Terrorism is very much on Debbie Hannan’s mind just
now. While the Glasgow-born theatre director can’t help but be aware of today’s
world of highly organised attacks, she’s looking more at a time when assaults
on culture were more ad hoc and DIY.
This is the backdrop to The Angry Brigade, James
Graham’s 2014 play, which Hannan directs this week in the Citizens Theatre’s
suitably intimate Circle Studio with a cast of final year BA acting students
from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. The play is named after the group
who, for a year beginning in 1970, orchestrated an estimated twenty-five
bombings on targets that included banks, embassies, the homes of Conservative MPs
and the 1970 Miss World contest.
The Angry Brigade’s key players were arrested after
being holed up in a top-floor flat in London, and the trial of what became
known as the Stoke Newington Eight went on to become what was then the longest
criminal trial in English legal history.
Graham’s dramatic study of the era is a fascinating
enough reimagining of a crucial time in late twentieth century history. For a
group of students who have come of age in a much slicker political age to get
to grips with such potentially alien material is an education. Hannan too has
had her eyes opened by the experience.
“I’m interested in plays that talk about how we can
change things,” she says, “and the question The Angry Brigade is asking is how
do we enact change. In the play, neither side is right. It’s really interesting
as well, because in the play, the police behave anarchically, and the
anarchists end up imposing lots of rules. It’s set up like a rehearsal process,
with the police trying to get inside the anarchists’ minds, and the second half
is like improvisation, and is actually about how you live, and how you organise
yourself in society.”
Drama students taking on such weighty themes isn’t
unusual, and enabling them to step into the recent past has opened up a world
of possibilities.
“Sometimes at drama school students can end up doing
plays they’re the wrong age for,” says Hannan, “but in The Angry Brigade the
characters are in their twenties like the actors are. That’s been interesting
because of the different relationship with politics people in their twenties
have now compared to the time the play is set in.
“Everyone in the cast is really conscious of what’s
going on today with LGBT, gender and race politics, so to go back to the 70s,
when women police officers were called WPCs and if they got married had to
leave the police force is really strange. At the same time, for all we might be
more politically conscious, no-one’s taking to the streets right now in the way
people did in the ‘70s, which was a really vibrant time for politics and
protest.”
Hannan’s production of The Angry Brigade comes shortly
after she was announced as the winner of the Young Vic theatre’s Genesis Future
Directors award, designed to nurture and develop emerging directors by giving
them a fully resourced production at the theatre. Hannan will direct a revival
of American writer Naomi Wallace’s play, Things of Dry Hours. First seen in the
UK in 2007 at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre following a New York run,
Wallace’s play is set in Alabama during the 1930s, and explores race, class and
the impact of the Communist party on the lives of ordinary people.
“It’s another play about wanting to change things,”
says Hannan. “It’s all about power dynamics.”
Hannan’s award comes at a crucial time at the Young Vic,
with Kwame Kwei-Armah having been appointed in February this year as the new
artistic director of the London-based theatre founded by former Edinburgh
International Festival director Frank Dunlop. With Kwei-Armah taking over from
David Lan, who initiated the Genesis scheme, Hannan’s production of Things of
Dry Hours will form part of Kwei-Armah’s first season.
“It’s perfect for me,” says Hannan. “I’ve been in
London for four years, and this is a real chance to make a statement,
especially with Kwame coming in. I’m thrilled to be part of it.”
Hannan first came to prominence by way of Notes from
the Underground, an audacious reimagining of Dostoyevsky’s novel of existential
despair which played in the Citizens Theatre’s Circle Studio while Dominic
Hill’s production of Crime and Punishment played on the theatre’s main stage.
Hannan returned to the same space in 2015 to direct Howard Barker’s similarly
provocative biblical-inspired play, Lot and His God.
Hannan’s first professional job was with the National
Theatre of Scotland, as assistant director to John Tiffany on Enquirer, a
verbatim play about the state of the press. Given that Hannan’s dad is sports journalist
Martin Hannan, this seemed like an appropriate way to start. Hannan is also
related to playwright Chris Hannan, although she’s not quite sure how.
“I think he’s my dad’s second cousin, but I’m not
sure,” she says, having never actually met him. She has read all his plays, however,
and knows that he’s aware of her work too.
Hannan was born in Glasgow, but grew up in Edinburgh,
where as a child, inspired by her family’s love of TV drama and blockbuster
films, she spent her days writing stories. With the Edinburgh Festival Fringe
on her doorstep, Hannan was attracted by theatre in pubs and gig venues. She is
a graduate too of Holyrood High School’s drama department, then led by the
remarkable Frances Paterson. Paterson was
given a Herald Angel award for her work opening up her students’ minds to the
possibilities of theatre. Playwright and performer Kieran Hurley also came
through Holyrood High, as did actress Pauline Knowles, who appeared in Hannan’s
production of Lot and His God.
“Mrs Paterson changed my life,” says Hannan. “She
clocked that I loved making stuff, and let me do it. I remember writing and
directing something, and seeing people acting it out, and Mrs Paterson would be
really encouraging.”
Hannan went on to study English Literature and History
of Art at the University of Edinburgh, and, under the guidance of professor of
drama Olga Taxidou, discovered the work of Peter Brook.
“I remember seeing Marat/Sade and thinking ‘This is it’,”
Hannan says.
Hannan went on to do an MA at the RCS, and worked with
writer Pamela Carter on developing a show, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, for
the RCS’ New Works season. Prior to directing her own work, she assisted on
Stewart Laing’s production of The Maids, and has been championed by Dominic
Hill at the Citz and former National Theatre of Scotland artistic director
Vicky Featherstone. With Featherstone now in charge of the Royal Court in
London, Hannan has recently worked as trainee director there.
As well as The Angry Brigade and Things of Dry Hours,
Hannan is working with writer Sarah Kosar on a play about Monica Lewinsky, and
will be reviving a show called Latir, which she produced in Mexico. Having
recently directed Anthony Neilson’s play, The Wonderful World of Dissocia, at
the RCS, Hannan’s production of The Angry Brigade should add to an already
provocative body of work.
“Protest and activism are such different things now,”
she says, “but at the same time you have a Tory government putting in austerity
policies. In that way, it’s very much a reflection of now.”
The Angry Brigade, Citizens Theatre, Glasgow, May
30-June 2; Shame: A Double Bill, Pleasance Theatre, London, June 26; Things of
Dry Hours, Young Vic, London, August 15-25
The Herald, May 29th 2018
ends
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