Marlie Haco on directing Good Day for VAULT Festival.
Good Day, written by Daniel Bainbridge and Cam Scriven, has an intriguing query at its centre: if we may develop into immortal and stay youthful, would it not be nearly as good as it would at first sound? It’s an interesting idea which may very well be explored in some ways – so we sat down with director Marlie Haco, whose theatre firm Double Telling is taking up the duty of participating with this query on stage.
We have to start out by saying Good Day appears to be like like one thing out of Charlie Brookers’ Black Mirror, would that be a good evaluation on the play?
Black Mirror will little question spring to thoughts for a lot of viewers members – a number of of the present’s plotlines have even to some extent come to cross in actuality since they aired – nevertheless, I feel Good Day in the end has a extra uplifting message than many Black Mirror episodes. To me, the collection at all times felt like a condemnation of the various dangers posed by AI, whereas Good Day doesn’t search to return down too firmly on one aspect or the opposite. I hope, in staging the play, to carry open as many meanings and interpretations as potential, permitting area to discover how expertise is a optimistic and unfavourable power for the characters – it’s each what drives Zara to wish to finish her life and what reignites her capability to go on dwelling.
What was it that made you wish to be part of this explicit story then?
As you’ve already urged, the theme of expertise has been tackled extensively in TV, however much less so in theatre, so I used to be excited by the problem of utilizing dwell efficiency – the place we will incorporate components like motion, authentic music, and video – to discover the affect of AI on humanity.
I’m enthusiastic about how the play exploits a therapeutic relationship to current a compelling battle between the life power and the demise drive in a futuristic setting. I used to be drawn to how the play blends the sunshine and the darkish in its exploration of vital modern points comparable to suicidality and euthanasia.
And what else are you able to inform us about it, from which course is the play tackling the subject of immortality?
Good Day focuses on a lady who needs to die in a world the place immortality is the norm, and appears at how her life is modified by the bond she kinds with an android who, in contrast, needs to be alive. The play makes use of the protagonists’ relationships to query the extent to which we will nonetheless discover that means and connection in our lives when our time is infinite and asks whether or not this is sufficient to maintain us alive perpetually.
It’s set in a futurist and excellent world; no poverty, no conflict. How does this dictate the way you direct such a play, what do you must do to create such a panorama?
In attempting to ascertain the principles of the world, I’ve explored with the actors how this seemingly good setting brings its personal set of issues and should in the end result in a world devoid of that means and function; with out social and monetary pressures, what drives individuals to work, succeed, or create? If all the things is supplied by expertise, what place do people have on this world?
Like with every other setting, we should all develop into actually clear about what that this world appears to be like and looks like – we’ve hung out drawing details from the textual content, making imaginative responses to questions the textual content leaves unanswered, and creating maps of the areas that the characters inhabit. We’ve additionally used motion work to develop a bodily language for a way they work together with their environment.
I’m eager to make use of all of the design components to trace on the dystopian underbelly of the utopian panorama, presenting expertise as an omnipresent power on this world.
We not too long ago noticed Annie Davison, who will play Zara, the girl who needs to die, in Anything With A Pulse, the place we mentioned she had “instant chemistry that makes their encounter fast-paced and zesty”, was this what you noticed in auditions to make you solid her to this function?
I additionally noticed Annie in Anything With A Pulse – I used to be struck by the power and charisma she had on stage and was excited by how this is likely to be turned to a really totally different function.
You’re bringing the present to VAULT Festival in March, is it straightforward to recreate that good world within the Vaults’ damp chilly caverns?
We have a better job than we’d as we’re performing within the Network Theatre, which is a extra conventional black field area. Nevertheless, my imaginative and prescient has at all times been to make use of the design to recommend the concurrently utopian and dystopian setting of the play by creating the impression that the viewers are trying by way of a portal into this shiny, ‘perfect’ world that’s each alluring and disconcerting – a spot you’d like to spend a day, however not eternity. This is partly the place the concept to make use of video got here from, a option to immerse the viewers in a hyper-digital actuality. I’m at all times enthusiastic about how we will each exploit and push in opposition to the probabilities {that a} bodily theatre area is providing us.
Whilst clearly tackling a really critical matter, it guarantees some darkish humour, is that this straightforward to deliver out of the script while nonetheless guaranteeing you don’t distract from the primary speaking factors of the play?
Something I really like in regards to the play is how comedy and tragedy lie so carefully collectively and in directing the manufacturing, I wish to discover methods to carry each concurrently. I favor to keep away from encouraging an actor to ‘play a line for laughs’, however relatively to permit the comedy to return from the scenario or predicament the character is in. I’m very fortunate to be working with actors who very naturally draw out the potential for comedy within the strains.
Ultimately, nevertheless, I’m within the human story on the coronary heart of the play and guaranteeing that our audiences can join with these characters – but when they discover them humorous too, that’s nice!
And we will’t not finish by asking you, in the event you may have this magic chip implanted to let you dwell perpetually, would you leap on the probability, or has this play given you second ideas about the way it may not be as great because it first appears?
Without giving an excessive amount of away, I really feel the play is basically a love letter to our mortality and due to this fact I’d positively suppose twice earlier than choosing a chip that might take away the very factor that makes us human.
Massive due to Marlie for taking day trip of their mortal life to talk to us. Good Day will play at Network Theatre as a part of VAULT Festival 2023 between 7 and 12 March. Further data and bookings will be discovered right here.