“……....definitely the biggest high ever, and just a real testament to the building’s desire to keep creating and to not be beaten by the pandemic. The innovation and bravery to take on such a thing as making a film in a theatre, whilst we are in a pandemic, was a thing to behold really.” Clint Dyer
Following on from the 2020 monologue Death of England which opened in the Dorfman, and its sequel Delroy, Face to Face is an audience gripping pre-recorded play which was filmed in the Lyttelton theatre and directed by the visionary actor, writer and director Clint Dyer. ALT caught up with Dyer to talk about DOE, growing up in Upton Park, directing and his dreams for a more inclusive theatre audience at the NT.
ALT: Who was the nine year old Clint that shaped the creative you have become today?
Clint:
I grew up in East London in Upton Park, a very poverty stricken Upton Park in those days. I was at Catholic school when I was nine and I was very shy. I think in those days I had my eyes on being a footballer. I think nine would have been about the age when I was starting to encounter racism in a way that was overt and obvious to me. I’m sure I would have heard things in the house by then, but it was starting to happen to me on a personal level and was things that were memorable. I think that it’s funny, because I remember I was extraordinarily shy as a young child, and I wonder if some of it was because my mum was so desperate to try and protect us. She was very much keeping the world at bay. We weren’t allowed school friends in the house. We weren’t, there was very much, a barrier around us, she was over-protective but when you realize where we grew up you understand why. So that was me around nine.
ALT:
When did you connect the dots that you were probably going to be really good at acting or directing, when did the creative interest come?
Clint:
Well, funnily enough, my mum and dad instilled the possibilities of creativity in us quite young. My sisters went to ballet, we all played instruments. My sisters were five and six years older than me. So, by then they would have been playing, my sister, played the French horn and my other sister played the guitar, they sang in choirs, and they would have been doing school plays then as well.
My dad constantly played music in the house. The arts as a form of entertainment were most definitely encouraged in the house. The first time that I really noted a real reaction, and a specific kind of enjoyment, was at school at about 14. I did a play that was part of the Stratford East workshop, called Fings Ain’t What They Used to Bed to be I remember being clapped off about two scenes in. And then on my last scene, the audience knew they weren’t going to see the character again and everybody clapped. It was kind of weird, even the cast were like ‘what’s going on? I’ve been on all night!’ Some of the actors in it were older than us and were part of the theatre and Stratford East workshops. They suggested that I go down to the workshops every Saturday morning as they did and learn acting through improvisation, which is what I did!
ALT:
So let’s fast forward to now; you’ve recently taken up the post of Deputy Artistic Director at The National Theatre (NT), what has that been like so far? What has been some of the joys and the challenges, particularly with coming out of a pandemic?
Clint:
The crazy thing is, I took the job nearly at the beginning of the pandemic, right in the middle of it. It’s just been the craziest entrance into such a big job. Essentially, I’ve been firefighting since we started, we are in a pandemic. So, in one sense I have no idea what the job is normally like, we’ve lost almost a third of the staff, some that I was very close with. Maybe 15, 20% of staff. We are obviously financially strapped, because of that audiences haven’t been the same. We haven’t been performing for ages, so the amount of revenue we lost is huge. It’s a really funny time to be doing this. My highs while I’ve been here, undoubtedly during the making of the film, that’s when I was in my position. Making the film was definitely the biggest high ever, and just a real testament to the building’s desire to keep creating and to not be beaten by the pandemic. The innovation and bravery to take on such a thing as making a film in a theatre, whilst we are in a pandemic, was a thing to behold really.
ALT:
For the theatre industry as a whole, what do you think would be some of the strengths that have come out of the pandemic? For example digital streaming across the industry is a thing?
Clint:
It’s really opened some pathways to creative thinking. Creatively, how do we keep our audiences entertained, engaged and happy? It’s been such an awful time, and what we really recognized is that the arts were our way through this. Could you imagine trying to deal with all this without TV or without being able to live stream, without artists writing, without art at this time. It’s just the recognition really how important in our lives the arts are. It was a particular shock to see the government cutting the arts funds after what we’ve been through. Really? Really credible thinking… As if the arts didn’t prove themselves completely during the pandemic, but then look at what they did to the NHS…
ALT:
Let’s talk about your career a bit more again…Now, this is a big moment for you. You’ve got Death of England; Face to Face coming out on Sky Arts and you’ve got Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical, which just had a massive West End red carpet opening. What does it feel like, specifically in this moment, because as lots of people are aware, the arts have been heavily affected, but to see these two great things happening, how does that feel for you?
Clint:
Well, obviously, I feel very proud to say that I survived it in a time when so many artists have been challenged to the max. I feel very privileged and lucky in that they’ve been so well received and they’re doing so well. It’s something that I’ve fought for. The timing of it all is, is fascinating. As an actor, it’s also disturbing, the writing and directing has taken off so much that it’s eclipsed my 30-year acting career. That’s something I’ve got to look at, to make sure I do not just kill my acting career. I’m chuffed. I’m not a spring chicken, so I think the hard work I have put into this career is and has been coming to fruition for a long time.
It’s weird because my career is a career of somebody that comes in and out, in and out, in and out. Every five years I have something that everyone goes ‘Oh my god, Clint Dyer!’ and then they go back a bit…it’s quite strange. So, it’s kind of trying to keep a momentum, and obviously we understand the reasons by which those things happen in terms of the amount of output a Black practitioner in Britain is allowed to have. So, I was only allowed to have the space that many times in so many years… That’s been the major challenge with my career. And what’s been interesting about what’s happening to me of late is that there’s been some continuity.
ALT:
And would you say that’s off the back of what happened last summer?
Clint:
The weird thing is that I’ve been doing a dance with The National for about nine years in terms of trying to get a piece on. The first Death of England happened just before the pandemic, it was a hit, they commissioned us to write it before we’d even finished the run. So, we were writing it, then COVID happened, then George Floyd happened. And of course, we were writing it. I know for a fact we wouldn’t have got into the programming so quickly had it not been for COVID, but the first Death of England propelled where I am right now. What I think it is an example of is opportunity, if you give people the opportunity at this kind of level, people will answer it.
ALT:
I read somewhere that you’ve had a lot of firsts, for example, the National, you are the first artist to write, direct and perform there. You were saying it’s like a double-edged sword, there’s also the other side of the ‘firsts’, because in a sense they highlight some of the flaws in society. Can you elaborate a bit on that please?
Clint:
It’s an interesting one, isn’t it? Some of the things that have been attributed to me aren’t quite the whole truth. By that I mean the musical that I directed in the West End, there had been Black people that had directed in the West End before me, but because the gap between them was so long, it gets conflated into another story that’s convenient. So, what actually happened with the West End first, was that I was the first one to transfer a British Black musical. Inside of that, there are Black firsts for me individually, but it gets taken into ‘the first black…’ and it’s not quite actually the fact of the matter. What’s disheartening is that we’re always having to reinvent the wheel again, because of the convenience of the way that we want to remember things. So, you know, Paulette Randall directed in the West End before I had, and others…yes, it might not have been the ‘proper’ West End, but you could also go, ‘yeah they had directed in the West End.’ The upsetting thing is that whilst there are truths with the situation at The National, and there are truths in what I’ve achieved in the West End, I think the bigger story is more disturbing than the celebration. That’s what I’m trying to say. The bigger story is that it’s so shocking that I should be part of that story in 2021 or 2020, that we’re still talking about Black firsts in theatre. I’ve been in the industry 32 years, and I’m still firsts, or even spoken of in that kind of conversation. Oh my god! Ah man, it makes me want to scream!
ALT:
I’ve been getting that recently when I hear this person’s the first person to do this, or the first person to do that. I think I feel a sense of happiness, then of course there’s a sense of sadness that hits you, that this is disgraceful. So, on a lighter note, what has directing taught you, and what do you bring to directing as an actor?
Clint:
What I know I bring to directing, as an actor and a writer, is a bit more width. I know I bring a conversation that has experience on all different sides, of storytelling. That is something that I find pleasing in my relationship with #actors, in my relationship with crew, I’ve been around it all. I feel very comfortable in myself when I’m on a set or when I’m on stage, I’ve been doing it for so long and holding all these different roles that I can communicate what I want quite easily. There might be a lot of people who laugh when they read that when I say I can communicate what I want easily. I mean that I feel like I can be myself. That in itself is a very difficult thing as a director, because you’re trying to look after so many people, you want to make sure that you’re allowing space for everybody else to be themselves, to be as creative as you need them to be. But inside that, I feel as though I’m comfortable enough in these areas not to be freaked out by that.
ALT:
With Death of England: Face to Face what was it like directing that as a film? What were some of the things that you still wanted to convey, or how much did you want to keep it as theatrical as possible?
Clint:
The great thing for me was having shot a lot of short films before, the last one being half an hour long. So, using a camera in that way wasn’t unusual to me. What was wonderful was having Sashi Kissoon and Sam and the sound department who were all prepared and happy to go along with my methodology. My methodology, you could argue, is firmly rooted in a theatre process. I used very much a theatre process to be able to make the film and by that, I mean a collaborative process. In terms of being able to hold on to the spirit of the piece. The spirit of the piece is that it’s the characters that are trying to convey how they see their lives. So, by holding onto that as a central tenant of how we express the story, we were able to 1, maintain the roots of the theatre piece in that it’s a one man play, and 2, trying to mix the genres became easy because we had theatrical setups, but we also had very naturalistic shot setups. So it actually meant that we were able to break out into a fantasy world very easily and then go back into what we would class as a social realistic world.
ALT:
So for someone who doesn’t actually know the story, in about two sentences, what is the story of Death of England: Face to Face?
Clint:
Wow. Story of Death of England: is two guys grappling with their past in light of the very huge encounters that everybody had during lockdown.
ALT:
Where do you call home?
Clint:
Hackney/ Soho, one of the two.
ALT:
What are you working on next that you can talk about?
Clint:
Blimey, there is so much I’m working on…
ALT:
Maybe tell us a bit about your vision for the National Theatre, what kind of stories would you stop telling or continue to tell?
Dyer at the helm at NT: image Helen Murray
Clint:
I’ll tell you what I really want for the National Theatre. I want audiences to reflect the work that we’re putting on. By that I mean that the National’s has South-Asian play writers, Asian writers, disabled writers, black writers, female writers, white writers, you know, the range of people that we’re now employing throughout the making of the work is so wide. I’d love to see that reflected completely in the audiences, but not in the specific choice of each play. I would love it to have a sense of ownership of the experience of humans, as opposed to just the specificity of each production. Just like the way that we watch TV, we watch whatever we feel like watching, there isn’t the case of I only watch black people. It’s so strange the way that theatre has managed to departmentalise who it advertises to you know, who is this show for? It’s like, NO!, I want us to feel like the National Theatre, which we all pay taxes into, belongs to you as well, no matter who you are. And every play is a play for you. That is what I’d like to be able to do at the National Theatre. That to me will be success.
Death of England: Face to Face will be broadcast on free-to-air Sky Arts on Thursday 25 November at 10pm.
https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/death-of-england-face-to-face
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