completed the first phase recently, and we are looking forward to the second and third!
An original Christmas story, The Lighthouse sees St Nikolas crash his sleigh on an iceberg far out at sea on Christmas Eve. Deprived of his ancient powers, Nikolas is forced to accept rescue from a little girl in a rowing boat, Rose. When she takes him to the lighthouse where she is living alone, he begins to question his life at the frozen edge of the world.
We asked the Lighthouse’s director Alex Crampton (pictured above), writer Rachael Claye, and producer Adam Hemming, about the show and their experiences with theatre and Christmas. Here’s our exclusive interview!
Alex, can you tell us a bit about your experience with new writing over your career as a director? What makes this show particularly exciting?
Alex: My very first production was at University – ‘Whoreticulture’ by friend and long-term collaborator, Sam Haddow. I loved the intensity of that experience, how Sam responded to me reading his text so deeply and developing it alongside him, supporting him but also enjoying a certain amount of creative ownership as well. New writing is an unfinished product – you get the excitement of working on something in a raw, malleable form, with all the freshness, innovation and immediacy. I’ve worked with Isley Lynn, Jon Barton, Nick Myles, Laura Jacqmin, Cat Kerridge and had work performed at Southwark Playhouse, Soho, Arcola, Gate, Theatre 503, the Pleasance – and of course, the Space. I’m particularly excited about the Lighthouse because it’s big on visuals and design – the environment is a character in itself and a trigger for Rachael writing the play. I enjoy epic, fantastical settings so my fingers are crossed we see this all the way through to full production. It’s also a luxury to have an extended development process for a new script … having it staggered means that the team has been able to pull it apart, have some digestion / thinking time, and return to elements that are troubling us. We’re still unpicking and trouble-shooting.
What is something you are looking forward to as this show progresses?
Alex: Absolutely its seeing our ideas and thoughts take on an increasingly 3D shape, finding the solutions to our problems.
What got you working as a director? Did you always want to do it?
Alex: I remember my drama teacher at school – an amazingly inspirational and influential woman called Brigid Doherty – said to me: ‘you should direct. You have the vision.’ (!) I’ve always had a strong sense of what I want (those are my words for being naturally bossy and a control freak) which are put to constructive use with directing. I’d always performed, but at university I suddenly got stage shy. I had a first stab at directing and it went amazingly well. My lecturer (another marvel named Richard Rowland) told me I could do it professionally. I resisted committing fully, battling for about 2 years after graduating with ‘why start a career that is financially insane? It’s not sustainable’ etc, but after being deeply unhappy in a ’real world’ job I just quit and went for it. I got myself into a theatre environment full time (community engagement alongside directing) but have focused on directing itself for the last two years as I went freelance. Things have really escalated in that time … I got some advice (Steve Harris, another legend) that you’ll only make it if you do it full time. I agree with that – it’s so hard, it needs full focus. I still question what I’m doing on a regular basis, it is financially difficult, but I love it, and can’t seem to stop …
Adam, can you tell us about your involvement in the play’s journey – from your first reading of the script to taking it through the current R&D process?
Adam: The play was initially read at one of our ScriptSpace play development readings and I was alerted to it by a playwright who regularly attends. He really enjoyed it and told me that if I was looking for a Christmas play then I should definitely consider it! I was equally enchanted when I read the script, it’s such a beautiful piece of work. The play has some fairly substantial production challenges, not the least being a multi-level lighthouse as the setting! I met with Rachael and discussed the script and we decided that research and development of the script and how it might be staged was the best way forwards. I applied to the Arts Council and here we are!
What do you think the Space offers to new writing and emerging playwrights?
Adam: The Space has always offered a safe and supportive environment for playwrights to get their work staged. In recent years we’ve evolved from being just a receiving house to really thinking about how we can support and develop new work and playwrights of all levels. ScriptSpace was a feedback service for playwrights with a first draft, Script 6 challenged six playwrights to alter their approach to writing and Space Productions has realised some fantastic new plays in the past. What will we do next? Stay tuned for some exciting announcements early next year!
What is something you are particularly looking forward to as this show progresses?
Adam: I’m very excited about the next phase – bringing our designers in and coming up with different ways of tackling the lighthouse/reindeer/iceberg/magic sack!
Rachael, can you tell us a bit about The Lighthouse’s genesis? Where did the inspiration for this alternative Christmas story come from?
Rachael: When my youngest daughter was just a few months old, I was in my kitchen listening to a play on the radio that was set in…. a kitchen! I so badly wanted to be transported somewhere more surprising, somewhere that set my imagination going. I thought I’d have a go so I signed up for a beginners’ playwriting course with the playwright Jemma Kennedy at Cit Lit. Just a few weeks in she set us a homework looking at dramatic setting. We had three lists of options from which to choose a place, a character and a theme or emotion, and come up with just an opening moment. The aim was to look at the way place shapes the story that you tell. I went away having picked an iceberg, a young child with a secret, and salvation. I jotted in my notebook something that made me laugh – Father Christmas crashlands on an iceberg far out at sea and hears oars pulling towards him through the fog – a young girl who lives all alone in a lighthouse…. It sounded silly but then I wrote a bit of a first scene and found I enjoyed making things real – ignoring the usual tropes around Father Christmas and (as I love Arctic/Antarctic adventure stories, especially Shackleton’s South) putting him on a real iceberg with the terrifying cracks in the ice and that sense of isolation and the power of the natural world. A saint is someone we mythologise – rather like a modern celebrity – and debunking the myth was fun. The other character, Rose, stepped straight out of my head and onto the ice. I enjoyed going back to the lighthouse with her and showing Nikolas round – her captive saint, though she doesn’t know it yet.
What has the research and development process been like so far?
Rachael: Fun! I loved rehearsing with the actors and director, going through the text line by line. Their ideas and responses brought out things I hadn’t known were there. I also learnt a lot about the process – so much of writing is sitting on your own and being in your own head, but this is the moment when the moveable, rewritable thing I’ve been mucking around with becomes something solid to a team of people and they bring their own creativity to it. I found that a real thrill. I have no idea how anyone is going to make an iceberg, a lighthouse interior, a magical sleigh for the stage… That’s the next challenge.
Is there a particular moment of the script that you’d be most excited to see on stage?
Rachael: Hmm. I have always wanted to just be taken inside that lighthouse far out at sea…. There’s also a point near the end of the play, just before the final crisis, when Saint Nikolas’s dysfunctional sack suddenly starts to work in its curious way and produces a gramophone. We hear a lovely lilting song to which Rose dances while Nikolas pulls all sorts of other strange objects from the sack. I’d love to see that, it’s a wistful, romantic moment so different to their dangerous world.
How much research did you do for The Lighthouse? Did you discover any interesting facts you’d like to share?
Rachael: Saint Nikolas was Turkish and the only child of wealthy traders – and they really did recently discover the remains of a lighthouse that existed in his hometown when he was a child. I did a fair bit of research but in the end the story is a made-up one and I used historical accounts/facts as something to mine for useful ideas rather than as a narrative guide. Accounts of Nikolas’s life are very varied, and some are even confused with stories about another Saint Nikolas who also lived in Turkey. Whatever we know about him we can’t be certain of – although it does seem probable that he really did punch one of his fellow bishops at the council of Nicaea! Our cuddly old fella in red seems to have been pretty hard on heretics, an absolute hardliner in religious terms. I read a lot about lighthouses and in the summer took a boat out to the Farnes islands off Seahouses in Northumberland to see the lighthouse where Grace Darling lived with her mother and father. They were a lighthouse family – her brother manned a lighthouse further down the coast. Whole generations lived out their days at sea, the land just within sight but a world away. I saw the neighbouring island to which lighthouse keepers would row because it had enough earth – unlike their own barren rock – for them to grow vegetables and keep rabbits there (for eating).
How is the St Nikolas of the play different to the Father Christmas we might be familiar with?
Rachael: He doesn’t have a red coat or a jolly chuckle. He’s shabby and spends too much time by himself. He has developed the habit of talking to his reindeer; faced with a real person, he would rather they just went away and stopped bothering him. He reckons he can manage best by himself but he’s hopeless at DIY. He doesn’t want anyone getting under his skin.
What would you like for Christmas?
Adam: Socks. No, really.
Alex: A massive ‘reset’ button for how we’ve screwed the planet and each other, and everyone to sign a declaration that we all promise to be better and won’t make the same mistakes again. Posh chocolate. A nice old-world looking table lamp.
If you had to stay in a lighthouse for a year, what is one thing you would bring with you?
Adam: My family, which is really three things so I’m cheating a bit. My wife Catherine would keep me sane, my daughter Phoebe would keep me entertained and Margo, our dog, would protect us from troublesome saints.
Alex: Ooh … it would have to be my laptop with an endless self-generating power supply. I feel like I’m amputated without my laptop. That way I can watch films and play games with the outside world, keep a sense of connection. OR I’d bring a trunk of all the books I never have time to read, because I’m watching films or playing games on my laptop ….
Rachael: Tea bags and a hot water bottle.