When David Greig woke
up to a newspaper interview he'd done about his latest play, what he
read bore little resemblance to the work he was still in the process
of writing. The Events, according to the report, was to be a musical
about the Norwegian killer Anders Brevik, who slaughtered
seventy-seven people in July 2011 when he bombed central Oslo before
opening fire on an island youth camp. Brevik claimed the attacks were
to prevent what he saw as the Islamisation of Norway, and is
currently serving a twenty-one year prison sentence for terrorism and
pre-meditated murder.
To suggest that such a
serious writer as Greig would do anything so crass as pen a musical
about such a horrific occurrence, then, was as headline-grabbingly
misleading as it was innacurate. The Events, which runs at the
Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh as part of its Edinburgh Festival
Fringe programme, may or may not draw inspiration from massacres such
as Brevik's, but it looks set to be a far subtler experience than
previous headlines suggest.
“My first reaction
was anger,” Greig admits. “To suggest that I was writing a
musical about Anders Brevik was so far away from what we were doing.
Then my second reaction was that the subject was so controversial,
that maybe some things are too dark to talk about.”
The Events focuses on a
liberal-minded woman and how she reacts when the choir that she leads
are attacked with tragic results.
“She's a typical
liberal,” says Greig. “She's vegetarian, she's a little bit
hippyish, she works with depressed people, and she runs this choir.
She's someone who thinks she can find empathy with the attackers, but
she's also the victim.”
The Events began over a
conversation with Ramin Gray, artistic director of Actors Touring
Company (ATC), who are lead producers of the show, in the Traverse
bar.
“We realised there
were similarities between the Islamic terrorists who were involved in
9/11 and 7/7, and Brevick, who at that point had not long before been
responsible for this great tragedy in Norway. As we've also seen more
recently in events in Woolwich, which again isn't dissimilar to
Brevick or 7/7, these things were all committed by strange,
vacant-eyed boys. They're sort of bogeymen, but they're weak,
inadequate bogeymen.”
Gray observes that “All
of the things mentioned have a political context. They're not like
what happened with the equally terrible events in Dunblane or
Columbine. They have a political purpose, however warped they might
be. Maybe the people behind them were abandoned or abused, we don't
know. When these things happen, all of us, whether they affect is
directly or not, spend days and weeks trying to work out what
happened and why it happened. We also try and work out what should
happen to the perpetrators. I think part of the reason that these
people obsess us is that there's no clear answer ever. ”
The Events is a
co-production between ATC, the Young Vic, Brageteatret in Norway and
the Schauspielhaus in Vienna. After its Edinburgh run, the production
will play in London, Dublin and Birmingham. The pair's researches,
which involved speaking to psychiatrists, hypnotherapists, priests
and many others, eventually took them to Norway, where they spoke to
a boy who was on the island when Brevik opened fire.
“I haven't spoken to
any perpetrators,” says Greig. “That's probably a mistake.”
This may be so, though
both Greig and Gray are at pains to stress that The Events is very
much a work of fiction.
“Our project is to
investigate and probe,” Gray says. “To understand is maybe to
condone, and maybe that's not possible.”
Greig wonders whether
“understanding would give the perpetrators some kind of victory.
The play ends in act of retribution, but it's all a bit ambiguous at
the moment, and we were just discussing whether any of us would kill
the perpetrators of such a crime. Some would, but some definitely
wouldn't, but what I think the play does look at is that this idea of
understanding is kind of a shroud that's put in front of you to avoid
the darkness, when you actually need to face the darkness.”
Greig wrote The Events
while his stage version of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory, currently playing in the west end, was being rehearsed. The
image Greig presents of him sitting at the back of the Theatre Royal
in Drury Lane writing something so recognisably serious as The Events
while something so fantastical as Dahl's story was being knocked into
shape is a glorious counterpoint to the material.
One crucial element of
The Events will be the onstage appearance of a real choir, which will
be made up of local singers from each town or district the play tours
to.
“The choir came first
in a way,” says Greig. “We saw a choir when we were doing some
research in Norway, and it seemed like such a perfect image if the
best in being human. In the play, what happens to them becomes the
motor for the story. A choir is a group that can include or exclude
you”
Gray points out that
“The play looks at the effect of these events on the community and
communities in general. Every community is bound to every part of
humanity, and a community choir really taps into that. It's a simple
way of making the play sing.”
As the play is
presented in different places, particularly in towns or cities still
raw from real life tragedies, one can't help but wonder how audiences
will react. Norwegian audiences in particular may perhaps recognise
some aspects of themselves onstage.
“What I would very
much like,” says Greig, “is for people in Norway to be able to
reflect on it, and to bring their own experience to it in a creative
and positive way.”
Gray concurs.
“What I would like to
do,” he says, “is to provide a space for a community to come
together and share a moment.”
“What I'm not
interested in,” says Greig, “is going out to shock or provoke.
That would be horrible.”
The Events, Traverse
Theatre, Edinburgh, July 31st-August 25th.
David Greig was born in
Edinburgh in 1969, and brought up in Nigeria.
At Bristol University
he formed Suspect Culture Theatre co with director Graham Eatough and
composer Nick Powell. Plays written with the company include Timeless
and Mainstream.
Greig's professional
breakthrough came in 1995 at the Traverse Theatre with Europe. Plays
that followed include The Architect, Outlying Islands and Damascus.
More recently, Greig
wrote Midsummer, The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart and Dunsinane.
Greig's version of
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is currently running in the west
end.
The Herald, July 16th 2013
ends
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