The monster in the room is no match for
Pauline Lockhart. Don’t be fooled by appearances as Lockhart squares up to
giant puppets in Strange Tales, a new compendium of Chinese ghost stories
brought to life for the festive season by site-specific auteurs Grid iron in
co-production with the Traverse Theatre. The Glasgow-born actor may be small in
stature, but as co-writer and co-director of the show, she takes no prisoners.
As a fourth degree martial arts black belt, neither is Lockhart someone you’d
mess with at any level.
It was Lockhart’s experience with martial
arts that first made her look at the work of Qing dynasty writer Pu Songling
contained in his collection of almost 500 pieces of work, translated as Strange
Tales from a Chinese Studio. While nominally ghost stories, their fantastical
content took them beyond western notions of the genre in a way that also gave
them dramatic thrust.
“They’re not like ghost stories we’re used
to,” says Lockhart of Pu’s 400-year-old yarns once the puppet monster has been
defeated. “They’re completely different. Some of them are only half a page
long, and they’re just weird, with some things happening without any real
resolution. Others are these big long love stories in which people fall in love
with ghosts, and humans and ghosts can have kids and live together perfectly
normally. In others, humans can have relationships with fox spirits, and
they’re so theatrical.”
Despite film adaptations including A
Chinese Ghost Story, the stories have never been staged in the UK.
Key to the eight tales presented in new
translations by Ewan Macdonald care of the Royal Shakespeare Company Chinese
Classics Translation Project is the show’s visual elements. Karen Tennent’s set
and costumes are augmented by interactive video projections from Susanna Murphy
and Cristina Spiteri of Bright Side Studios, while a series of puppets,
including the aforementioned monster, have been created by visual artist Fergus
Dunnet.
Lockhart appears on
stage with fellow storytellers Luna Dai and Robin Khor Yong Kuan. Working
alongside Grid Iron’s Ben Harrison as co-director and co-writer, she was keen
to put martial arts to the fore.
“I’ve been doing martial arts for 21 years
now,” she says, “and I’m always trying to get it into shows. It was a challenge
to find other actors who were at least up for giving it a go, but we start
every day with a bit of martial arts class. We’ve got them up to fourteen
push-ups a day now.”
Lockhart is one of the few women black
belts in Scotland. As with the stories in Strange Tales, her interest in
martial arts began by accident.
“I was sitting up late night, and watched
this biopic about Bruce Lee,” she says, “and thought it would be amazing to be
able to do what he did. I went to the library to read about him, and started
going to a class in Leith Academy. At first, my heart sank, given the size of
me, but I thought, if I’m going to do this I have to take it up seriously, and
I’ve stuck it out for twenty-one years and worked my way up. I think as an
actor its great having that discipline. It’s just a great constant to have in
your life.
“I’m wee, and I’m not really built for it,
but I’ve managed to stick at it, and when you think you can’t take anymore,
something else kicks in about perseverance. You’re used to holding onto your
comfort zone, but this teaches you that you can take things further.”
Lockhart has previously directed shows
with acting students at Edinburgh College, and sees herself more as an
all-round theatre maker than a straightforward writer or director.
“I’m not really interested in just writing
it on the page,” she says. “I prefer to think about how it’s going to be
performed and everything else that goes into it. I’m interested in the whole
thing, I guess.”
With fellow actor Wendy Seager, Lockhart
has also co-founded Wildfire, a theatre company focusing on creating and
presenting theatre by and for working class audiences. Coming from Glasgow’s
east end, Lockhart is conscious of the lack of opportunities for this much
neglected demographic.”
“I’ve been an actor 30 years now,” she
says, “but I’m getting to an age where you realise there’s not many people from
my background actually in the business. There’s really not. There are people
who pretend to be sometimes, but for people starting off now from my background
it’s much harder. We could sign on the dole while waiting for a job, whereas
now you need money to be able to pursue acting.
“All these people I was at school with,
who were clever ore funny or talented, they didn’t have the opportunities they
should have had have, and sometimes they ended up in prison or dead. I was one
of the ones who came through, but now there’ll be loads more who won’t be able
to do that. The opportunities that are there aren’t even going to reach these
people. The people who programme theatre have to programme things that will
appeal to a wider demographic than middle class educated people. It’s a whole new
way of thinking we need, from the ground up.”
This is the case too with Strange Tales.
“We want to
create something that appeals to a wider community who might not normally go to
the theatre,” says Lockhart. “We’ve been out doing community events with East
Asian communities, just to get their voices and find out what they wanted to
see. What we’ve ended up with is something that’s entertaining, but which has a
wee spiritual message coming through, that’s about living your life, not
worrying about fame or money, but doing things that are worthwhile.”
Strange Tales, Traverse Theatre,
Edinburgh, December 3-21.
The Herald, November 28th, 2019
ends
Comments