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With Mooted Theater’s Macbeth just around the corner we speak to director Mark France about his past, present and what lies next for Mooted.

Could you tell us a bit about your own background?

I started directing about fifteen years ago down in my home town of Poole, but only really pursued it professionally after completing my postgraduate studies in Leeds in 2003. Since then I’ve worked at Hull Truck, Harrogate Theatre, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Theatre in the Mill in Bradford. I also do a lot of schools work, and in particular work regularly for the Shakespeare Schools’ Festival. Here in York I directed A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Henry VI for York Shakespeare Project, and as well as my work for Mooted I worked for five years for a Leeds-based company, Icabod, and directed several touring productions for them. At the moment I’m also researching a PhD examining rehearsal methods
when working with Shakespearean verse, as well as teaching at the University
of York.

Could you tell me a bit about Mooted Theatre?

I set up Mooted Theatre in 2008 with a couple of York-based actors,
Andy Curry and Bill Laughey, and my wife, Catherine Doman, with a view to
building a professional small-scale company in York that would  tour work
around the region. Since then Nigel Smith has joined the permanent company
and we have produced a number of successful shows. Macbeth is our fifth and
most ambitious yet, and York  audiences may well remember our productions
of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and Taming of the Shrew.

How do you audition people and bring together your team?

We have a core of actors who have been in more or less every Mooted
production, but for Macbeth we needed a large cast so we threw the net a bit
wider than usual and held open auditions and workshops to see as many
people as possible. We’ve got a huge diversity of talent assembled in the
cast of twenty, and they’ve been working incredibly hard to make the
production a reality. My creative team offstage  are mostly people
that I’ve worked with before, especially Kingsley Ash (Music), Audrie
Woodhouse (movement) and Simon Jarvis (Design). In fact, I went to school
with Simon and this is the eighth  production we’ve worked together on.

How do you go about putting on a production of this scale?

Ha ha, with difficulty! We don’t have huge resources and we’re not
funded (yet!) by the Arts Council so all our income comes from box office
sales. The short answer is all work incredibly hard to realise the  play
as best as we can and make every penny count. We have a reputation for
good-looking productions with high production values, which is a testament
to the hard work and creativity of the people we  work with. This one
has been a logistical challenge though, but I think it’ll be worth it when
we open in two weeks’ time!

What made you chose Macbeth?

I feel its relevant, it’s exciting, it’s perennially popular and it
has a very particular connection with its audience. It’s not just an
incredibly exciting thriller, it’s an exploration of the darker side of
human nature  that is a warning to us all. It’s also the first
time I’ve revisited a play that I’ve directed before. I staged an open-air
production on Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour in 1997 – that was a very
traditional production and although it was successful I’ve always wanted to
come back and do something very different with the play, so here I am
hopefully doing just that.

How will your interpretation differ from the classical productions?

There’s been so many Macbeth’s over the years it’s impossible to
consciously set out to do something completely original without moving
completely away from Shakespeare’s text, so I try to put aside what I  know
about what other people have done and just concentrate on the people I have
around me and our response to the play.  This is the only production with
this cast and creative team, so as long as we work  hard and do
ourselves justice it will by its nature be a unique production. That said,
we’ve set the world that looks not unlike the First World War, and we’ve
thrown in a few surprises along the way. Although  we pay a lot of
attention to the writing, and a very detailed approach is important when
working with Shakespeare, we’ve also tried to create a very visual, visceral
production that will hopefully shock and  surprise our audience.

What can you tell audiences to expect?

Well it won’t be for the faint-hearted – this is a blood, brutal
play set in a nasty, disintegrating society, and we’ve not shrunk from
showing that. It’s a roller-coaster ride that we want to give them.
Macbeth is Shakespeare’s shortest play, but it’s packed with action and
incident and the pace never lets up. It’s going to be an intense, immersive
experience, although not without its lighter moments too.

How would you encourage people to work with Mooted?

I think the more people see our work and know about us the more
people will put themselves forward for one of our shows. Our website
www.mootedtheatre.com, always carries details of when we’re  recruiting,
and they can ‘Like’ our Facebook page as well to be kept in touch with
what’s going on. We all work incredibly hard and demand high standards of
ourselves and others, so I think people need to be  willing to go with
that, but the results are hopefully worth it.

After Macbeth, what are your plans for the coming year?

A bit of time off to concentrate on other things, so Mooted will go
quiet for a while, but will hopefully be back late next year with a
production of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros’.

 

For more information on the upcoming show of Macbeth click here.