Capacity to connect
As director Sophie Hunter joins our roster, she tells us about her theatrical background and her belief that art can create meaningful connections with urgent issues
Was there a moment when you decided you wanted to be in the theatre?
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be in theatre. Growing up in London fed into that, having so much access. I had so many seminal theatre experiences from a very young age, thanks mostly to my mother, who would take me to anything and everything. At university, seeing Complicité’s shows was a game changer. The work they were making was unlike anything I had seen before and spoke to me profoundly. When I realised that so many of them had trained at Jacques Lecoq’s school in Paris, I set my sights there.
I was focused on acting until I went to Lecoq. It was there that I realised my future was in directing. I began to understand what makes a piece of theatre work: the architecture, dynamics, the rhythm. That understanding and analysis felt like home – albeit an intense, hard-working home.
From then on, I searched for the directors, choreographers, visual artists and filmmakers whose work felt vital to me, and I would make what felt like pilgrimages to see their work. Elizabeth LeCompte, Alice Rohrwacher, Romeo Castellucci, Deborah Warner, Robert Lepage, Pina Bausch, Crystal Pite, to name a few. They were and are my teachers in many ways.
What did the movement aspect of the Lecoq training bring?
For a performance to resonate, the truthfulness of the body and the physical presence are essential. I have a laser focus on that. Lecoq honed that and gave me that critical understanding and connection, as well as the tools to articulate it in the rehearsal room. But Lecoq was only one chapter in my training. I went on to study with Anne Bogart and her company in New York, which opened up brilliant ways of understanding and making work. Time with The Wooster Group in New York was also seminal.
What is your creative process at the start of a project?
It varies from project to project. For example, with Salt of the Earth, it was a physical space that set off the creative process. I was shown a vast old salt warehouse in Venice. The salt was still seeping through the walls from decades earlier. That prompted months of research into salt and a rediscovery of the story of Lot’s wife. I found a National Geographic article about a scientist working in the Venice Lagoon who specialises in salt marshes, and became aware of how vital and vulnerable they are. One thing led to the next and that scientist became a key collaborator. I staged a reimagining of Lot’s wife in 40 tonnes of salt with six performers and a 30-strong choir. I filmed on those salt marshes and created a project that involved scientists, local NGOs and the local community. It’s an ongoing project and has become a global environmental campaign in and of itself.
A gift of a re-released record was the starting point for one of my current projects. The record was the Voyager Golden Record, an attempt to create a portrait of humanity in images and music that was sent to the stars 49 years ago. Listening to it, I was moved and felt the timeliness and urgency of the idea. From there, I started to envisage it as a shared listening experience on a much larger scale, with the story of how the record was made at its heart.
Is there a unifying identity across the variety of your work?
You could say there’s a re-centring of female voices. I made an installation performance inspired by the female chorus in Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and there has been Phaedra and Lot’s wife. Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle are both complicated when it comes to women and I was intent on finding a way to rethink the female characters. I was particularly fond of a hard-hitting video montage we made of female protesters throughout history making its way into the ending of The Seven Deadly Sins.
The environment and the emergency we face are central, too. Salt of the Earth was an interesting journey that started with an environmental message. I challenged myself to make a piece of work that would have a tangible impact on the ground. This activism is part of my life now, growing the project to reach more communities.
The Voyager project is also, at its heart, a homage to the planet and our capacity to connect with the environment. Perhaps another theme of my work is a refusal to give up on that connection, and the belief that telling stories can help us restore it.
What have you learnt about how to collaborate successfully?
I have so much admiration for the collaborators I work with. My job is to create space for each of them to do their very best work, to feel they can take risks, and ultimately to give them confidence to trust me to bring it together and hold it all.
What are the challenges of projects that bring together so many different artistic disciplines?
One challenge comes from putting a group of people in a room who are brilliant and unique, and who have different ways of working. As director, you have to navigate that and make sure everyone feels heard, but also instil in them a sense of trust and belief in you. Ultimately, I’m the one who’s sculpting it, but everyone has to trust that process and the end point. The joy of live theatre is that you hand it over to the performers, and they keep it alive. At that moment, I stand back and let go of control.
How easy is it for a self-confessed perfectionist to know something is finished?
Not the easiest! I’ll be fine-tuning later than most people would expect, but if you have created a company where there’s a deep sense of trust, you can do that. My recent experiments with film have been interesting, as far as being able to exert perfectionism to the very end: the editing suite is my favourite place!
What is your experience of directing opera?
I’ve loved it. From staging Britten’s Phaedra in an equestrian arena and having to use a cherry picker to hoist the brilliant mezzo-soprano Ruby Philogene into a 20-foot dissolving dress, to directing a double bill of The Seven Deadly Sins and Bluebeard’s Castle at Teatro Colón amidst some quite intense political moments in Argentina… it’s been quite a wild ride.
The timescale of opera projects has been an eye-opener. I have been working on a project with the architect Santiago Calatrava for long enough to see my children grow at least a foot or two. But I would not have sped up that creative process by a second.
As an actress, I understand what it is to be a performer, and I have a huge admiration for singers – for their bravery. My connection to music is deep-rooted, as is my love for the epic, visual nature of the canvas that opera gives you.
What are your fears for the arts?
My fear for the arts is always about funding. The across-the-board cuts to funding for the arts in education are deeply damaging. Not to give the next generation access to the arts is a grave error and a huge loss as far as people’s connection to their essential nature. That is my biggest fear, as well as the biggest catalyst to galvanise me in my work.
What are your hopes?
I found a lot of hope in the Salt of the Earth project, because it proved how art has the much-needed and potent capacity to move people to action and bring them together in the climate sphere. I saw first-hand the fruits of that science/art collaboration and it felt powerful. I hope it will spawn more collaborations, leading to more funding, with people acknowledging what that kind of collaboration means. The more we have these cross-disciplinary alliances and listen to each other, the more change will happen. Any complacency in any art form is dangerous. It’s vital – and energising – to keep innovating and to make work that speaks to new audiences.
Sophie Hunter takes part in a panel discussion on Action for Soils Powered by Art at World Living Soils Forum on 4 June.
